The Patriot Post® · SCOTUS Rolls Back the Administrative State

In America’s coequal three-branch governmental system, the primary job of the legislative branch is to make the laws. The executive branch’s job is to enforce those laws. And the judicial branch’s job is to rule on the constitutionality and application of those laws. That, in a nutshell, is the basic U.S. civics lesson any middle school student should be able to articulate.

However, when it comes to the federal government’s actual practice of maintaining these constitutionally delineated roles, that’s another story entirely, as evidenced by Washington’s massive bureaucracy.

Much of that bureaucratic state is thanks to the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., a ruling that established what has become known as the Chevron Doctrine. In that decision, the Court effectively gave the executive branch — in this case, represented by the Environmental Protection Agency — the sweeping authority to make law under its directive to enforce the Clean Air Act.

Of course, this opened a can of worms, as it granted the executive branch, via its cadre of unelected bureaucrats, broad leeway to interpret the laws and create regulations to enforce them. In other words, the executive branch was no longer merely enforcing the laws; it was now creating them. It also gave Congress the freedom to abdicate responsibility. Laws could be crafted with vague language that would then allow members of Congress to dodge responsibility for how those laws were applied and enforced.

The crux of the issue with the Chevron Doctrine is tied to the question of interpretive authority. Does the legislative, judicial, or executive branch have the primary and ultimate authority in interpreting the laws that Congress creates? If Congress does not explicitly delineate its parameters in the laws it passes, do federal agencies then have the authority and freedom to interpret and expand those laws’ regulatory powers?

The constitutionally consistent answer should have been a clear “No.” However, that clarity was muddied thanks to Chevron. This lack of clarity resulted in an ever-expanding regulatory state.

Now, in a truly landmark decision in favor of limited government, a decision akin to the Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, the Court by a 6-3 decision in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo has overturned Chevron.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation, while ensuring that the agency acts within it.” He added, “But courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”

What Chevron allowed to proliferate was the tyranny of the “experts.” Courts were effectively hamstrung, and they were required to defer to Washington’s bureaucrats in decisions regarding challenges to regulations. Ambiguities within Congress’s laws became the playground for bureaucrats to run roughshod over Americans as they developed a continuously encroaching administrative state. Everything from gas cans to light bulbs to gas stoves has come under the heavy regulatory hand of these unelected bureaucrats.

Now, thanks to this ruling, the reining-in of the regulatory state can begin. As Justice Neil Gorsuch stated, “Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss. In doing so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation’s founding.”

As for Congress, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee pointedly observed, “With Chevron’s demise, it’s time for Congress to re-learn how to write real laws.” What a novel concept.