With a new location decision issued on Friday, the Supreme Court curbed the unwavering authority of governmental organizations.
The high court overturned a 40-year law that gave national authorities broad authority to implement laws under ambiguous language in a 6-3 selection in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, unless Congress had expressly prohibited such laws. However, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion to overturn the 1984 precedent in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, stated that” Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s ( EPA ) authority to enforce the Clean Air Act was established under the Chevron doctrine of 1984, allowing federal bureaucrats to interpret the legislation that Congress authorized agencies to enact. Justice Roberts argued for the judiciary to intervene after the precedent, noting that the” Administrative Procedures Act” mandates that courts exercise independent judgment.
After all,” courts frequently encounter statutory ambiguities in cases that do n’t involve agency interpretations or delegations of authority,” Roberts wrote. A court is not, in any way, delegated from its obligation to interpret the statute when faced with a statutory ambiguity in such a case.
” Courts in that situation do not throw up their hands because’ Congress’s instructions have’ supposedly’ run out,’ leaving a statutory’ gap,'” the chief justice added. ” Courts instead understand that such statutes, no matter how impenetrable, do — in fact, must — have a single, best meaning. That is the whole point of having written statutes,’ every statute’s meaning is fixed at the time of enactment.'”
The conservative legal movement, which has spent four decades attempting to overthrow the unchecked authority given to unelected bureaucrats, has won a major victory with the high court’s decision. The majority opinion was also written by Chief Justice Roberts in a 6- 3 decision, which is a precursor to the Chevron doctrine’s demise two years ago in West Virginia v. EPA. In that case, the Supreme Court curbed the EPA’s authority to unilaterally cap carbon emissions.
A “reasonable” solution to the current crisis may be to cap carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity, according to Roberts. However, it is improbable that Congress authorized EPA to adopt a similar regulatory scheme on its own. A decision of this magnitude and consequence lies with Congress itself, or an agency acting in accordance with a clear delegation from that representative body.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent in Friday’s decision, voting with the court’s two other left- wing justices in the minority.
This Court has long believed that Chevron deference should reflect what Congress would want, and that this is based on a presumption of legislative intent, according to Kagan. Congress is aware that it is unable to write a complete set of regulatory statutes.
Justice Kagan argued that “agencies have expertise in those areas, courts do not have, and that is the best way to fill the gaps in legislative ambiguity.”
Courts have no such accountability and no proper basis for making policy, she wrote,” Agencies report to a President, who in turn responds to the public for his policy calls.” ” And of course Congress has given that knowledgeable, knowledgeable, and politically responsible agency the authority to administer — to make rules about and otherwise implement — the statute that created the uncertainty or gap.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the courts, not the bureaucrats themselves, are responsible for determining the extent of bureaucrats ‘ authority under a statute, and that the precedent in Chevron is “revolution masquerading as the status quo.”
” All today’s decision means is that, going forward, federal courts will do exactly as this Court has since 2016, exactly as it did before the mid- 1980s, and exactly as it had done since the founding: resolve cases and controversies without any systemic bias in the government’s favor”, Gorsuch wrote.
