The Supreme Court rebukes the administrative state

The U.S. Supreme Court continued its streak back toward constitutionalism by disallowing a mandate by the Environmental Protection Agency that claimed virtually no limits in jurisdiction over greenhouse gas emissions. The case, West Virginia vs. EPA, was handed down last Thursday and overturned a lower court that had sided with the EPA on the question of just how wide the scope of its powers could go.

The key issue is whether administrative agencies have the authority to enact regulations that carry the force of law, supposedly to carry out the alleged will of Congress, even when the laws do not grant these agencies those specific powers. In this case, the regulations gave the EPA the power to force private entities to restructure the energy grid and decarbonize the economy. In doing so, the court invoked “the major questions doctrine,” which essentially holds that regulators face a higher hurdle when translating laws into rules when the rules are of “great economic and political significance.” In other words, when Congress passes a bill calling for limits on something like emissions of dust but does not specify the exact parts per million allowed, regulators may well need to fill in the details that Congress left out. But when the EPA takes it upon itself to restructure the entire energy economy in a way that is politically divisive with no explicit congressional mandate, it has gone too far.

What changed legally is that the court weakened what has been known as the Chevron deference doctrine. Chevron, named after a 1984 case, gave regulators very broad authority to go beyond the law as passed by Congress. Thanks to this new ruling, that deference to the bureaucracy is severely diminished, and “major questions” of “great economic and political significance” go back to the people’s elected representatives, where the Founders originally placed them. That is good news for constitutionalism.

This is more than just a shift in technical legal doctrine. Ultimately, every question of law is a question of justice, and every question of justice is ultimately a question of religion and ultimate meaning. All law is based on faith, whether it is the faith found in the Bible or the faith that doesn’t admit it is a faith, like secular progressivism. The latter faith, believing in the inherent goodness and perfectibility of mankind, promiscuously grants power to a class of educated managerial elites. This faith doesn’t see sin as the problem, only ignorance. Every seeming moral problem is only a disguised knowledge problem. In this view, education is the path to redemption and is therefore messianic. Of course, the ignorant masses are not yet able to govern, so an expert class of the more evolved is needed to rule the rest for their own good.

Justice Neil Gorsuch explicitly alluded to this in his opinion by quoting Woodrow Wilson, the historic figure who most embodied progressive elitism and decried “popular sovereignty.” Wilson had little confidence in the American people. He also revealed deep racial prejudice against black Americans, as well as those from southern, central, and eastern Europe. Immigrants to the United States from nations like Italy, Hungary, and Poland, said Wilson, possessed “neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence.” All this he wrote in The Study of Administration, which was his academic manifesto and a foreshadowing of his presidency.

Marvin Olasky’s study, The American Leadership Tradition, makes a plausible case that Wilson’s rejection of the authority of the Constitution was presaged by his rejection of the authority of Scripture, which may well have been a rationalization of his rejection of the authority of his marital vows.

Whatever the historical causes, the clash of worldviews is undeniable and at the center of this case. For all the recent hysteria from the progressives about democracy, we will hear no applause now that the high court has remanded a matter of great importance to the branch of government closest to the voters, the legislature.

The battle is not over. More decisions like this are needed, and we already see the progressives shifting their focus from one unelected managerial class, regulators, to another one, corporate managers. At the same time, the court was rebutting the Chevron case, activists managing corporate proxy services successfully passed an anti–fossil fuel proposal at the annual meeting of the company after which the doctrine is named, Chevron. The vigilance that we’ve shown in the courtrooms is finally paying off, but the battle is shifting and now we must direct equal vigilance toward the corporate boardrooms.