How the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ‘Chevron’ ruling puts countless regulations

CNN
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A major Supreme Court ruling Friday that shifted power from the executive branch to the judiciary stands to transform how the federal government works.

By overturning a 1984 precedent, the court’s conservative majority has made countless regulations vulnerable to legal challenge. The types of executive branch moves that the ruling jeopardizes include a plan to put Wi-Fi on school buses, a new ban on noncompete clauses, health care coverage rules being implemented through Obamacare, and the latest plan to forgive student loan debt.

The Supreme Court ruling could boost efforts by conservatives who have taken aim at the Biden Environmental Protection Agency’s rules limiting planet-warming pollution from vehicles, oil and gas wells and pipelines, and power plants.

“There is no substantive area that this doctrine does not touch,” said Kent Barnett, a University of Georgia School of Law professor who specializes in administrative law.

The so-called Chevron doctrine — named after the case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — told courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute in circumstances in which the law in question is vaguely written. The precedent is deeply entrenched in administrative law, with Republican and Democratic administrations alike using it to shield regulatory action from legal attack.

“Essentially, anytime where an agency has a dispute with either an individual or some other entity — sometimes even the federal government versus the state government — Chevron deference could come up,” said Thomas Berry, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion overruling the precedent, writing for an ideologically split 6-3 court that “Courts must exercise their independent judgement in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”

The Roberts court has been chipping away at the precedent over the years. But in the case before the justices this term — two lawsuits challenging regulations requiring that fishermen pay environmental monitors they are required to carry on their boats — the high court dealt the final blow.

The ruling has injected legal uncertainty into regulations of all types, including those on technology, labor, the environment and health care.

There are so many highly complex scientific policy decisions that it would be nearly impossible for Congress to draft legislation with enough detail to account for every regulatory scenario, legal scholars argue.

Roberts said the new opinion should not be used to upend previous cases upholding regulations absent a “special…