Sayonara, Chevron

“…It’s time for the Supreme Court to jettison the doctrine known as Chevron deference, which forces federal courts to surrender their judicial function to the unaccountable bureau­crats of the administrative state.

This past January, the high court heard arguments in two cases—Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relent­less Inc. v. Commerce Department—that present the opportunity to do just that. A decision in these cases is expected by June.

Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution vests the “judicial Power of the United States” in “one supreme Court” and “such inferior Courts as the Con­gress may … establish.” As this language makes clear, the Supreme Court is the head of the judicial branch of our federal government. It sits atop the judiciary and super­intends the decision-making of lower courts through the opinions it hands down.

The Chevron line of cases is an exercise of the Supreme Court’s super­intending role over the judicial branch. It is a set of instructions to the lower courts about how they are to exercise their judicial function when review­ing agency actions that involve formal interpretations of a statute the agency is charged with admin­istering.

Under Chevron, the courts are told to defer to the agency’s inter­pre­tation if the part of the statute at issue has more than one plausible reading, even if the court believes there’s a better interpretation that’s more faithful to the statute Con­gress enacted.

Right away we notice something strange about this instruction: In its unanimous 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court is telling the lower courts to abdicate a portion of their judicial power—to cede it to administrative agencies…”