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Etiquette
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Friday, June 28, 2024
Supreme Court attacks the federal government: Chevron defense is overruled
In a gigantic blow to the federal government's ability to regulate anything, the USSC has completely overruled the Chevron defense. This opens the door to further erosion of democracy and the rule of law. The Chevron defense allowed federal agencies to write regulations based on sloppy, often incoherent laws that congress writes and passes. Those agencies are empowered to enforce the regulations they write. The idea is that since congress is incompetent and coward, federal agencies are empowered to try to translate congressional slop into coherent law. For decades, corporations and businesses have hated this system because it is so hard to corrupt. Congress is much easier to corrupt.
Live Updates: Supreme Court Overrules Chevron Doctrine,
Imperiling an Array of Federal Rules
The foundational 1984 decision required courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes, underpinning regulations on health care, safety and the environment
The Supreme Court swept aside a longstanding legal precedent on Friday, reducing the power of executive agencies and endangering countless regulations by transferring power from the executive branch to Congress and the courts. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that “agencies have no special competence” and that judges should determine the meaning of federal laws.
The precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, is one of the most cited in American law, underpinning 70 Supreme Court decisions and roughly 17,000 in the lower courts. Critics of regulatory authority immediately hailed the decision, suggesting it could open new avenues to challenge federal rules in areas ranging from abortion pills to the environment.
The importance of this case is hard to overstate. The damage it will cause is catastrophic. Note Roberts' assertion that “agencies have no special competence” and that judges should determine the meaning of federal laws. That is a full-blown lie. An outrageous lie. The whole point of federal agencies is to acquire special expertise that neither judges nor congress has. That is what professional bureaucrats are for.
Note that this constitutes a gigantic power transfer from congress and federal agencies to the USSC. Federal judges are even less qualified than congress to have the expertise to regulate complex industries.
This is a freaking catastrophe. The plutocrats are celebrating by guzzling champagne and unleashing their attorneys to attack every federal regulation that the Chevron defense previously protected. The USS has betrayed us and the environment. The radical authoritarian Republicans on the bench sold us out to kleptocratic plutocracy.
We are now royally fucked and totally defenseless.
Context
Radical right former US senator Ben Sasse (R-NE)
commenting on congressional slop and cowardice,
and the bitterness of Supreme Court nominations
Sasse: “. . . . . the people don't have a way to fire the bureaucrats. What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws. What we mostly decide to do is to give permission to the secretary or the administrator of bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make law-like regulations. That’s mostly what we do here. We go home and we pretend we make laws. No we don’t. We write giant pieces of legislation, 1200 pages, 1500 pages long, that people haven’t read, filled with all these terms that are undefined, and say to secretary of such and such [federal agency] that he shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our dang jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary, because this body rarely finishes its work. [joking] And, the House is even worse.”
Well now, the court has taken the job of rule writing away from from both congress and federal agencies and given it to itself. We are so very fucked.
In recent years, the Republican majority has also made it easier to sue agencies and get their rules struck down, including by advancing the so-called major questions doctrine. Under that idea, courts should nullify economically significant regulations if judges decided Congress was not clear enough in authorizing them. Advancing and entrenching that idea, the court has struck down an E.P.A. rule aimed at limiting carbon pollution from power plants, and barred the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from telling large employers they must either have their workers vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus or have them undergo frequent testing.
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