This audio is automatically generated. Please let us know if you have any comments.
Dive Brief:
- The US Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine on Friday Loper Bright Enterprises et. at the. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et. at the.in one fell swoop for federal agencies.
- In a 6-3 vote, the high court overturned a 1984 decision Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council this gave way to the doctrine, which required federal courts to give deference to agencies’ reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutes.
- “The Administrative Procedure 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’s interpretation of law simply because a statute is ambiguous “, ruled the high court.
Diving knowledge:
The nix decision Chevron could have massive implications for law enforcement by regulatory agencies such as the US Department of Labor, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
Federal agencies “will likely face more challenges to their rules and regulations” and “agencies may issue fewer and more modest regulations in the future,” labor and employment firm Littler explained in a blog post of the company at the beginning of the year.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said the Chevron decision “has served as a cornerstone of administrative law” for 40 years.
“Congress knows that it cannot, in fact, write perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would normally prefer that that actor be the responsible agency, not a court,” Kagan wrote. “A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris. In recent years, this Court has too often usurped the decision-making authority that Congress assigned to agencies.”
This is a developing story.
