Power of federal agencies:
The Chevron Framework
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless
What they ruled: Judges no longer have to defer to agency officials when interpreting ambiguous federal statutes about the environment, the workplace, public health, and other aspects of American life.
Why it matters: In issuing its ruling, the court overturned a 40-year-old legal precedent known as “Chevron deference,” long a target of conservatives interested in reining in the power of the administrative state.
The Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., established a foundational doctrine where courts should defer to reasonable agency interpretations of acts of Congress.
The court’s decision will significantly curtail the power federal agencies have to regulate thousands of private companies, products, industries and the environment.
Environmentalist organizations criticized the decision. The Southern Environmental Law Center issued a statement saying the ruling "shifts power to judges who do not have the expertise of agency staff who live and breathe the science, financial principles, and safety concerns that federal agencies specialize in". Vickie Patton of the Environmental Defense Fund warned that the decision “undermines vital protections for the American people at the behest of powerful polluters”. The Nation's Elie Mystal wrote that the decision was "the biggest judicial power grab since 1803", as it can strip power given by Congress to the experts in the appropriate field of the executive branch and place it in the hands of the judiciary for agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Security and Exchange Commission, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In what has the potential to be one of the most consequential decisions in federal administrative law, the Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, overruled Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., in a pair of cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce (collectively Loper). The Chevron doctrine—named for the case that articulated it—required federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutory provisions the agency administers. For the better part of four decades, Chevron has been one of the foundational decisions in administrative law, governing the relationship between agencies and courts in matters of statutory interpretation and acting as a backdrop against which Congress has legislated. As one scholar put it: Chevron “is the most talked about, most written about, most cited administrative law decision of the Supreme Court. Ever.” For the past decade or so, however, Chevron has come under increasing fire from some corners of the federal judiciary and legal academia. Once cited often and approvingly by a majority of Supreme Court Justices, Chevron has recently fallen into desuetude at the Court. Over the past several terms, the Court has declined to apply or even cite Chevron in cases where it may once have governed. Other methods of statutory interpretation, such as the major questions doctrine, appear to have displaced Chevron, at least in some instances. Chevron’s absence at the Court has not gone unnoticed, with several Justices commenting on Chevron’s absence as evidence that it should be overruled. Against this backdrop, the Court explicitly overruled Chevron, holding that the Chevron framework violates Section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Section 706 requires courts to “decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action.” The majority held that the APA’s command required courts to exercise their own independent judgment on the meaning of a federal statute, but Chevron required courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of an ambiguous statute. That deference requirement, the Court held, abdicated the judiciary’s foundational function to “say what the law is.” Although the petitioners in Loper also challenged Chevron on constitutional grounds, the majority’s opinion did not address those arguments.