The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court\u2019s six conservative justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives. The liberal justices were in dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in challenges that could be spawned by the high court\u2019s ruling. The Biden administration\u2019s top Supreme Court lawyer had warned such a move would be an \u201cunwarranted shock to the legal system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren\u2019t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCourts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority,\u201d Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roberts wrote that the decision does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the assurance rings hollow. \u201cThe majority is sanguine; I am not so much,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kagan called the latest decision \u201cyet another example of the Court\u2019s resolve to roll back agency authority, despite congressional direction to the contrary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court ruled in cases brought by Atlantic herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island who challenged a fee requirement. Lower courts used the Chevron decision to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for government-mandated observers who track their fish intake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conservative and business interests strongly backed the fishermen\u2019s appeals, betting that a court that was remade during Republican Donald Trump\u2019s presidency would strike another blow at the regulatory state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court\u2019s conservative majority has previously reined in environmental regulations and stopped the Democratic Biden administration\u2019s initiatives on COVID-19 vaccines and student loan forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The justices hadn\u2019t invoked Chevron since 2016, but lower courts had continued to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled 6-0, with three justices recused, that judges should play a limited, deferential role when evaluating the actions of agency experts in a case brought by environmental groups to challenge a Reagan administration effort to ease regulation of power plants and factories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJudges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of government,\u201d Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1984, explaining why they should play a limited role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the current high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas all had questioned the Chevron decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They were in Friday\u2019s majority, along with Justice Amy Coney Barrett.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Kagan in dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opponents of the Chevron doctrine argue that judges applied it too often to rubber-stamp decisions made by government bureaucrats. Judges must exercise their own authority and judgment to say what the law is, the court said Friday, adopting the opponents arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bill Bright, a Cape May, New Jersey-based fisherman who was part of the lawsuit, said the decision to overturn Chevron would help fishing businesses make a living. \u201cNothing is more important than protecting the livelihoods of our families and crews,\u201d Bright said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defending the rulings that upheld the fees, President Joe Biden\u2019s administration said that overturning the Chevron decision would produce a \u201cconvulsive shock\u201d to the legal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Environmental, health advocacy groups, civil rights organizations, organized labor and Democrats on the national and state level had urged the court to leave the Chevron decision in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Supreme Court is pushing the nation into uncharted waters as it seizes it seizes power from our elected branches of government to advance its deregulatory agenda,\u201d Sambhav Sankar, a lawyer with the environmental group Earthjustice, said after the ruling. \u201cThe conservative justices are aggressively reshaping the foundations of our government so that the President and Congress have less power to protect the public, and corporations have more power to challenge regulations in search of profits. This ruling threatens the legitimacy of hundreds of regulations that keep us safe, protect our homes and environment, and create a level playing field for businesses to compete on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gun, e-cigarette, farm, timber and home-building groups were among the business groups supporting the fishermen. Conservative interests that also intervened in recent high court cases limiting regulation of air and water pollution backed the fishermen as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fisherman sued to contest the 2020 regulation that would have authorized a fee that could have topped $700 a day, though no one ever had to pay it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In separate lawsuits in New Jersey and Rhode Island, the fishermen argued that Congress never gave federal regulators authority to require the fisherman to pay for monitors. They lost in the lower courts, which relied on the Chevron decision to sustain the regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The justices heard two cases on the same issue because Jackson was recused from the New Jersey case. She took part in it at an earlier stage when she was an appeals court judge. The full court participated in the case from Rhode Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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