The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has overruled the 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, known as the Chevron Doctrine, which can considerably reduce the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws. Under the previous Chevron Doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed a particular matter in a law, courts must give "reasonable" deference to a federal agency's interpretation of law in their implementation. However, with the recent SCOTUS ruling, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided.”
What Was The Chevron Doctrine?
The Chevron Doctrine was a Court-made rule from 1984 and was the most cited administrative law case in history, being used for around 18,000 federal court decisions. In short, agencies, like the EPA, can fill interpretive “gaps” in the statutes they administer if congress hasn’t directly addressed the issue in question. This allowed many agencies to take a very aggressive approach to regulations.
Chevron Defense Was A Two-Step Test:
1. Determine if Congress has directly addressed the issue in question. If Congress's intent is clear, the analysis ends at step one. If the statute is ambiguous or silent, the court proceeds to step two.
2. If the statute is ambiguous, consider whether the agency's interpretation of the statute is reasonable. If the court determines that the agency's interpretation is reasonable, it must uphold it, even if it might believe there is a better interpretation. This is because agencies often have knowledge about the statute's subject matter that courts may not.
What Ended The Chevron Doctrine?
It was ultimately the SCOTUS ruling on the Loper Bright case (Loper Bright Enterprises et al v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et al). This case involved the interpretation of a particular provision of a statute in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act that required Atlantic herring fisheries vessels to have on-board data collectors (Observers) that allowed the tracking of the vessels data for fish conservation purposes. The question was, who pays for these data collectors? Federal agencies, invoking the Chevron Doctrine, stated they had the authority to make the fisheries pay for the data collectors through the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act. Because of the way the case was presented by the agencies, painting a broad stroke of power by looking at the statue as a whole instead of focusing on a small portion of the statue that was ambiguous on who pays, SCOTUS was able to make a broader ruling that include The Chevron Doctrine and agreed that the agencies do not have the ability to fill in gaps in statutes with a reasonable rule presented by Congress, that is decided by a court.
What Are The Early Interpretations & Meaning From The Loper Bright Case Ending The Chevron Doctrine?
The biggest takeaway is that courts will not rely on the agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous laws, but rather rely on their own interpretation. This should allow the regulated community to have more power in rulemaking as well as decrease the amount of change in regulation with administrative changes. Instead, this will all be decided on who has the loudest voice to influence Congress. These voices will fall heavily on trade organizations and their associate members.
Davey Resource Group (DRG) is active in many of these organizations and sends representatives to Washington DC annually. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, especially environmental regulation. With one of the most vulnerable regulations being the Clean Water Act, specifically the Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) 2023 Rule as it has been interpreted since the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling. The industry's pure interpretation of the SCOTUS Sackett ruling is not in-line with the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s (USACE’s) ambiguous interpretations have already led to several lawsuits. DRG is involved with several industry organizations and has been in constant discussion and debate with the EPA and USACE, insisting on more transparency and guidance from the agencies in order to better serve our clients.
Article Contributors:
Kevin Thomas, Principal Consultant, Davey Resource Group North Carolina
