Court rules the Chevron Doctrine as misguided and unworkable

The U.S. Supreme Court has overruled the landmark Chevron doctrine, significantly reshaping the future of regulatory litigation. In a 6-3 decision in the consolidated cases of Loper Bright v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, the Court held that the Chevron doctrine is “fundamentally misguided” and “unworkable.”

The Chevron doctrine, established in the 1984 case Chevron v. NRDC, had previously required courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

The Court has now rejected this framework, ruling that courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

The majority opinion, written by Justice Gorsuch, found that Chevron deference was incompatible with the APA’s mandate for courts to “decide all relevant questions of law.” The Court held that stare decisis did not require continued adherence to Chevron, as the doctrine had proven unworkable and had not engendered substantial reliance.

While the death of Chevron does not mean an end to all deference to agencies, the decision will fundamentally change how Congress writes statutes and how courts interpret them.

The Court noted that Congress may still expressly delegate discretionary authority to agencies, but courts will no longer “pretend” that statutory silence or ambiguity constitutes such a delegation.

The impact of this ruling remains to be seen, as the Court stressed that holdings in cases upholding specific agency actions are still subject to statutory stare decisis.

However, the Court indicated that a prior decision’s reliance on Chevron may suggest that the precedent was wrongly decided, potentially opening the door for challenges to agency actions that had previously been upheld under the Chevron framework.

Experts caution that predictions of the swift demise of the regulatory state are likely overstated. However, the Loper Bright decision will undoubtedly reshape the landscape of regulatory litigation, as courts are now required to exercise their independent judgment in evaluating the legality of agency actions.

Continue reading: Simone Biles Leads Day 1 of U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials