The Robert’s Supreme Court flips Chevron
What Chief Justice Roberts is saying is the justices know more than the scientists and engineers know. This was done in a decision which the agency experts immediately criticized. The issue being potentially undermining decisions by scientists and the very same agency experts.
The 6-3 and 6-2 decisions brought by fishing operators in New Jersey and Rhode Island challenged a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule. The court’s ruling overturned the principle known as Chevron deference.
Laughable, the court’s six conservatives reasoned courts “routinely confront statutory ambiguities” that have nothing to do with the authority of regulatory agencies. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
“Of course, when faced with a statutory ambiguity in such a case, the ambiguity is not a delegation to anybody, and a court is not somehow relieved of its obligation to independently interpret the statute.”
So suddenly, Roberts and the justices are the experts now.
Why You Should Be Concerned About Loper Bright
by Joyce Vance
Civil Discourse
The decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, handed down on Friday, will have a direct impact on all of our lives. It will upend agency regulations that are used to implement federal law. That sounds dry and far away from our daily lives. But it’s not.
The administrative state, which conservatives have spent decades attacking, has operated since the Chevron decision in 1984 on the basic premise that Congress passes laws and agencies issue regulations that implement them. What happened when a regulated entity didn’t like an agency’s decision? They could sue.
The longstanding Chevron deference doctrine required courts to defer to agency action when the law was ambiguous and the agency’s view was reasonable. That came to an end on Friday, when Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority in no uncertain terms,
“Chevron is overruled.”
After Loper Bright, it’s up to the courts. Judges need no longer defer to subject matter experts at a federal agency after the Supreme Court wrote the experts have “no special competence” and decided courts were better suited to make these decisions. The conservative majority wrote:
Slight issue here. Judges may know(?) the law. The technological expertise and the knowledge lies with the agencies. There always was a remedy to agency rules. There is no remedy to court rulings. In the end, citizens an businesses lose.
Liberal groups and elected Democrats worried the reversal will strip agencies of the power to enact strong regulatory safeguards across a broad spectrum of issues, especially climate and environmental regulations.
“It weakens our government’s ability to protect us from the climate crisis, threats to worker safety, public health, clean air and water, safe medicines and food, a sound financial system, and more,” Manish Bapna, president of the environmental group NRDC Action Fund, wrote in a statement.
“Today’s reckless but unsurprising decision from this far-right court is a triumph for corporate polluters that seek to dismantle common-sense regulations protecting clean air, clean water, and a livable climate future,” Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.
Rachel Weintraub, the executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a group that advocates for strong federal regulations, said in an interview before the decision was released the Chevron deference has allowed a host of regulations affecting consumer safety, labor, environmental protections, and other issues.
“The important role that government plays in ensuring the health and safety of our families and the fairness of our markets could be undermined here,” she said.
The ruling takes power away from the experts on a particular subject of a federal regulation – traffic engineers at the Department of Transportation, disease experts at the Food and Drug Administration, or scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, for example – and gives it to the federal judiciary (which know little) Weintraub said.
“Experts” the scientists!
The decision was about subjecting bureaucracy to legislation.
If the law is vague, send it back to congress!
I was an “expert”! I spent 47 (!) years blundering about the DoD complex in most every iteration of uniformed, civilian and contractor, letting the “experts” rule got you where the trillion buck a year defense budget is pillaged!
I had a side gig with DoT once….. they make all kinds of rules for trucks, highways, and Boeing QC!
I am not for any power to gumint, who cannot be fired, experts.
Paddy:
Just like the Laws of Soccer (former referee and coach), the United States Laws are open to interpretation and the interpretation varies by District and COA Courts. SCOTUS may get to interpretate also and reach a far different conclusion.
Laws are not rules.
Judge Aileen Cannon will decide if Boeing is safe to fly
If Aileen decides such, she should fly in such.
to put it plainly, Roberts et al are either fools or their intention is to destroy government…no doubt so their rich friends can make the rules.
you simply cannot run a modern government without “agencies” who are expert in doing what the voters wanted and reality requires. we have seen that even the Cout’s expertise in what they say the framers intended is…bullshit. but letting the courts decide what the framers, or congress, intended is, even if they are right about that…makes government impossible, and civilization uncapable of solving and managing serious threats to its own existence without being kneecapped by the next Congress who happen to win elections by playing on the ignorance of the people.
We hav limte government. We have checks and balances, one of those checks and balances should prevent the Courts from re-examining, by “judicial” reasoning everything that prior legislators have created to solve long running technical problems.
as for bullshit, though i am old enough to be uncomfortable with such language, the present Court deserves such description. in the past we have had Courts that mostly…mostly… at least offered colorable arguments, and paid attention to real needs, guided perhaps by their own need for the respect of their peers, we have a court today that offers thoroughy bogus arguments that fail even as legal arguments, and fail to meet the needs of a living population.
fortunately we have enough evidence of real corruption to impeach this court, even if we can’t pass a Constitutional Amendment every time we have to meet the demands of no longer sensible “intent” of the Framers.”
All we need to do is elect enough honest Congressmen. It may be too late.
It is impossible to run a modern country without “permanent” agencies with expert knowledge deciding what needs to be done to prevent long term harm. Knowledge that neither the Congress, nor the Court, nor the people have.
It is always possible for people affected by these rules to challenge them in the courts. But “legal knowledge” will not be sufficient to solve the real world problems.
This is particularly true when even the Court’s “legal knowledge” is obviously made up to support an agenda by people who prefer to have no government restrictions on their profit-making at all. And there are factions in Congress who are prepared to use blackmail to get their way.
We are at a crisis point in this country. There is no real hope of writing Constitutional Amendments and passing them in time to meet real world problems. There is no hope of getting intelligent responses from Congress when elections and election fraud can change the “sense of Congress” in a single election.
There is probably no hope of Court packing given the present state of the electorate….and control over elections by dishonest politicians in several states.
Maybe, given the apparent corruption of at least some Justices, there is hope of impeaching our way to Justices who are constrained at least by the professional opinion of their peers.
I think Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln may have showed us another way: ignore them.