Supreme Court reverses precedent on federal agencies’ regulatory authority

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court greatly reduced the power of regulatory agencies to interpret ambiguous laws, overturning the landmark 1984 decision Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc.

Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, remembers the original deliberations for that case well. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White as the court wrestled with whether Chevron Inc. had violated the standards of the Clean Air Act.

“I was actually the first to go through the papers of Justices [Thurgood] Marshall and [Harry] Blackmun for the case,” Percival said. “The air pollution control regulations were so complicated. Justice [John Paul] Stevens had been tasked with writing the majority opinion and Stevens eventually threw up his hands and said, ‘When I get so confused, I go with the agency,’ and that was his rationale, which was then embraced by all the other justices.”

Since then, courts have deferred to executive agencies in regulatory situations. Under Chevron, regulators—not courts—were assumed to have the needed expertise to fill in gaps in cases where Congress’ intent wasn’t clear. But as of Friday, that rule no longer exists.

In addition to curbing the power of the executive branch, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce renews focus on how lawmakers articulate their intentions in pieces of legislation.

“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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “But courts need not, and under the [Administrative Procedure Act] may not, defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”

For conservative members of Congress concerned about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ many restrictions on gun owners and other similar regulations from other agencies, the decision is a welcome rebuke to executive overreach.

“I think it was clearly the right decision,” said Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “We’ve seen overreach from some of these administrative agencies for a number of years. I have said for a long time that we need to retake some of the authority that we have allowed the executive branch to be able to make these rules.”

Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

“They’re making laws,” McCormick said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the ATF or anyone else when a bureaucracy is affecting the American people without oversight. They’re not elected officials. You don’t have the constitutional right to say, ‘You can’t do this with your business.’ They are there to enforce laws, not make laws.”

But where conservatives may welcome the reversal of Chevron, many of them also acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision had turned the spotlight back on Congress.

I asked Guest if he thought Congress could be more specific in the text of its laws—especially in complex areas that had been left to the expertise of regulatory agencies.

“Yes. It will put more work on Congress,” Guest said. “But that’s what the Founding Fathers intended. They intended Congress to make these decisions and the executive branch to then enforce them. And over the years, what we’ve seen is Congress has failed to fulfill their obligations.”

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan expressed concern that the ruling would put judges, left to interpret laws before agencies, in charge of making final decisions that would require a high level of expertise.

“Today, the majority does not respect that judgment,” Kagan wrote. “It gives courts the power to make all manner of scientific and technical judgements. It gives courts the power to make all manner of policy calls. It is a role this court has now claimed for itself, as well as for other judges.”

Ahead of the decision, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., condemned what he saw as a political move in the making.

“To the extent to which the Chevron Doctrine is undermined, it will provide another example of the MAGA extremist movement—including the Supreme Court—trying to jam their right-wing ideology down the throat of the American people,” Jeffries said at a news conference earlier this month. “We are witnessing significant judicial overreach.”

While most conservatives see the court’s decision as a win for legislative power, other members have a cautious eye to the future. When asked if Congress would be up to the challenge of regulating emerging fields like artificial intelligence, McCormick said lawmakers won’t have much of a choice.

“We better be,” McCormick said. “Let’s get back to business. Let’s get specific. We have to be very careful. It’s those unintended consequences of laws that we pass that could put us behind the rest of the world and cost us.”