Commercial fishermen land a big one: SCOTUS overturns the "Chevron doctrine"

[Swordsmyth]

Supreme Court to consider overruling Chevron doctrine

The Supreme Court on Monday announced it will hear a case that could significantly scale back federal agencies’ authority, with major implications for the future of environmental and other regulations.

The justices next term will consider whether to overturn a decades-old precedent that grants agencies deference when Congress left ambiguity in a statute.

More at: https://thehill.com/regulation/court...vron-doctrine/

You can thank Trump.

[Occam's Banana]

Supreme Court likely to discard Chevron
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/s...scard-chevron/
{Amy Howe | 17 January 2024}

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.”

Arguing on behalf of the second group of fishing companies, Paul Clement echoed Martinez’s points. Emphasizing that his clients’ case “well illustrates the real world costs of the Chevron” doctrine for small businesses, he decried the doctrine as “hopeless ambiguous” and “reliance destroying.” The question in this challenge to the rule, he said should focus on what the best reading of the statute is.

Representing the Biden administration, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the justices to leave the Chevron doctrine in place, telling them that it has “deep roots in this Court’s jurisprudence.” Under the doctrine of stare decisis – the idea that courts should generally adhere to their prior cases – the court would need a “truly extraordinary justification” to overrule it, which the challengers do not have, she asserted.

The court’s three liberal justices expressed support for keeping the doctrine in place. Justice Elena Kagan repeatedly suggested that federal agencies, with their scientific and technical expertise, are better suited than courts to resolve ambiguities in a federal statute.

Kagan cited as one example a hypothetical bill to regulate artificial intelligence. Congress, she said, “knows there are going to be gaps because Congress can hardly see a week in the future.” So it would want people “who actually know about AI and are accountable to the political process to make decisions” about artificial intelligence. Courts, she emphasized, “don’t even know what the questions are about AI,” much less the answers.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed with Kagan. She doubted whether there can be a “best” interpretation of a law when the justices “routinely disagree” about a law’s meaning. The real question, she said, is who makes the choice about what an ambiguous law means. And if the court needs a “tie-breaker,” she continued, why shouldn’t it defer to the agency, with its expertise?

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson posited that the Chevron doctrine serves an important purpose. Under Chevron, she suggested, Congress gives federal agencies the power to make policy choices – such as filling gaps or defining terms in the statute. But if Chevron is overturned and agencies no longer have that power, she predicted, then courts will have to make those kinds of policy decisions.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh saw Chevron’s deference to agencies differently. Chevron, he complained, “ushers in shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes in” and implements “massive change” in areas like securities law, communications law, and environmental law.

Justice Neil Gorsuch told Prelogar that he was less concerned about businesses subject to changing regulations, observing that the companies “can take care of themselves” and seek relief through the political process. Instead, Gorsuch pointed to less powerful individuals who may be affected by the actions of federal agencies, such as immigrants, veterans seeking benefits, and Social Security claimants. In those cases, Gorsuch stressed, Chevron virtually always works for the agencies and against the “little guy.”

Justice Samuel Alito pressed Prelogar to explain when a statute would be ambiguous, triggering the application of the Chevron doctrine. He observed that “in cases that don’t involve an agency,” courts do not simply throw up their hands and declare that they cannot determine what the statute means. “So that would seem to suggest that you never get to step two” of the Chevron test, requiring courts to defer to the agency’s interpretation.

The justices and advocates also debated what the impact of a decision overruling Chevron would be. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that the effect might be relatively minimal, noting that the Supreme Court had not relied on Chevron in several years.

Martinez countered that the issue still arises frequently in the lower courts, but he insisted that overruling Chevron would not call prior cases relying on Chevron into question.

But Prelogar pushed back, telling the justices that thousands of rulings “would be open to challenge.” “Litigants,” she said, “will come out of the woodwork.”

Prelogar suggested that the court could follow the path that it chose five years ago in Kisor v. Wilkie, in which the justices declined to overrule a long line of cases instructing courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own regulation, a doctrine sometimes known as Auer deference. Instead, a splintered court put limits on when Auer deference should apply going forward.

In this case, Prelogar told the justices, the court could “clarify and articulate the limits of Chevron deference without taking the drastic step of upending decades of settled precedent.” For example, she explained, the justices could “reemphasize” that, in determining whether the statute is clear, courts should use all of the interpretative tools at their disposal and not “give up just because the statute is dense or hard to parse.” And if the statute is still determined to be ambiguous, she said, the question whether it is reasonable should be “obviously deferential” but “not just anything goes.”

Martinez rejected any suggestion that the Chevron doctrine should be limited but not overruled. The justices, he said, should “recognize that the fundamental problem is Chevron itself.” By the time the session drew to a close, it seemed – but was not completely clear – that a majority of the justices agreed with him.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/keithboykin/stat...55709880459661

https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status...64129400549863

[Occam's Banana]

Cope harder, bitchez!

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1747687751036579967


Conservative Justices Appear Skeptical of Agencies’ Regulatory Power
The Supreme Court considered whether to overrule the seminal 1984 Chevron decision, which requires judges to defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/u...vron-case.html
[archive link: https://archive.is/5R4u4]
{Adam Liptak | 17 January 2024}

Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed inclined on Wednesday to limit or even overturn a key precedent that has empowered executive agencies, threatening regulations in countless areas, including the environment, health care and consumer safety.

Each side warned of devastating consequences should it lose, underscoring how the court’s decision in a highly technical case could reverberate across wide swaths of American life.

Overruling the precedent, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices, would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.”

But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh responded that there were in fact “shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes in, whether it’s communications law or securities law or competition law or environmental law.”

Judging from questions in two hard-fought arguments that lasted a total of more than three and a half hours, the foundational doctrine of administrative law called Chevron deference appeared to be in peril.

The doctrine takes its name from a 1984 decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the most cited cases in American law. Under it, judges must defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. In close cases, and there are many, the views of the agency take priority even if courts might have ruled differently.

Supporters of the doctrine say it allows specialized agencies to fill in gaps in ambiguous statutes to establish uniform rules in their areas of expertise, a practice they say was contemplated by Congress.

Its opponents, including business groups hostile to what they see as overregulation, counter that it is the role of courts, not executive branch officials, to determine the meanings of statutes. They also say that agencies’ interpretations can change with new administrations and put a thumb on the scale in favor of the government even when it is a party to the case.

Some conservative justices said courts must decide what laws mean without giving decisive weight to agencies’ views.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, for instance, said he was worried that judges would abdicate their responsibilities “and say, automatically, whatever the agency says wins.”

The court’s three liberal members, by contrast, said agencies were often in a better position than courts to interpret ambiguous statutes in their areas of expertise.

“Agencies know things that courts do not,” Justice Elena Kagan said, “and that’s the basis of Chevron.”

She added that discarding the decision would be a strikingly disruptive move, as there have been 70 Supreme Court decisions relying on Chevron, along with 17,000 in the lower courts.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Congress had given some policy choices to the agencies. “And my concern,” she said, “is that if we take away something like Chevron, the court will then suddenly become a policymaker.”

The fate of Chevron could turn on the votes of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, members of the court’s conservative wing whose questions were not uniformly hostile to the doctrine.

The tone of argument was lively and light, with smiles and banter among the justices, who remained engaged even as the hours went on.

The cases the justices considered were brought on behalf of two sets of fishermen, one in New Jersey and the other in Rhode Island. They objected to a maritime agency’s interpretation of a 1976 law that requires them to carry observers to gather data to prevent overfishing.

The contested interpretation, set out in a 2020 regulation adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, required the fishermen not only to transport the observers but also to pay for them, at a rate of about $700 a day.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a challenge to the regulation in the case from New Jersey, citing Chevron.

“Congress has delegated broad authority to an agency with expertise and experience within a specific industry,” Judge Judith Rogers wrote for the majority, adding that “the court’s review thus is limited to the familiar questions of whether Congress has spoken clearly, and if not, whether the implementing agency’s interpretation is reasonable.”

It was, she wrote. “Although the act may not unambiguously resolve whether the service can require industry-funded monitoring,” she wrote, “the service’s interpretation of the act as allowing it to do so is reasonable.”

A unanimous three-judge panel of the First Circuit said pretty much the same thing in the case from Rhode Island. “At the very least,” Judge William J. Kayatta Jr. wrote for the panel, the agency’s interpretation of the 1976 law was “certainly reasonable.”

Wednesday’s argument featured a host of hypothetical questions. Justice Kagan asked who should decide, for instance, whether a product is a drug or a dietary supplement. The answer, she suggested, was an expert agency.

“It’s best to defer to people who do know, who have had long experience on the ground, who have seen a thousand of these kinds of situations,” she said. “And, you know, judges should know what they don’t know.”

Justice Kagan imagined a new statute addressing artificial intelligence, one that would inevitably have gaps and ambiguities.

“Congress can hardly see a week in the future with respect to this subject, let alone a year or a decade in the future,” she said, adding, “Congress knows that this court and lower courts are not competent with respect to deciding all the questions about A.I. that are going to come up in the future.”

Justice Jackson is recused from the New Jersey case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451, having participated in it as a federal appeals court judge. In an unusual move, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a nearly identical case from Rhode Island, Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce, No. 22-1219, five months after it agreed to hear the one from New Jersey.

That may have been a sign that the court wanted to have nine members in place as it considers whether to overturn a major precedent.

Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for the fishermen from New Jersey, said Chevron had made life too easy for Congress, which can enact ambiguous statutes and let agencies sort out what they mean. “Chevron makes it so easy for them not to tackle the hard issues and forge a permanent solution,” he said.

The fishermen are represented by two conservative groups, Cause of Action Institute and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Both have financial ties to the network of foundations and advocacy organizations funded by Charles Koch, a billionaire who has long supported conservative and libertarian causes.

The justices debated the practical impact of their eventual ruling, expected by June, with some saying that Chevron had already largely fallen out of favor.

“How much of an actual question on the ground is this?” Chief Justice Roberts asked Roman Martinez, a lawyer for the Rhode Island fishermen, noting that the Supreme Court had not decided a case using the doctrine in years.

Mr. Martinez said lower courts continued to decide cases under Chevron, as happened in the cases before the court.

The justices were also concerned about whether a decision overturning the decision would give rise to countless challenges to earlier rulings under the doctrine. “Isn’t the door then open for litigants to come back?” Justice Barrett asked, adding, “Isn’t it inviting a flood of litigation?”

The arguments drew a few dozen demonstrators outside the court, despite the winter chill. Those gathered opposed the court overruling the Chevron doctrine.

After the argument, Meghan Lapp, the fisheries liaison for Seafreeze, a seafood company that operates some of the fishing boats involved in the case, spoke outside the Supreme Court, describing a yearslong attempt to challenge a maritime agency’s regulation.

“Quite frankly, nobody cared,” she said. “The agency is not afraid of us. They’re not afraid of the little guy because they know they get judicial deference.”

She added, “I hope that ends here today.”

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/GunOwners/status...79139132670038

ICYMI

The Supreme Court heard Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo today, AKA the latest "Chevron deference" case.

Not sure what Chevron deference is? It is a court-made legal doctrine that means courts can defer to agency expertise in certain situations. That's what led to the courts deferring to ATF’s ludicrous redefinition of “machine gun” to include bump stocks.

Although, history has shown that ATF is never an expert on firearms.

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

I am extremely skeptical that SCOTUS or any entity has Liberty of the Citizen as their concern.
Who better to corrupt than SCOTUS? Too much power lies in the courts.
When push comes to shove they are just another controlling entity.

[Swordsmyth]

[Valli6]

…has allowed federal agencies to make reasonable interpretations of undefined terms in federal statutes.

Why is it taken for granted that they are making "reasonable interpretations of undefined terms in federal statutes"?

Isn't it obvious that they are just as likely to make self-serving interpretations of undefined terms in federal statutes?

[Bern]

Regulatory discretion is what is enabling the SEC to continue bad faith conduct with crypto non-regulation.

[Swordsmyth]

Anything but interpreting the law in the way most favorable to the citizen is tyranny.

[Occam's Banana]

Anything but interpreting the law in the way most favorable to the citizen is tyranny.

Which citizen?

Fixed:

"Anything but interpreting the law in the way most favorable to the citizen liberty is tyranny."

[Swordsmyth]

Which citizen?

Fixed:

"Anything but interpreting the law in the way most favorable to the citizen liberty is tyranny."

The one the government is trying to rule with a regulation interpreting the law.

[Occam's Banana]

The one the government is trying to rule with a regulation interpreting the law.

But which one[s]? A government that overturns Chevron will still be "trying to rule" them all, just as much as a government that retains Chevron.

All laws must necessarily be interpreted (whether "regulatorily" or not). They ought to be interpreted only in terms of the principles of liberty, and not in terms of whether they are "favorable" to this or that particular citizen (or even to some generically abstract or hypothetical citizen) - and there will always be citizens to whom even such a proper interpretation will not be "favorable". Retaining the Chevron doctrine, for instance, will be "favorable" to some citizens, but not to others - and likewise for overturning it. (Hence, my previous question: "Which citizen?")

Chevron should be overturned, not because it might not be "favorable" to (some) citizens, but because it is so easily subject to the inscrutable, unreviewably arbitrary, and/or morally hazardous interests of unaccountable bureaucrats (and their preferred and politically-connected "experts").

[Bern]

No legislation without representation!

[not.your.average.joe]

any doctrine that rationalizes a government mandate requiring the herring industry to bear the costs of observers on herring boats is a flawed doctrine

[Bern]

Yep. Not too much different from we the people having to bear the cost of room and board for soldiers stationed in our homes.

[Occam's Banana]

No legislation without representation!

Fixed:

"No legislation without representation!"

Liberty and legislatures cannot coexist.

Sooner or later, one will have to dissolve the other.

Once you've covered the basics (which might be crudely but effectively summarized as "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff") and set up a mechanism for their application (and occasional adjustment or refinement), there really isn't anything left for legislatures to do - except conjure up a never-ending sequence of superfluous and increasingly broad & thick layers of liberty-smothering ad hoc rules and regulations (such as those to which things like the Chevron doctrine are applied).

[Matt Collins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPEzVE36fB4

[Occam's Banana]

Fixed:

"No legislation without representation!"

Liberty and legislatures cannot coexist.

Sooner or later, one will have to dissolve the other.

Once you've covered the basics (which might be crudely but effectively summarized as "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff") and set up a mechanism for their application (and occasional adjustment or refinement), there really isn't anything left for legislatures to do - except conjure up a never-ending sequence of superfluous and increasingly broad & thick layers of liberty-smothering ad hoc rules and regulations (such as those to which things like the Chevron doctrine are applied).

//

[Occam's Banana]

Javier Milei at the WEF — Attacking Socialism, Defending Monopolists?
Dr. Robert Malone
January 20, 2024

[...]

It is asserted by some who study Monopolies that there is no historical evidence that natural monopolies formed before the Sherman Antitrust Act. Under this theory, the Act itself created the market interference and insecurity consequent to a vaguely worded Act which enabled the Administrative State to interpret the Act in an arbitrary and capricious manner. This very ambiguity, reinforced by the eagerness of the Administrative State to functionally create law in interpreting such ambiguity, exacerbated by the Chevron Deference Supreme Court decision, in turn gives rise to free market distortions and indirectly enables the formation of the very State-sponsored Monopolies which Jefferson warned of.

//

[Anti Federalist]

Elections still have consequences.

https://x.com/mrddmia/status/1806696880518074629

[spudea]

Thank you Trump!

[Anti Federalist]

Thank you Trump!

That's one of the five reason I'll vote for him.

[Occam's Banana]

LINK (PDF): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...2-451_7m58.pdf

https://x.com/mrddmia/status/1806696880518074629

[Anti Federalist]

This is huge.

[Anti Federalist]

Massive hat tip to @vita3 for reminding me of this.

I've been running around all day and it slipped my mind.

It was my long lost commercial fishing shipmates that brought the suit that overturned the "Chevron doctrine".

Huge, huge win for liberty today, I cannot believe more people are not commenting about this.

Anti fed,

Wasn’t there a nice win for fishermen today? Some ruling in their favor

Yes, it was, it was the basis for overturning the "Chevron doctrine".

It was a much hated regulation, that I got a taste of back in the late 80's, just as I was leaving fishing for a living.

Fishermen had to pay the government for the wages and per diem for the spies they put on board to "monitor" you.

SCOTUS struck that down. Or, to be more precise, SCOTUS struck down the legal precedent that the government used to justify itself in mandating this.

Thanks for reminding me.


Supreme Court sides with fishermen in landmark case deciding fate of the administrative state

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sup...strative-state

The Supreme Court's ruling impacts what is known as 'Chevron' deference to federal agencies

By Brianna Herlihy Fox News

Published June 28, 2024 10:25am EDT | Updated June 28, 2024 12:24pm EDT

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of a group of fishermen who challenged a decades-old legal doctrine that they say gave the administrative state too much power over their business.

In a 6-2 ruling where Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate, the court's majority said the federal rule promulgated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requiring the fishermen to pay $700 a day for an "at-sea monitor" is out of the bounds Congress set for the federal agency.

The justices in January heard the arguments of two cases stemming from lawsuits brought by New Jersey fishermen and herring fishermen from Rhode Island challenging NOAA's rule, which they say threatened to ruin their livelihoods.

The court's decision overruled what is known as the Chevron doctrine — a legal theory established in the 1980s that says if a federal regulation is challenged, the courts should defer to the agency’s interpretation of whether Congress had granted it authority to issue the rule, as long as the agency's interpretation is reasonable and Congress had not addressed the question directly.

"Chevron is overruled," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court's majority.

[Anti Federalist]

So much of the tyranny we suffer under, is tyranny of the the regulatory state.

Odious and burdensome regulations, thrown down as edicts on high from a thousand different swamp agencies and bureaucracies, all staffed by pointy headed apparatchiks who hate you, all carrying the force of law, all you are expected to comply with, none of which was ever voted upon or discussed or debated by the people who are supposed to represent you in government.

Can't buy a gas powered car, this is why.

Can't buy a light bulb you want, this is why.

Can't buy a toilet that flushes, this is why.

Can't buy diesel fuel that does not cost three times what it used to, this is why.

Can't have a fireplace in you new home, this is why.

Can't have a gas stove, this is why.

And this goes on and on and on and on.

On the last vessel I commanded, the Code of Federal Regulations that pertained to my vessel, was contained in over thirty volumes of regulations.

When initially outfitting the vessel it took three pallets of books and forms, lifted on by crane, to comply with all US and UN and IMO codes.

Now you know two of the five reasons I will vote Trump.

[oyarde]

Admin agencies dont get to decide own powers any longer. Need to get memos out to all of em now

[Anti Federalist]

@Occam's Banana

Hey Roach, if you would like, you can merge my thread into all the others and collect them all in one place.

I'd just ask that you write a new headline that makes sure to mention it was a suit brought by commercial fishermen that tore the Chevron Doctrine down.

[vita3]

Good news can have multiple threads!

Cheers to Liberty & more Freedom !!!