The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => SCOTUS News => Topic started by: Elderberry on January 15, 2024, 03:07:52 am
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New York Post by Thomas M. Boyd 1/14/2024
When Justice John Paul Stephens issued his 1984 opinion in Chevron U.S.A. v. National Resources Defense Council, he started what legal scholar Gary Lawson later called “nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution.”
At long last, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that may signal the beginning of the end to that revolution.
Article I of the Constitution explicitly directs that “All legislative Power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,” not regulatory agencies.
Yet Justice Stephens’ opinion found that “agenc[ies] may . . . properly rely upon the incumbent administration’s views of wise policy” in “reasonably” defining statutory ambiguities.
The legal doctrine that Chevron spawned became known as Chevron deference and former President Ronald Reagan’s White House counsel, Peter Wallison, pointed to it as “the single most important reason the administrative state has continued to grow out of control.”
Forty years of regulatory and judicial tumult has ensued, finally crescendoing to a point that has compelled the Supreme Court to intervene.
More: https://nypost.com/2024/01/14/opinion/supreme-court-poised-to-end-constitutional-revolution-thats-marred-us-governance-for-40-years/ (https://nypost.com/2024/01/14/opinion/supreme-court-poised-to-end-constitutional-revolution-thats-marred-us-governance-for-40-years/)
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One of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever...right up there with Dred Scott, Plessey/Ferguson, and Carrie Buck.
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One of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever...right up there with Dred Scott, Plessey/Ferguson, and Carrie Buck.
:yowsa: Add Roe, while you're at it.
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:yowsa: Add Roe, while you're at it.
Yeah, and Jacobson, which was cited repeatedly in various states in support of forced COVID vaccination.
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Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce - Winning these two cases would be massive. No more EPA shutting down businesses with frivolous rules.
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Despite all the Cloward-Piven smoke, the liberal apparatus always has pinch points it is built on like the Chevron case, that if overturned means the whole thing comes crashing down.
It's just too bad that almost all the Right can't see it to take advantage of it.
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Supreme Court to hear major case on power of federal agencies
SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 1/16/2024
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Wednesday in a case involving the deference that courts should give to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws that they administer. From health care to finance to environmental pollutants, administrative agencies use highly trained experts to interpret and carry out federal laws. Although the case may sound technical, it is one of the most closely watched cases of the court’s current term, which is filled with blockbuster cases involving abortion, gun rights, and whether a former president is eligible to appear on the ballot. The stakes in the case are high: The challengers argue that the current deferential standard is unconstitutional, while the Biden administration contends that overturning the existing doctrine would be a “convulsive shock to the legal system.”
The doctrine at the center of the case is known as the Chevron doctrine. It is named after the Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, upholding a regulation issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Justice John Paul Stevens set out a two-part test for courts to review an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers. The court must first determine whether Congress has directly addressed the question at the center of the case. If it has not, the court must uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it is reasonable.
In an article published in 2014, law professor Thomas Merrill suggested that the Chevron decision was not regarded as a particularly consequential one when it was issued. But in the decades since then, it became one of the most significant rulings on federal administrative law, cited by federal courts more than 18,000 times.
At the same time, Chevron has been a target for conservatives, who contend that courts – rather than federal agencies – should say what the law means. In recent years, some justices have urged their colleagues to revisit the doctrine, and the court itself has not cited Chevron since 2016. But the Supreme Court had repeatedly turned down petitions asking them to reconsider the Chevron doctrine – until last year, when it agreed to take up a case brought by a group of family-owned companies that fish for Atlantic herring.
The federal law at the center of the fishing companies’ challenge, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, gives the Secretary of Commerce and the National Marine Fisheries Service the power to “implement a comprehensive fishery management program.” The law also requires that fishery-management plans “may require that one or more observers be carried on board a vessel … , for the purpose of collecting data necessary for the conservation and management of the fishery.” Pursuant to this law, the NMFS issued a rule that requires the fishing industry to pay for the costs, estimated at $710 per day, associated with these observers.
The agency halted the monitoring last year due to a lack of funding and reimbursed fishermen for the costs of observers while the program was in effect.
The fishing companies, led by Loper Bright Enterprises, went to federal court in Washington in 2020 to challenge the NMFS rule, arguing that it was not authorized by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Relying on Chevron, the district court rejected that argument, holding that the act clearly authorized industry-funded observers in the herring industry.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld that result, but on a different rationale. It too applied Chevron, but it concluded that the statute was silent on the question whether the law allows NMFS to require fishermen to pay for the costs of observers. But the NMFS’s interpretation of the law as obligating the industry, rather than the government, to bear the costs is a reasonable interpretation under the second step of Chevron, the court of appeals ruled.
Loper-Bright came to the Supreme Court in November 2022, asking justices to review the D.C. Circuit’s decision and overrule Chevron. The justices agreed to take up the fishing companies’ case in early May 2023, but with a caveat: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the case, presumably because she heard oral argument in the case while she was still a judge on the D.C. Circuit. Apparently because of Jackson’s recusal, the court added Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, a second challenge to the NMFS rule, to its docket in October 2023 and fast-tracked the case so that it could be argued on the same day as Loper Bright.
In the Supreme Court, the fisheries are represented by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, as well as lawyers from the New Jersey public-interest firm Cause of Action. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the lawyers from Cause of Action, who are representing the fishing companies at no cost to them, in fact work for Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by longtime anti-regulation advocate and billionaire Charles Koch.
More: https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-to-hear-major-case-on-power-of-federal-agencies/ (https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-to-hear-major-case-on-power-of-federal-agencies/)
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Reversing Chevron would be a HUGE step in the right direction! I hope and pray that it happens!
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Yeah, and Jacobson, which was cited repeatedly in various states in support of forced COVID vaccination.
And while we're listing bad SCOTUS decisions: Reynolds v. Sims and Wicker v. Filburn.
To really gut the administrative state, overturning Chevron isn't enough. Wicker v. Filburn, which turned the Commerce Clause into an excuse for the Feds to regulate everything needs to go as well.
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And while we're listing bad SCOTUS decisions: Reynolds v. Sims and Wicker v. Filburn.
To really gut the administrative state, overturning Chevron isn't enough. Wicker v. Filburn, which turned the Commerce Clause into an excuse for the Feds to regulate everything needs to go as well.
:yowsa: pointing-up
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And while we're listing bad SCOTUS decisions: Reynolds v. Sims and Wicker v. Filburn.
To really gut the administrative state, overturning Chevron isn't enough. Wicker v. Filburn, which turned the Commerce Clause into an excuse for the Feds to regulate everything needs to go as well.
Agreed!
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Supreme Court likely to discard Chevron (https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/)
It has been nearly 40 years since the Supreme Court indicated in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. After more than three-and-a-half hours of oral argument on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely that the rule outlined in that case, known as the Chevron doctrine, will survive in its current form. A majority of the justices seemed ready to jettison the doctrine or at the very least significantly limit it.
The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws. Although the doctrine was relatively noncontroversial when it was first introduced in 1984, in recent years conservatives – including some members of the Supreme Court – have called for it to be overruled.
The plea to overturn the Chevron doctrine came to the court in two cases challenging a rule, issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, that requires the herring industry to bear the costs of observers on fishing boats. Applying Chevron, both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld the rule, finding it to be a reasonable interpretation of federal law.
The fishing companies came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in on the rule itself but also to overrule Chevron. Roman Martinez, representing one group of fishing vessels, told the justices that the Chevron doctrine undermines the duty of courts to say what the law is and violates the federal law governing administrative agencies, which similarly requires courts to undertake a fresh review of legal questions. Under the Chevron doctrine, he observed, even if all nine Supreme Court justices agree that the fishing vessels’ interpretation of federal fishing law is better than the NMFS’s interpretation, they would still be required to defer to the agency’s interpretation as long as it was reasonable. Such a result, Martinez concluded, is “not consistent with the rule of law.”...
Excerpt: Rest at above link
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And while we're listing bad SCOTUS decisions: Reynolds v. Sims and Wicker v. Filburn.
To really gut the administrative state, overturning Chevron isn't enough. Wicker v. Filburn, which turned the Commerce Clause into an excuse for the Feds to regulate everything needs to go as well.
:yowsa:
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And while we're listing bad SCOTUS decisions: Reynolds v. Sims and Wicker v. Filburn.
To really gut the administrative state, overturning Chevron isn't enough. Wicker v. Filburn, which turned the Commerce Clause into an excuse for the Feds to regulate everything needs to go as well.
Is that the New Deal one?
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Is that the New Deal one?
:yowsa:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111
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And while we're listing bad SCOTUS decisions: Reynolds v. Sims and Wicker v. Filburn.
To really gut the administrative state, overturning Chevron isn't enough. Wicker v. Filburn, which turned the Commerce Clause into an excuse for the Feds to regulate everything needs to go as well.
Though it isn't related to the administrative state, the sheer awfulness of Reynolds v Sims is too often overlooked when discussing legally indefensible Supreme Court decisions.
The other one I'd add to that list is Plyler v. Doe. That's the one that said the children of illegal immigrants were constitutionally entitled to attend free public schools, and on the grounds that there was no rational basis to deprive them of an education paid for by the citizens of Texas. Completely absurd.
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Making fisherman pay for Government monitors on their boats is bull$h!t. The fisherman didn't ask for the regulations. The fisherman doesn't directly benefit from the regulations. But, the fisherman has to pay to have his boat monitored by a Government enforcement agent.
That's akin to me having to pay the individual salary of the police officer who is writing me a traffic violation. Not only do I have to pay a citation fine and incur an auto insurance penalty, but, I also have to pay the officer for the time he spend writing the citation.
Such a mandate is a tax without enabling legislation. When La Cosa Nostra does such a thing, the DOJ calls it a crime - extortion.
Anything that imposes a burden upon a business or individual should be legislated by elected representatives.
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Though it isn't related to the administrative state, the sheer awfulness of Reynolds v Sims is too often overlooked when discussing legally indefensible Supreme Court decisions. That's the case that held that states cannot have a county-based "upper" house of their state legislature because having anything other than a population-based legislative chamber was allegedly inconsistent with the "republican form of government" guaranteed by the Constitution. Of course, the U.S. Senate isn't population based, so there seems to have been a slight inconsistency there.
The other one I'd add to that list is Plyler v. Doe. That's the one that said the children of illegal immigrants were constitutionally entitled to attend free public schools, and on the grounds that there was no rational basis to deprive them of an education paid for by the citizens of Texas. Completely absurd.
:yowsa: Absolutely!
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Our federal government has been on tilt for a long time. Any correction is welcome!
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From reply 11 above:
"The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws."
Correction:
The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained indoctrinated experts to interpret and implement federal laws.
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From reply 11 above:
"The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws."
Correction:
The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained indoctrinated experts to interpret and implement federal laws.
X= quantity or quality unknown
Spurt = drip under pressure
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X= quantity or quality unknown
Spurt = drip under pressure
And many have PhD's - Piled high and Deep. :cool: