The Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in Loper Bright and Relentless – a pair of administrative law cases with the potential to transform the way our federal government works. The two cases pose the same question: Should the Court overturn long-standing precedent, the Chevron doctrine, also known as Chevron deference?
Issued in 1984, the Court’s decision in Chevron is as integral to administrative law as football is to the NFL. The doctrine arising out of that ruling holds that courts should defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Phrased another way, Chevron doctrine stands for the proposition that when Congress hasn’t specified otherwise courts should defer to agency experts when it comes to how agencies implement law.
What does that mean? Under Chevron, the FDA’s experts decide whether a medication is fit for public use, for example, not a judge. And instead of a judge deciding whether a nuclear reactor poses a threat to public health, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes the call. Rather than letting a judge decide whether a plane is safe for passengers, the Federal Aviation Administration is in charge.
During oral argument, members of the Court’s far-right majority signaled their willingness to overturn Chevron. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a longtime critic of deference, was particularly outspoken in his critiques— as was Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Meanwhile, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, by contrast, emphasized the chaos that would result from overturning this pillar of administrative law.
