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9:07 AM β Saturday, June 29, 2024
The Supreme Court has overturned the 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which mandated judicial deference to agencies in cases where the law is unclear.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationβs (NOAA) federal rule requiring fishermen to pay $700 per day for an βat-sea monitorβ is outside the authority that Congress granted the federal agency, according to the majority of the court in a 6-2 decision.
The justices heard the arguments in January in two cases arising from lawsuits filed by Rhode Island and New Jersey fishermen opposing NOAAβs rule, which they claim threatened to destroy their livelihoods.Β
The Chevron doctrine, a legal theory developed in the 1980s, states that if a federal regulation is contested, the courts should accept the agencyβs reasonable interpretation of whether Congress gave it the right to issue the rule, provided that Congress had not directly addressed the issue. This theory was overruled by the courtβs decision.
βChevron is overruled,β Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the courtβs majority. βCourts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation while ensuring that the agency acts within it.β
βBut courts need not, and under the APA, they may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous,β he added. βChevron was a judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties.β
βAnd the only way to βensure that the law will not merely change erratically but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion,ββ he said, citing Vasquez v. Hillery, is βfor us to leave Chevron behind.βΒ
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that Chevron deference βpermits the Executive Branch to exercise powers not given to it.β
βChevron deference was βnot a harmless transfer of power,’β Thomas wrote. ββThe Constitution carefully imposes structural constraints on all three branches, and the exercise of power free of those accompanying restraints subverts the design of the Constitutionβs ratifiers.β In particular, the Founders envisioned that βthe courts [would] check the executive by applying the correct interpretation of the law.β
βChevron was thus a fundamental disruption of our separation of powers. It improperly strips courts of judicial power by simultaneously increasing the power of executive agencies. By overruling Chevron, we restore this aspect of our separation of powers,β he said.
The fishermen claimed that 20% of their revenue is lost due to the required expense of at-sea monitors.
Dissident from the majority, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor stated that the Chevron βhas formed the backdrop against which Congress, courts, and agenciesβas well as regulated parties and the publicβall have operated for decades. It has been applied in thousands of judicial decisions.β
βIt has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kindsβto name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest. Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government,β Kagan wrote. βThose were the days when we knew what we were not. When we knew that between courts and agencies, Congress would usually think agencies were the better choice to resolve the ambiguities and fill the gaps in regulatory statutes.β
βBecause agencies are βexperts in the field.β And because they are part of a political branch with a claim to making interstitial policy, And because Congress has charged them, not us, with administering the statutes containing the open questions,β she continued. βAt its core, Chevron is about respecting that allocation of responsibilityβthe conferral of primary authority over regulatory matters to agencies, not courts.β
Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermenβs Stewardship Association (NEFSA), praised the Friday decision, stating that βFederal officials usually ignore the well-grounded concerns American fishermen share about overregulation.β
βWe are grateful to the Supreme Court for bucking this trend. And we are especially grateful to the fishermen-plaintiffs in Relentless and Loper Bright who have spent years fighting for their brother and sister fishermen everywhere,β he added.Β
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