On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court issued Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overruling the principle of Chevron deference as established in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
Chevron deference directed courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of federal law in the event that:
- there is an ambiguity in a law that the agency enforces; and
- the agency’s interpretation is reasonable.
Chevron was based upon the reasoning that ambiguities in a statute may be viewed as a delegation of authority from Congress to an agency thus limiting a federal court’s ability to review agency action.
In Loper, the Court held that Chevron conflicted with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Under the APA, “it thus remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says.” “The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled.”
The Court held that “Chevron was a judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties. And the only way to “ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion,” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986), is for us to leave Chevron behind. By doing so, however, we do not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework. The holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful—including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself—are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology.”
A copy of the Loper case can be found here: https://spelusolawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/22-451_7m58.pdf