DOEREN MAYHEW
Clawing Back the Administrative State – Agency Deference Dismantled
In a 6-3 vote , the U . S . Supreme Court shattered a bedrock principle that , for 40 years , permitted regulators to fill in the blanks when a statute is silent or ambiguous on a specific issue , as long as the agency ’ s construction is reasonable . Termed Chevron Deference , the legal doctrine stems from the seminal case Chevron U . S . A ., Inc . v . Natural Resources Defense Council ( 1984 ), which applied a two-part litmus test to decide when courts should defer to agency interpretation . Generally , when deciding proper application of Chevron , the court considered whether Congress directly spoke to the precise question at issue . If not , then whether the agency ’ s answer is based on a reasonable construction of the statute .
In Loper Bright Enterprises v . Raimondo , Secretary of Commerce , Et al ., and its companion case Relentless v . Department of Commerce , the Supreme Court overturned the two-part Chevron test , shifting power back to the courts to interpret a statute , unless the statute explicitly extends authority to the agencies regulating the industry . The Supreme Court held , “ The Administrative Procedures Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority , and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous .”
Chief Justice John Roberts in writing the opinion for Loper shot back at the suggestion that agencies , rather than courts , are better suited to handle ambiguities related to technical or scientific questions that fall within the purview of the agency ’ s expertise .
“ Under Chevron ’ s broad rule of deference , though , ambiguities of all stripes trigger deference , even in cases having little to do with an agency ’ s technical subject matter expertise . And even when an ambiguity happens to implicate a technical matter , it does not follow that Congress has taken the power to authoritatively interpret the statute from the courts and given it to the agency . Congress expects courts to handle technical statutory questions , and courts did so without issue in agency cases before Chevron .”
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