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Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine
- r3db34rd 2y ago[flagged]
- knodi 2y agoNothings is getting through congress... so we're fuked.
- jason2323 2y agoWhat is the significance of this
- burkaman 2y agoFrom the New York Times: > The Supreme Court on Friday reduced the authority of executive agencies, sweeping aside a longstanding legal precedent that required courts to defer to the expertise of federal administrators in carrying out laws passed by Congress. The precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, is one of the most cited in American law. There have been 70 Supreme Court decisions relying on Chevron, along with 17,000 in the lower courts.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Arthur_ODC 2y agoIt's another chip away at oversight protections. The more things like this happen, the more the function of government (and business, and relationship between labor and business) will return to the way they were operated in the US between 1880 and 1920.
- epicureanideal 2y agoHuge and positive in the direction of lawmakers making law, not regulatory bodies that are unelected. Similarly in favor of trials by jury and not by regulatory administrative courts. A huge win for democracy and freedom that both major US parties and all citizens should celebrate.
- ekelsen 2y agoThat's one take...
- mcmcmc 2y agoHow is it a win when the US justice system is so incredibly broken? This is a win for rich people and greedy firms who can drown their victims in drawn out legal action by throwing money at them. Jury trials are a zero sum game and are not actually that great at achieving just outcomes. They make sense for individuals, but corporations are NOT people and should not be entitled to the same constitutional rights.
- mywittyname 2y agoSo...bad. I'm the person who prefers having regulatory bodies handle matters over a dysfunctional and ignorant congress who is political about everything.
- shrubble 2y agoAre you familiar with the term "regulatory capture"?
- vdqtp3 2y agoA regulatory body who is not responsible or beholden to the citizenry, and who cannot effectively be balanced by another portion of government?
- iaw 2y agoWasn't this decision essentially made by the ultimate regulatory body in the country? How is the supreme court beholden to citizenry? They have life appointments, they're beholden to no one (except exceedingly rich "friends" apparently)
- vdqtp3 2y agoNo, that's the core issue. They are overstepping the authority granted in legislation. If Congress passes an open-ended law saying "Agency X can administer Y in accordance with rules 1,2,3" then the agency should not be able to simply decide that rules 4,5,6 should also be created. This is what has been happening for decades, has been defended by Chevron, and is being forbidden by this decision.
- badrequest 2y agoCorporations will run roughshod over regulators and everyday citizens' lives will be measurably worse as a consequence.
- epicureanideal 2y agoNot at all. They can still be sued, and lawmakers can still make laws. (edited, originally mistakenly wrote "regulators" can still make laws, which is exactly the wrong thing)
- Molitor5901 2y agoRegulators do not make laws, they make regulations based on authority granted to them in law.
- AdamN 2y agoAnd that's better how??
- giantrobot 2y agoThe word "can" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
- rty32 2y agoOf course, we regularly have big, major bipartisan bills getting passed in the Congress, don't we? /s
- Retric 2y agoActual laws are up to congress etc which frankly don’t understand the intricacies because it’s not their job. So it’s common for agencies to be given authority to oversee something without a law explicitly defining specific level of salt in drinking water etc. Regulators therefore don’t make laws only clarifying where boundaries exist (safe levels > X ppm). Deference for unintentional ambiguity seems unrelated, but in the real world people want to know where the lines are so they can respond accordingly. Not knowing where the limits are gets expensive for anyone not trying to push boundaries. Lawsuits meanwhile are horrifically inefficient in terms of time. What exactly are people supposed to do while waiting for a lawsuit to finish? For some things sticking with existing guidelines works but nobody wants to make major investments when the underlying rules are about to change. Clarity is far more valuable than generally perceived and that’s what’s being destroyed here because the courts even decades to make the meanings of laws clear. This decision is therefore directly and significantly harmful to the US economy.
- okrad 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....
- FDAiscooked 2y agoFDA finds food factory to be non compliant with food safety standards. FDA can't shut down the factory. It has to take it to court. A Judge with a JD or a jury of random people will decide if the factory can stay open. Factory stays open. Millions of people eat salmonella contaminated food.
- mywittyname 2y agoI'm guessing the next stage is to prevent people from being able to sue said factories?
- iaw 2y agoBy opening the package of salmonella you've agreed to binding arbitration agreement in the venue of their choosing.... Sadly I'm not even that far from serious.
- jasonjayr 2y agoNah, there will be some binding arbitration clause hidden on that package of rice , so you can't sue or join a class action.
- redeux 2y agoYes, or absent that just limit the liability to a trivial amount, which many state governments have already been doing for years.
- kergonath 2y agoYou don’t need to go that far. Just make it inconvenient and expensive.
- Molitor5901 2y agoThat's absolutely 100% false. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act gives the FDA considerable authority to shut down a food factory if it is not adhering to regulations and laws regarding safety. Where do you find that the FDA cannot shut them down?
- bitshiftfaced 2y agoWhen Congress writes a law that establishes a new regulatory agency, they outline what that agency does and how they enforce the regulations. Inevitably as time goes on, new edge cases come up or someone realize that the law is ambiguous. Chevron deference established a precedent where the regulatory agencies were allowed to resolve these ambiguous cases or do things not specifically written into the law. This decision means that companies can now fight certain decisions they couldn't previously. For example, one of the cases that led up to this was due to the National Marine Fisheries Service forcing fishing companies to pay their monitors' salaries. The law established the monitors and their role, but it did not say that the companies must foot the bill.
- tivert 2y agoSo basically, Congress is going to have to pass more updates to previous laws to reflect what the regulatory agencies need or want. Basically, fix the bugs in the core legislation instead of patching it downstream.
- techostritch 2y agoThis seems really inefficient though. Do we really want top-down authority of decision making like this? No one would think it was good if in a company where if the rules of how to do your job were vague (and in this case, we're talking about delegated responsibilities), you had to go to the board of directors to get them clarified.
- tivert 2y agoAnd it may be so, but the law/constitution doesn't automatically morph to adapt to whatever some particular person thinks is more efficient. If this is really needed, maybe it's time for a constitutional amendment adapt the structure of the government.
- techostritch 2y agoWe can nit pick what you meant by 'automatically' morph, but the fact that it was just forced into a pretty severe morph to adapt to what 6 particular persons wanted I think challenges the argument you're making.
- psunavy03 2y agoIf a Federal law telling you what you can and can't do with widgets was ambiguous, then courts were previously required to defer to the Federal Widget Agency's interpretation of the law as long as the judge found the interpretation "reasonable." Now, if there is a lawsuit or other legal matter over widget usage, the court can take the Federal Widget Agency's interpretation of the law into consideration, but is free to rule however it sees fit on the precise interpretation of Federal widget law.
- rootusrootus 2y agoWe are now going to need to place a great deal more trust in Congress to legislate with nuance and understanding of the issues. Obviously the congressmen cannot really become that knowledgeable about every topic, so they will rely even more on advisors to write the legislation for them. We have some idea of how this plays out, because it already happens.
- zerocrates 2y agoChevron says (said) that the courts should defer to agencies as the experts in their specific arenas when interpreting vague laws. This situation comes up a lot. It's quite common for Congress to delegate to an agency with only quite broad language, relying on the agency to fill in the specifics through regulation. Practically, the major effect here is to reduce the power of the executive (and of Congress to delegate to the executive) and increase the power of the courts. Like many of the Supreme Court's actions, it needs to be understood in the context of the years of history of Congress being in an almost total state of paralysis, so decisions that nominally "kick things back" to Congress are of enormous significance. The decision tries to say that this doesn't affect the solidness of the many many prior cases that relied on Chevron deference, but expect a flood of challenges to regulations in basically every field.
- carnufex 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neaden 2y agoThis court continues to make decisions that might be defensible if you were making them for the first time, but go against decades of precedent in which time many laws have been written on the assumption that things would work a certain way. For a group that claims to be holding to tradition they sure are willing to throw things into chaos.
- soraminazuki 2y agoIt depends on which tradition they're talking about. Could it predate the rule of law?
- RajT88 2y agoI believe the conservative judges use the following process flow: 1. Is the prior precedent what I want? If no, go to 2. 2. Is the prior precedent consistent with "textualism", i.e. can we find enough period writings which use the words in the constutition a certain way? If no, go to 3. 3. Is the prior precedent consistent with "originalism", i.e. can we find enough period writings which suggest some people peripherally or directly involved with the drafting of the constitution (or state constutitions) thought of an issue in the same way we want to rule? If no, go to 4. 4. Rule that way anyways, and just do your best to justify it with whatever you dug up for 2 and 3.
- brodouevencode 2y agoSo if something that is seen as a bad idea should be kept in place because "that's the way we've always done it"?
- Drakim 2y agoObviously an outright bad idea should not be kept around just because that's how we have always done it, but don't underestimate the value of predictability and stability. Society can't operates if laws change every day, even if it's driven by a desire to make the laws better.
- 2y ago
- shmerl 2y agoEnabling corruption seems to be the primary agenda of this court these days.
- aaronbrethorst 2y agoThat seems unfair. They’re equally committed to denying women bodily autonomy.
- netsharc 2y agoAmazing how the US approaches Taliban Afghanistan step-by-tiny-step (and sometimes with giant leaps, e.g. by electing Trump). It's incredible (i.e. "too extraordinary and improbable to admit of belief") that about half the country^W voters think that lot is the best to lead their country... As to what corruption will bring: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-revolt https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev... There's also no denying that the alternative party also has its own corruptions, which turn off voters..
- stronglikedan 2y ago[flagged]
- Spooky23 2y agoExactly. Managing labor would be much easier if we could go back to constitutional principles as the founders intended and just own the workers.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoYep. Please remind your friends in Arizona to vote https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2380:_Election_Impact_Score_Sheet https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2380:_Election_Im...
- chatmasta 2y agoWouldn’t corruption be more likely to arise from a system where courts defer their decisions to mega-corporations and federal agencies?
- raytopia 2y agoHow much is this going to mess up the ability for the federal government to operate?
- mywittyname 2y agoThe hope from conservatives seems to be 100%.
- rootusrootus 2y agoThere must be a great deal of tension within the right. On the one hand, some undoubtedly consider themselves small government libertarian types, but the recently ascendent MAGA folks are decidedly authoritarian and absolutely willing to use the federal government as a weapon against their perceived enemies. This sort of ruling helps the former but not the latter.
- jandrese 2y agoThere is no tension. "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." -- Francis M. Wilhoit Viewed through this lens the actions are completely consistent.
- mindslight 2y agoThis quote can be helpful for analyzing many situations. But applied generally it throws the baby out with the bathwater - people who legitimately want small government, and aren't merely using libertarian precepts as cover for an authoritarian agenda. (as an aside I think if you're in the libertarian camp but yet still supporting 2024's radical republican party you're either hoping for outright societal collapse or you're gravely mistaken about what it now stands for)
- kergonath 2y ago> people who legitimately want small government, and aren't merely using libertarian precepts as cover for an authoritarian agenda. AKA useful idiots. The fundamental debate between big versus small government is deceptive. What we really need is effective and efficient government (roughly in that order, in my opinion). Sometimes that is big, sometimes that is small.
- pininja 2y agoI was curious about cases where this played a role. Looks like the namesake case was about EPA Clean Air Act enforcement in the 80s (the outcome being regulation), and then an FCC ruling to classify internet providers as “information services” rather than “telecommunication services” and avoid stricter regulation (the outcome being deregulation). Overall, it seems the Chevron deference was a cornerstone of administrative law, affecting how agencies operate, how laws are enforced, and how the balance of power between branches of government was maintained. It’s not clear that this always led to more or less regulation. I’m curious what the impact of deference was beyond cases that made it to court?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- torstenvl 2y agoUntil today, most national policy was set by "experts," i.e., people whose careers, professional reputation, and emotional bonds are bound up in the industry. That is to say, the rich and connected in any given area of life. The SEC is staffed with "experts" in exchanging securities, i.e., successful traders, who are then expected to govern traders. The inexorable result of this status quo is corruption and oligarchy. https://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congress-doesnt-care-what-you-think https://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congr...
- calgarymicro 2y agoIronic that you link to an article about the Gilens/Page study, which showed that it was in large part Congress that was unresponsive to popular opinion, not federal agencies like the SEC.
- torstenvl 2y agoFair. Please read as a cf. not a see.
- thuuuomas 2y ago
- consumer451 2y agoFrom Justice Kagan's dissent on page 82: > This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—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 usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court... > Put all that together and deference to the agency is the almost obvious choice, based on an implicit congressional delegation of interpretive authority. We defer, the Court has explained, “because of a presumption that Congress” would have “desired the agency (rather than the courts)” to exercise “whatever degree of discretion” the statute allows. Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740–741 (1996). > Today, the Court flips the script: It is now “the courts (rather than the agency)” that will wield power when Congress has left an area of interpretive discretion. A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris. In recent years, this Court has too often taken for itself decision-making authority Congress assigned to agencies. The Court has substituted its own judgment on workplace health for that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; its own judgment on climate change for that of the Environmental Protection Agency; and its own judgment on student loans for that of the Department of Education.
- adamc 2y agoOur court is now activist in a very regressive way. The ride is going to be a very bumpy one until it generates sufficient pushback.
- xbar 2y agoI would prefer if this conservative court would review the constitution and conclude that it must revoke its own right of judicial review.
- mmanfrin 2y agoTurns out the notions of jurisprudence they claim to represent is all a farce for pushing specific political agendas after all.
- throw0101c 2y agoSome folks were predicting this: > 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. * https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d... Some of the back and forth during the trial: > 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. * Ibid. See also perhaps: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura.... Generally: it seems that the USSC has been more been willing to throw out precedent and (not so?) settled law. The USSC is about to go on 'summer break', and so is releasing quite a few rulings all at once in a short time frame; a running tally seems to be available at: * https://www.scotusblog.com/author/scotusblog/ https://www.scotusblog.com/author/scotusblog/ Some seem to think this is a bit of a 'news dump' and 'DoS of attention': * https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/supreme-court-june-docket-disaster-alito-roberts.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/supreme-court-ju... * https://www.msnbc.com/alex-wagner-tonight/watch/-news-dump-from-hell-supreme-court-appears-eager-to-hide-controversy-in-flood-of-major-rulings-212474437754 https://www.msnbc.com/alex-wagner-tonight/watch/-news-dump-f... * https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/ https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/
- wormlord 2y ago[flagged]
- EricDeb 2y agoyes I imagine your average American would be surprised if you explained it to them.
- Molitor5901 2y agoIt Congress wants to change the law, they can. It's up to congress, not the administration, to make law. For decades it seems Congress has largely abdicated its legislative responsibility in exchange for the political ease of letting the administrative state, and the courts, make the law. Just because something has "precedence" doesn't mean it's right. Banning gay marriage had precedence, but that didn't make it right. Slavery, segregation, all had ample precedence. They were still absolutely wrong then as they are now.
- kemayo 2y agoThat said, it's also valid for Congress to decide to abdicate its powers. We've had 40 years of Chevron deference, during which time Congress wrote laws expecting that this is how they'd be interpreted. If they didn't want this behavior, they could have passed laws about it. Or included some boilerplate language within new laws about how the agency has to defer to courts for interpretation of those regulations. (Granted, by the same logic, they could presumably start adding some "these rules should be interpreted according to the agency's definitions" boilerplate to new laws, if they really want that.)
- Molitor5901 2y ago[flagged]
- kemayo 2y agoI don't think that slavery and fiddly details of how regulations are interpreted are really comparable. Morally or practically.
- Molitor5901 2y ago[flagged]
- foota 2y agoWeren't both of these problems addressed by congress, not the courts?
- brettcvz 2y agoThis seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this? Or can justices just keep granting themselves more powers and invalidating any restraints?
- iraqmtpizza 2y ago[dead]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoNo, that isn’t the case. It is saying that regulatory agencies cannot exceed their authority and act like the judicial branch. In other words, it was the executive branch that had taken more power previously.
- HelloMcFly 2y ago> In other words, it was the executive branch that had taken more power previously. If I may disagree: it was the legislature that gave the executive branch power, and the judicial branch that essentially approved such an arrangement (unanimously) in the original Chevron ruling.
- tivert 2y ago> If I may disagree: it was the legislature that gave the executive branch power, and the judicial branch that essentially approved such an arrangement (unanimously) in the original Chevron ruling. But the only way to properly do that is a constitutional amendment. To give an extreme though-experiment example: Lets say Congress 1) packed the Supreme Court with yes-men, 2) passed law giving themselves a huge pay raise and delegating all legislative powers to the President, while they go party. Didn't it just create a a king/dictator? Wouldn't that be unconstitutional?
- HelloMcFly 2y ago> But the only way to properly do that is a constitutional amendment. A constitutional amendment make it permanent, but Congress never actually lost control. They always had the power - and still do - amend, restrain, clarify their own laws. > Didn't it just create a a king/dictator? Wouldn't that be unconstitutional? In a scenario with a packed Supreme Court of "yes men" there are no bounds to what could happen, so why bother with the thought experiment? In your example, the constitution is already worthless.
- impalallama 2y agoSupreme court rules government illegal in landmark ruling...
- brigandish 2y agoI found this[0] overview from a few months ago to be helpful, and doesn't fall foul of describing the justices' views as coming solely from their being conservative or not. One example: > 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.” [0] https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...
- gradus_ad 2y agoThe basic trend in America has been to defer power to an administrative state beholden to the Executive. This accumulation of power has the basic effect of enabling tyranny. To prevent tyranny it is necessary to check this concerning accumulation of Executive power.
- rootusrootus 2y agoDoes this decision do that, or does it just move the accumulation of power to a different branch? From bureaucrats who can be fired to unelected judges with lifetime tenure. How would you argue that this is an improvement? The response may be that Congress makes far more specific legislation, along with all the weird pitfalls that will come from that, and outsources the actual text to corporate lobbyists. That seems like a win only if you implicitly trust that corporations are working in our best interests. Is that a core plank in the conservative platform?
- maxwell 2y agoIt's not moving power from the executive to the judicial branch, it's forcing legislative responsibility back on Congress. Note that constituents in the U.S. have the worst representation of any OECD country. Worse than Commie China. America's biggest problem is the "Permanent" Apportionment Act of 1929.
- Spivak 2y ago> it's forcing legislative responsibility back on Congress I mean it's not really going to do this in practice, because Congress can and will continue to be dysfunctional it just means that the court rather than the agency is going to make the call on what the law means. Without a way for the judiciary to be say, "this law is too ambiguous to rule on, Congress must pass a law right now clarifying their intent, then we will issue a ruling" it's just going to be the judges making a call.
- maxwell 2y agoIf Congress doesn't want to do anything, and this one clearly doesn't (they look to be on pace for the fewest acts ever), then that just effectively kicks the responsibility down to State legislatures. Good for distributing power. You know, laboratories of democracy.
- GenerWork 2y agoThis is unbelievably good news! It's time to move power out of the hands of bureaucrats back into Congress where it belongs.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoCongress are the bureaucrats
- vaadu 2y agoCongress are the elected bureaucrats Agency folks are unelected bureaucrats
- HDThoreaun 2y agoCongress is one of the least effective institutions in this country
- vaadu 2y agoThe purpose of Congress is to make these kinds of decisions. They pass the buck so they don't have a voting record that an election opponent can use against them. They need to do their job.
- HDThoreaun 2y agoUnfortunately saying they need to do their job will not make it so
- rhaksw 2y agoThis decision has more to do with the Court owning its own past mistake, where they deferred to executive agencies. But both the judiciary and the legislative enabled the executive to consolidate lawmaking and interpretive power, thus violating the separation (and balance) of powers. Overruling Chevron is a step in the direction of restoring the balance of power. The balance may never be perfect, but at least we can see when we're far off course and make a correction.
- sandworm101 2y agoSo if courts aren't to defer to agencies on such matters, to where do they look? Congress? The executive? We can hate on regulatory agencies all day long, but they are least get stuff done. They show up to work and figure out how to move forwards. This decision seams a win for those political groups who, rather than actual fix anything, are bent on throwing sand into the gearbox.
- jimmyjazz14 2y ago"They get things done" has been one of the selling points for more than a few tyrannical regimes throughout history.
- sandworm101 2y agoAnd comparing the likes of the IRS or FDA to the tyrannical regimes of the past is the hallmark of sovereign citizens, tax protestors, healthcare deniers, and other bunker-dwellers who see view traffic tickets as an attack on their god-given right to drive a Tesla while trading bitcoin on a cellphone.
- ldf80g804 2y ago[dead]
- radley 2y agoIf I'm not mistaken, it's a selling point for functional governments too.
- jjk166 2y agoBecause it's not the problem people have with any of those tyrannical regimes.
- bbayles 2y agoWhat did they do prior to 1984?
- 2y ago
- bell-cot 2y agoBefore proclaiming that this outcome is horrible - Please consider that the Good Guys (your opinion) might not win the election in November. And that you might not want the courts auto-deferring to all the plausible-ish interpretations of ambiguous laws which gov't agency officials appointed by the Bad Guys (your opinion) might suddenly add the Official Agency Interpretations next year.
- aklemm 2y agoFrom either side, relying on the judiciary over active, well-functioning legislature is bad.
- bell-cot 2y agoTrue. And having Santa Claus make all the decisions would be even better. Unfortunately, neither Santa Claus nor an active and well-functioning legislature seem to be available.
- FireBeyond 2y agoSome would also argue that the judiciary is not particularly well-functioning, so why are we acting like that's the best option in the absence of alternatives?
- AmericanChopper 2y agoIt’s not bad to have due process. If some unelected regulator decides to invent a new interpretation for a law, and this causes some form of damages to you, then the courts are absolutely the appropriate venue to seek your remedy. That’s what due process is. This just puts judicial oversight back into a process where it had (for rather poor reasons imo) previously been removed.
- w4 2y agoExactly this. Unchecked administrative power in the Executive has left very dangerous tools laying about for would be autocrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory This will certainly make life harder for the regulatory agencies, and I don’t want to minimize the difficulty that represents, but this decision reinstates an important check on the Executive’s power at a very critical juncture in our nation’s history.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoMore discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40821007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40821007
- dctoedt 2y agoTime for Congress to start aggressively using its express constitutional power (under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause of Article III) to circumscribe federal courts' power to set aside congressional directives such as the ones that led to Chevron deference. "Separation of powers" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution; it's a bootstrapped creature of power-seeking judges.
- tmountain 2y agoThey can barely agree to increase the debt ceiling.
- lovethevoid 2y agoThat’s actually one both parties agree vehemently on, it just depends on who can get what they want most out of the approval. It’s a negotiation tactic effectively, and no president wants to be behind the failure to do so, which leads to the opposing party having the upper hand to negotiate substantial wins in the process.
- rayiner 2y ago> "Separation of powers" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution; it's a bootstrapped creature of power-seeking judges. Article I, Section 1 says: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article II, Section 1 says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Article III, Section 1 says: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Three specifically named powers, which are specifically assigned to three separate bodies, at the beginning of three separate sections. Gee, I wonder what the framers could possibly have been going with all this? I wish they had written papers elaborating on this concept that’s clearly reflected in the text: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch10s14.html https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch10s14... It’s hard to imagine anything that is more part of the constitution than separation of powers. If you handed the constitution and a copy of the federalist papers to an alien who knew nothing else about our society, they would understand that the constitution requires separation of powers.
- rswail 2y agoI'm impressed that they can so easily dispose of 40 years of law making by Congress that assumed that agencies would interpret the statutes and make rules for regulating their area of authority. Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide. So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. Awesome logic work, but terrible legal thinking without considering the side effects of the decision.
- HDThoreaun 2y agoCongress can still delegate chevron style. They just have to explicitly do so
- Balgair 2y agoThere's already been a big issue with 'regulatory capture' and lobbying in government. Congress is only going to delegate when some other entity, likely a business, isn't already writing the law/regulation. A concrete example: Boeing is going to up their lobbying game hard. They can now not only help write the laws, but help choose who says they've broken them. There is no way that it will be good for passengers before it is good for stockholders.
- dotnet00 2y agoGood thing Boeing hasn't already been doing that /s
- the_gastropod 2y agoBurning a man alive with a stubbed toe: "He was already injured!". Yes. Lobbying is already a huge problem. This ruling exclusively makes it worse.
- dotnet00 2y agoHow is it worse that now they need to lobby Congress instead of just getting the FAA to say that they can certify their planes themselves?
- lolinder 2y agoThere's a tendency among certain people on HN to act like the conservative justices have no rhyme or reason and are just a bull running mindlessly through the china shop breaking precedent at random or specifically to hurt specific groups of people. I'm not a fan of every ruling that they've made, but this should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who's been paying any attention to the arguments that this court has made over and over and over again. Their legal and constitutional philosophy has been very consistent: They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. They believe that the Executive branch and the Judicial branch have been compensating for Congressional failure for too long and they have been very clear that they're intent on undoing that and rolling the system back to how they believe it should be. There's an argument to be made that this theory is incorrect and/or harmful, but they've been remarkably consistent in applying it. Anyone who's been listening to them saw this coming years ago.
- epicureanideal 2y agoAlso, if the commenters here READ the full decision, the court explains the history and its reasoning better than any of us can do here. That's a common feature of Supreme Court decisions, and I find many Supreme Court decisions to be very interesting reading, including those from past decades.
- throw0101c 2y ago> Also, if the commenters here READ the full decision, the court explains the history and its reasoning better than any of us can do here. Sometimes the reasoning is specious and a fig leaf (e.g., Heller); have no idea how good it is here.
- vdqtp3 2y agoIf you are stating that Heller is specious and a fig leaf, you are arguing from a position of bad faith. You may disagree with the constitutional basis for the decision and wish the second amendment to be abolished, but the decision was well stated and solid.
- lolinder 2y agoThere's a tendency among certain people on HN to act like the conservative justices have no rhyme or reason and are just a bull running mindlessly through the china shop breaking precedent at random or specifically to hurt specific groups of people. I'm not a fan of every ruling that they've made, but this should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who's been paying any attention to the arguments that this court has made over and over and over again. Their legal and constitutional philosophy has been very consistent: They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. They believe that the Executive branch and the Judicial branch have been compensating for Congressional failure for too long and they have been very clear that they're intent on undoing that and rolling the system back to how they believe it should be. There's an argument to be made that this theory is incorrect and/or harmful, but they've been remarkably consistent in applying it. Anyone who's been listening to them saw this coming years ago.
- rootusrootus 2y agoIt would be somewhat amusing if Congress took the bait and wrote some legislation telling the Court to get back in its lane. Maybe the majority of justices would actually be okay with that.
- kyrra 2y agoSCOTUS is governed by the constitution. All congress has control over is the purse (money paid to the justices), number of justices, and appointment of justices. SCOTUS rules are set out in Article III. If congress wants to change the rules of SCOTUS, they will need to amend the constitution. Note that congress does have power over all lower federal courts, as they were created by congress. SCOTUS is special here though.
- colejohnson66 2y agoThe ability for SCOTUS to rule on Chevron isn't even in the Constitution! Marbury v. Madison was SCOTUS saying "we can overturn your executive and legislative choices" and no one bothered to stop them.
- doublerabbit 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoPlease don't post generated comments.
- jimbob45 2y agoIs there a reason you haven't added that to the FAQ yet? I don't know how that guy could have known not to use generated comments unless there was a sticky I missed.
- dang 2y agoMore likely that would go in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html although the line between that and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html is a bit blurry. There are lots of established practices or conventions here that haven't been elevated to that level because we don't want to make those lists too long. At a certain point it would start to feel bureaucratic and that would be bad; also, the longer they are the less people will read them. Arguably one can derive 'no generated comments' from what's already there though I agree it's not entirely obvious. The community has been doing a pretty good job of managing this issue though, so I'm not sure it needs officialization.
- callroomlamp 2y agoDevastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy. The biggest question is who will interpret the application of law? Will it be challenged in court once again until a clear statement is made? Meanwhile, what will be the effects of this “deregulation” until a clear statement is made
- stronglikedan 2y agoIt's not about the application of law. It's about the ambiguity of law. If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. This is a fantastic decision on the part of the court.
- radley 2y ago> It's about the ambiguity of law. If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. I doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political, more responsible, and more governed by facts. Particularly when the party that made this decision has veered completely in the opposite direction. If anything, it will be used to prioritize "faith" over fact, like what we've seen in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
- rayiner 2y agoIf that party can win elections by doing that, that’s what should happen. “Expertise” carries zero weight in a democracy other than its ability to persuade voters.
- radley 2y agoBut historically, it ends up causing a great deal of harm.
- thedragonline 2y ago
- persnicker 2y agoThis is a fantastic outcome. If you give an agency the power to interpret the law that congress has prescribed to the agency, the agency will almost always chose an interpretation that is in their self-interest - often leading to a corrupt (really, just an outright wrong) interpretation of the law. It's surprising that Chevron was ever even case law. Thank goodness we have a set of justices that are actually looking to get rid of conflicts of interest and focus on an objective and conflict-free rule of law. It seems based on the dissent liberals want to relish in giving government agencies power to interpret what they want, which is consistent with yesterday's dissent from the liberals where the liberals dissented with the SEC case where the liberals dissent stated that the SEC should be able to prosecute individuals in their own SEC-based rules with their own SEC-based court. The court system is moving to ensure there are more checks and balances and that the law is interpreted and prosecuted in a way that has less conflict of interest.
- EricDeb 2y agoI strongly disagree. As someone above said it's the equivalent of requiring a meeting for every commit when building software. How good do you think congress will be at passing small laws when changes need to be made in federal agencies regulations?
- persnicker 2y agoIf every commit of software had the potential to put someone in prison or ruin their life based on a law that didn't exist though the agency itself interpreted for their own self-interest, I would certainly want a meeting for every commit. Furthermore, it's not "every commit" - it's commits that are questionable or have varying interpretations. Most litigation occurs relating to known laws that has substantial case law relating to it. The edge case situations are the ones that are not accounted for, and they're the far minority of litigation. It's these edge case situations which will require a meeting, and deservedly so. I'm sure you wouldn't be against that, however if you have facts to provide that would show this would be a bad outcome or what I stated would in fact lead to an absurd result, then please go ahead an provide it.
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- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
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- OutOfHere 2y agoI am really not a fan of the current Supreme Court, but this looks to be a good ruling. Agencies get carried away by their power, and this power requires stronger checks by real courts, not by the fake agency courts that always rule in favor of the agency. I make no judgment on how this ruling will be used or abused.
- OutOfHere 2y agoTo continue, although people will complain about the risk of environmental harm from this ruling, this harm is more a function of easy loans to companies that emit pollution. If you were change the money supply back to being gold-backed, the easy loans go away, the "growth at all costs" mantra dials back, and the ongoing environmental harm thereby modulates itself. It is the root cause of the unsustainable growth and environmental evils we see.
- voxic11 2y agoAlso its funny because the original Chevron case was about how under Reagan the EPA re-interpreted the Clean Air Act to make it easier for companies to introduce new pollution sources. The EPA was sued and the lower courts backed the original interpretation of the Clean Air Act. This was overturned by the Supreme Court in the Chevron decision which said the courts must defer to the EPA's new interpretation. So the environmental impacts of this decision are hardly clear cut.
- techostritch 2y agoSo, I don’t think I’ve seen this language used, but does this basically end the use of “executive orders”? That’s what executive orders were right, advice to agencies on how to interpret laws?
- cdaringe 2y agoSo if I work for the ohhh I dunno department of energy, and im working on rules for, uh, i dunno, radiation exposure. Does this mean that DOE cant what—set legally safe exposure levels? The court has to?
- colejohnson66 2y agoOr Congress
- xboxnolifes 2y agoOnly if congress didn't expressly give the department the right to do so in legislation.
- vharuck 2y ago(IANAL, but here's my reading) You can set them. The difference is, if the DOE is sued over that regulation, the court will make it's own judgement as to what the law intended. Should there be radiation exposure rules? If so, what should the levels be? How should they be measured? What is covered by those rules? The DOE will get its say. But the court would be free to conduct its own research or give whatever weight it wants to the plaintiff's arguments for interpreting the law.
- salawat 2y agoThere will be no controversy. The Court will refer to DoE's definitions/rulemaking. Issue closed. Now, if DoE started publishing guidelines about the radiation levels in bananas to be marketed in the U.S., the Courts would look at DoE like they have a second head, and tell them Congress never intended for them to govern banana radiation levels. That's the FDA's job. Now let's make it more interesting. Let's say DoE passes down rulemaking around the how radiation exposure resulting from food intake by Nuclear plant employees gets factored into lifetime exposure, and Dole sues to have their bananas excluded from the calculation. Under Chevron, check the statute, no mention of banana-ry. Check the agency definitions for reasonability: Guideline related to management of Energy infra/workers in the United States. Okay. The Government is passing something that applies to all DoE covered workers. Okay. No single entity (purveyor of fruit) is singled out. No invalid statutory constructions were used. Check with FDA for corroborating info. Okay. Tell Dole DoE's rulemaking request is ultimately reasonable and within scope for fulfilling DoE's narrowly scoped mandate; end of story. The gist is the Court can't just ignore a request for redress of grievance via deferring to the Executive Agency in question anymore. Obligatory IANAL. Just my read of the decision. The justices really drilled home on review of administrative law being the job of the courts. Not the Executive.
- leotravis10 2y agoGet ready for the Judicial Branch (especially the Supreme Court) to be in charge of every federal agency going forward. It's going to get real ugly....
- josefritzishere 2y agoThis decision conflicts with their decision on the homeless. In one case local laws are enforcible, in the other, we are powerless to regulate. In both cases the balance of power shifts to the party already more powerful. Calling it disingenuous would be charitable.
- rayiner 2y agoCan you articulate what you think the conflict is?
- neonate 2y agohttps://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
- chucke1992 2y agoSo basically now the agencies won't need to think about interpreting the law themselves?
- dilippkumar 2y agoThere’s a lot of negativity around this ruling here on HN. As a not-lawyer, non expert, I welcome this ruling. The strongest argument I can make in favor of this come from the dissenting opinion by Justice Kagan: > This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—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 usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court... In other words, Congress can not get its shit together, but someone still has to do the work of figuring out what rules we should all follow. Congress would much rather play politics and make speeches and theatrical high-drama hearing rather than doing the hard work of legislating laws. It is obvious that Congress can not get all the details right. Neither can the regulatory body. The only advantage of delegating the work of rule-making to regulators is that the iteration times are faster. Why are the iteration times faster? It has more to do with the Congress being a dysfunctional body. When incompetence is rewarded by reduced work loads, incompetence is amplified. Yes Congress can not get their shit together. But that’s way more visible to voters when their incompetence translates to visible inaction. This is the way the system should work (in my opinion). Feels like a positive ruling to me.
- eightysixfour 2y ago> When incompetence is rewarded by reduced work loads, incompetence is amplified. What? When incompetence has more responsibility, the effect of incompetence is amplified.
- dilippkumar 2y ago> When incompetence has more responsibility, the effect of incompetence is amplified. Correct. This is the desired effect. Today, Congress hides behind endless procedural votes and dramatic hearings and grandstanding against political opponents and basically doing everything except for useful work. Now, not only are they on the hook, their incompetence is (hopefully) going to be amplified. The all-talk-but-no-legislating politicians will, over the next 20 years, get weeded out one by one.
- wnevets 2y agoThe heritage foundation is doing so much damage to this country
- debacle 2y agoGood. Make Congress do its job. Erode the executive until we're not frothing at the mouth every 4 years worrying about who will be "in charge," and instead focusing on the actions of our congressional representatives.
- Spivak 2y agoSo we froth at the mouth every two years instead? I get the argument but I'm not really sure this is going to help in the way you want it.
- BadHumans 2y agoI imagine this is table setting to give the Trump stacked courts more range for when he wins.
- cryptonector 2y agoHow?!
- mullingitover 2y ago[flagged]
- throwaway4220 2y agoWhat does this mean for the FDA?
- unethical_ban 2y agoThe supreme Court is hosting a revolution upending the common understanding of modern government, without firing a shot. We need to amend the constitution to revert what these jurists are doing to destroy our administrative state.
- MR4D 2y agoCongress can’t write good laws (good = clean, unambiguous) due to a variety of reasons, most of which are just political and not practical reasons. Here’s hoping this decision causes Congress to write laws with more clarity now that they cannot be as sloppy and get away with it. There may be much upheaval in the short term, but for that reason alone, I think it will have a positive impact on the country. One other reason I think this decision is good - if we are innocent until proven guilty, then ambiguities should go in favor of the individual not the State.
- masklinn 2y ago> Congress can’t write good laws (good = clean, unambiguous) due to a variety of reasons, most of which are just political and not practical reasons. A massive reason in this case is that congress are not matter experts, laws are already large and unwieldy, and agencies need flexibility in their work as, as ponderous as they are, they're still more nimble than congress and need that in order to react to changes in the area they regulate. > One other reason I think this decision is good - if we are innocent until proven guilty, then ambiguities should go in favor of the individual not the State. I'm sure the individual will greatly benefit when the EPA's regulation of the next great carcinogen is struck down on grounds that congress has not explicitly restricted it.
- deveac 2y ago>A massive reason in this case is that congress are not matter experts, Perhaps they should not be crafting new laws concerning things that they do not understand. If this results in fewer new laws, that may be better. If this also results in their having to spend more time doing homework on new urgent laws of greater importance, that may also be a good thing. A return to the Constitutional prescription that Congress writes the laws, the Executive administers them, and the Courts interpret them certainly does not seem inappropriate, and discarding this framework in the name of arbitrary desired outcomes like EPA rulings feels off. If it's a bandwidth issue, maybe we should up the number of judiciary and lower the number of extra-judicial agency bureaucrats.
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- CobrastanJorji 2y agoWhy did the Supreme Court invent Chevron deference 40 years ago? To serve corporations. It's not called "Chevron" because it's about inverted V's, after all. The EPA wanted to interpret the law in a way that Chevron liked and the Natural Resources Defense Council did not like, so the Supreme Court said "no, no, the EPA gets to decide, we are but poor unqualified judges." Why did the Supreme Court take it away? Because agencies started interpreting laws in ways that corporations did not like, so the Supreme Court changed its tune to "who are these agencies to interpret the law, we are the judges here."
- RIMR 2y agoThis is pretty much direct irrefutable evidence that the SCOTUS has been corrupted. The extreme ideological tilt is disturbing enough, but it's clear that these judges answer to the highest bidder, not the American people or the intent of the Founding Fathers.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoIf the spirit of the ruling originally by the SCOTUS was to benefit corporations , and they overturned it because it was no longer benefiting corporations - are they really corrupted? Or just business as usual?
- soerxpso 2y agoWhat? Some guy making a vague statement on a web forum with nothing concrete to back it is "direct, irrefutable evidence"? I'd like to see any evidence at all that any SCOTUS judge is actually profiting from this decision in any way. Chevron was corrupt 40 years ago; overturning it is not, or at least isn't more corrupt than the decision originally was in the first place.
- fzeroracer 2y agoClarence Thomas? The huge amount of gifts he's taken from Republican donors who have ties to real estate companies and businesses that benefit the most from things like 'pesky environmental regulations' being weakened or removed?
- Animats 2y agoThis would be less of a problem if Congress was more active at drafting and passing bills. We got into this mess because Congress stalled out.
- cryptonector 2y agoChevron arguably helped Congress shirk its responsibility.
- seaourfreed 2y agoCryptocurrency industry, will now innovate far more
- annoyingnoob 2y agoJudges are appointed, not elected. Federal Judges receive lifetime appointments. This decision takes power away from elected officials and hands the power to appointed officials, officials appointed for life. Conservatives have played the long after to Roe to attempt to stack the courts with conservative judges. This is how we got to the Supreme Court that we have now.
- Invictus0 2y agoCongress is a mess because the country is a mess--the elected represent the electorate.
- karmasimida 2y agoI would prefer less regulation than more, so this is welcome.
- jmyeet 2y agoThere's some interesting history here [1]. Anne Gorsuch Burford was appointed by Reagan to head the EPA. She beleived federal regulations had become too onerous and the power of the administrative state had become too large. It was her mission to roll back environmental protections and gut the agency through reorganizations and layoffs. This did not go well. She ultimately resigned over a scandal where she withheld funds to help clean up a site to hurt a Senate campaign and lied about it. The Reagan administration eventually discovered the lie and I believe she resigned to avoid proseecution. The EPA under Reagan tried to limit clean air responsibilities by narrowly scoping what a "source" of static pollution is. The Natural Resources Defence Council ("NRDC") sued, in a case called Natural Resources Defence Council v. Gorsuch [2]. Interestingly, the trial court judge was future Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Court ruled against the EPA. That case was appealed to the Supreme Court as Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc [3]. The Supreme Court reversed this decision and said that the EPA had the broad authority to define what a "source" was as policy and this become the basis for what we now called (or used to call) "Chevron deference". It's worth noting that SCOTUS at the time made what was then a pro-corporate and anti-environmental decision. Former EPA Anne Gorsuch Burford's son is Neil Gorsuch, current Supreme Court justice who voted to overturn Chevron deference and essentially avenge his mother, continuing her anti-government legacy. [1]: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/07/why-neil-gorsuchs-mother-would-be-so-proud-destruction-his-supreme-court-has https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/07/why-neil-gorsu... [2]: https://casetext.com/case/natural-resources-defense-council-inc-v-gorsuch https://casetext.com/case/natural-resources-defense-council-... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoThe conservatives in for some crazy awakenings with this. So many federal law enforcement practices that are super shady get handwaved away under the Chevron doctrine. I think this was a bad ruling as far as running a functional country goes, but a lot of shady stuff the government got away with is finally going to get stopped.
- rayiner 2y agoThe media's coverage of this as a "conservative win" is extremely misleading. This case is simply about whether agencies or judges should interpret what federal regulatory statutes mean. Chevron itself was written by five conservatives (and one democrat--with three other justices not participating) and overruled a decision authored by then D.C. Circuit Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She had sided with an environmental advocacy organization in finding that the EPA's interpretation of a Clean Air Act amendment was incorrect. Chevron has always been a double-edged sword for both conservatives and progressives. In many cases, public interest advocacy organizations would much rather have judges deciding what laws mean than bureaucrats, because agencies tend to be staffed with industry people who are--while well meaning and operating in good faith--often veterans of industry and very sympathetic to it.
- shawndrost 2y agoWhat an incredible coincidence that everyone -- the media, the judges who voted 6-3, and HN commenters like yourself -- sees this case along ideological lines!
- rayiner 2y agoEvery case is obviously going to be viewed through the legal of legal ideology. That’s different from making it seem like it favors one particular political ideology. Liberals hated Chevron because agencies were generally less willing to push the law in their favor than judges. Under this ruling, they can go and sue in the ninth circuit and have liberal judges Decide what the clean air act means.
- mushufasa 2y agoThis is a complete disaster. The ramifications will be felt for decades. Now businesses must factor in the uncertainty of any random person launching a lawsuit that causes a local court to reverse a federal agency policy. Huge potential impacts to product / revenue, not just legal fees to fight everything. And immeasurable impacts of cowing all bold business decisions to avoid the ire of any person or group, no matter how niche or extreme. Even if a new supreme court reverts this decision, now people are going to be concerned about the unpredictability of the Supreme Court.
- tiahura 2y agoHow would a random person have standing?
- tstrimple 2y agoStanding doesn’t matter. A conservative website creator was able to take a case all the way up to the Supreme Court without ever have been sued. They just made up a situation where an alleged customer demanded they make a gay website. The customer never even existed. This is on top of the Supreme Court literally legalizing bribing of government officials across the country as long as the payment is made after the favor and not before. Then it’s just a gratuity and not a bribe. The entire system is rotten at this point.
- avar 2y agoThat website creator sued their state's regulatory agency, and "sufficiently demonstrated both an intent to provide graphic and web design services to the public in a manner that exposes them to [Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act] liability, and a credible threat that Colorado will prosecute them under that statute."[1] Yes, the alleged "situation" may have been contrived, but that doesn't change whether they have standing to sue their state to challenge what they see as an unconstitutional law. Do you think their only recourse should be to break the law, and risk the penalties associated with that if it does turn out to be constitutional? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/303_Creative_LLC_v._Elenis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/303_Creative_LLC_v._Elenis
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- fullspectrumdev 2y agoCan anyone speak to what this will mean for the ATF’s “rulemaking”?
- chasd00 2y agoIt means a judge can, if they so choose, decide if an ATF rule is lawful or not instead of the ATF itself always having the final say. Speaking of the ATF, it took a Supreme Court ruling to get ammonium perchlorate off the explosives list so model rocketry could continue as a hobby. With this ruling, a case like that wouldn’t have to go all the way to the Supreme Court. This is a good thing.
- cryptonector 2y agoThey won't be able to stretch the law as much as they have at times. As the court's decision in Raimondo and the concurrences note, the court had already stopped using Chevron since 2016. Notably the court ignored Chevron last week when they decided that bump stocks are not machine guns -- if you read that decision it was all about the interpretation of "more than one shot with a single action of the trigger", which is precisely what the court would have deferred to the ATF on under Chevron and which it did not now. The scaffold of federal gun control (NFA etc.) remains untouched by Raimondo. Only ATF rulings regarding various technologies developed in the past 40 years will be affected, and probably not that very many. I doubt more than a very small handful of ATF rulings will be affected.
- dantheman 2y agoFantastic!
- kernal 2y agoThis ruling removes power from the executive branch and returns it to the state and to the people. How anyone could view this as a terrible thing is bizarre IMO. In what world is giving federal agencies wide powers to interpret laws and decide the best ways to apply them a good thing? That's a rhetorical question because the answer is it isn't.
- VincentEvans 2y agoCongress can actually legislate the right of agencies to interpret the gaps in the laws back into effect - by passing a law that explicitly gives agencies this power. Just like congress can legislate abortion laws rather than leaving it to judicial precedence. Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with the position of supreme court to push the responsibility of lawmaking back on congress.
- darby_nine 2y ago> Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with the position of supreme court to push the responsibility of lawmaking back on congress. That the court is allowed to exercise power not enumerated anywhere is a major problem, just not a new one. We really should have legislated their role centuries ago.
- sqeaky 2y agoFundamentally, people are suffering because the courts are acting for political expedience instead of doing and saying what's right and correct. Congress should get its Act together, but one group acting in responsible is not license for another group to act irresponsible.
- mjfl 2y agoacting for political expedience? They are making heavily impactful, politically unpopular moves to correct what they believe to be long term errors buried in court precedent.
- freejazz 2y agoIt's politically expedient for their goals, your post explains exactly why: they are hugely unpopular moves, if for any reason, because of the tremendous uncertainty they create in the law at large.
- goodluckchuck 2y agoI don’t buy the idea that this creates uncertainty. When I read a statute I have a level of certainty as to what it means. When I read executive branch rules interpreting the statute I have a better understanding of what the executive intends to do, but - as they don’t write the law - it doesn’t provide much clarity as to what the statute actually means. The executive can and should continue to provide guidance about its intentions, but saying that the law is whatever the executive intends it to be is smoke.
- hn1986 2y agoThis is a net negative for US citizens
- mjfl 2y agoI think it's good that courts will no longer have to defer to federal agencies granting themselves powers "because we say so." This will stop mission creep of the federal regulatory agencies and correct a long term error in court precedent. The Supreme Court is doing its job.
- BurningFrog 2y agoThe best argument for this is the "separation of powers" one. In the system of Thursday, regulatory agencies can be "both judge, jury and executioner", ordering people to do whatever they want, since that's how they choose to interpret their mandate. Power like this can and will be abused, even if it's true that the agency has the best expertise in the area. It also makes it very dangerous for those who are abused to complain publicly, since they can arbitrarily be found in violation of the law as retribution. This is no way to live, and the system of Monday should be better, even if it may be confused and cumbersome for a few years.
- anigbrowl 2y agoPower like this can and will be abused Compare and contrast judicial shopping, eg patent disputes filed in the Eastern District of Texas.
- TimTheTinker 2y agoThe solution to both problems is law, and the rule thereof.
- tomcam 2y ago> The Supreme Court on Friday curtailed the executive branch's ability to interpret laws it's charged with implementing, giving the judiciary more say in what federal agencies can do. That is one way to view it. Another way is that legislation should be left to legislators.
- rpmisms 2y agoFINALLY. Chevron is the bedrock of bureaucracy, and it provides a layer of opacity. It's fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-republic--note the lack of capitalization.
- gnicholas 2y agoFun fact: > Ironically, it was Gorsuch’s mother, former EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch, who made the decision that the Supreme Court upheld in 1984. [1] 1: https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-chevron-regulations-environment-4ae73d5a79cabadff4da8f7e16669929 https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-chevron-regulations...
- chrismaeda 2y agoOne of the issues that led to this decision is regulatory overreach. Standard example is the clean air act which regulated air pollution. Years later the EPA decided that green house gases were air pollutants that could be regulated under the act. Then they tried to say that CO2 was a pollutant, and businesses started to fight back hard.
- eightysixfour 2y ago> Pollution, the addition of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed, recycled, or stored in some harmless form. Sounds like green house gases are pollutants.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nerdright 2y agoI bet a lot of commenters here don't understand the extent to which this ruling will apply. The ruling affects cases where statutes do not explicitly grant interpretive authority to the enforcing agency. When a statute clearly delegates interpretive authority to the enforcing agency, the agency's interpretations will definitely prevail in the courts. So this ruling is not as terrible as most comments think. If anything, it's very rational. If a law explicitly applies to X, you don't want the executive branch applying it to Y and Z. That's how you create a rogue executive branch (even though you may be well intentioned).
- emmelaich 2y agoAverage number of pages in the Federal Register is around 70k each year since the mid 1970s. I found his and other interesting facts about USA govt rule making in Counting Regulations: An Overview of Rulemaking, Types of Federal Regulations, and Pages in the Federal Register Sep 2019 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43056.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43056.pdf
- dadjoker 2y agoWow, truly amazing all the people in here who are perfectly content to let unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats make one "rule" after another because it makes them feel like they're doing their jobs, only increasing the regulatory burden on everyday Americans. So sad how many people prefer an oppressive regulatory government over the freedoms and liberties America was founded on.
- anamax 2y agoChevron deference is actually fairly recent. Therefore, what happened before is a reasonable guide to what will happen now.
- newzisforsukas 2y agoNot really as the world is completely different?
- banish-m4 2y agoChevron also snuck out of a billion dollar lawsuit liability based on whether a comma in a civil engineering build code meant "and" or "or".
- r3db34rd 2y agoThis is the best news of 2024.
- davidguetta 2y agoIdk im french and it seems a good decisio
- cchance 2y agoDoesn't this fuck things like the 400ft drone limit and remote id and a bunch of other shit as well?
- cryptonector 2y agoRemote ID, possibly. Raimondo means only that the courts won't blindly accept an agency's interpretation of the law, but sometimes -often!- the court's interpretations will roughly agree with the agencies'. For the 400ft thing you'd have to look at what the FAA wrote in their ruling about how it's within the letter of what statute(s), and then reason for yourself whether that's a stretch, and then wonder what the chances are that the courts will interpret that differently.
- tekknik 2y agoWhat happened to no politics on HN? The US is getting closer to a major election so articles like this are going to pop up more and more.
- KingLancelot 2y ago[dead]
- fbnbr 2y agoGiven the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn the Chevron deference doctrine, the responsibility for interpreting legal gaps now firmly rests with the courts, pushing Congress to be more explicit in its legislations. This shift underscores the need for tools that can help both government officials and advocates navigate the complexities of policy development and legislative analysis efficiently. If you're a government official, advocate, or researcher feeling the impact of this change, consider reaching out to me. I am working on a platform that leverages AI to revolutionize policy research, bill drafting, and legislative analysis. I think there is a lot of toil that can be removed with intelligent policy research, advanced legal analysis, collaborative policy development, and automated legislative drafting. My team and I are designing it to empower teams with tools to facilitate grassroots participation while integrating seamlessly with existing civic platforms. We're currently looking for early testers to help refine our product. If you're interested in enhancing your productivity and navigating the new legislative landscape with ease, DM me. Your insights could be invaluable in shaping a tool that addresses the real challenges in policy development and advocacy.