Courts

Chevron Is Heading Back To The Court. This Totally Isn't A Ploy To Strengthen The 6-3 Justice Skew.

For some reason, the non-political branch keepings finding itself in politicking.

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Chevron SongRemember learning about Chevron deference in law school and being a little confused on what it meant? That’s cool — that was kind of the point of it. Back in ’84, the Supreme Court decided that in cases where there was some confusion over how a federal court ought interpret an ambiguous or imprecise statute, the court should just defer to whatever the appropriate governmental agency Congress delegated the responsibility to. Now that we’ve had a refresher, prepare for the usual of this court: there’s no clue on what will happen to it now.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider overruling a 1984 decision that established Chevron deference—the principle that federal courts should defer to reasonable federal agency views when Congress passes ambiguous laws.

The Supreme Court agreed to consider the issue when it granted cert Monday in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Loper Bright Enterprises and other petitioners are challenging a federal regulation that requires fishing vessels on national waters to “foot the bill for the salaries of the monitors they must carry” under federal law.

…

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told CNN that a decision overturning Chevron deference “will give courts more power—and the executive branch less—on everything from environmental regulation to immigration to public health to meat inspections to telecommunications policy.”

This could have massive consequences.

Even if we get a far-right socialist anarchist satanist atheist like AOC or whomever is Marjorie Taylor Green’s new boogeyman, it is hard to deny that the judiciary — and the decisions that may come under their purview under a weakened Chevron — will lean right. Trump did a phenomenal job of placing right-leaning judges wherever he could, and that’s before you even consider that judges tend to tilt right and that we’ve living under the most conservative Supreme Court in the last 90 years.

An aside: the good news is that we have an example of a Supreme Court justice who decided to practice restraint and recuse themselves from the case. I’ll give you a guess on who:

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In the meantime, maybe brush up on some Chevron jurisprudence?

Supreme Court Could Limit Agency Power After Agreeing To Reconsider Chevron Deference [ABA Journal]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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