Supreme Court strikes down Chevron, curtailing power of federal agencies
Supreme Court strikes down Chevron, curtailing power of federal agencies
This article was updated on June 28 at 3:46 p.m. In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretion of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-
This sucks. This is leaning further into the Major Questions Doctrine that SCOTUS has been pushing, where agencies and their actually knowledgeable, employed scientists and technical experts, have no real control over regulatory policies, and instead are beholden to Congress and judges to decide e.g. how many ppm of a chemical is safe for people to drink.
The march into corporatocracy continues.
An unsurprising decision but still horribly disappointing.
Thats a good thing. Unelected officials should not be passing laws.
Regulations are not laws. They are the specific implementation mechanisms of laws.
For example, Congress passes a law like the Clean Water Act. But that law doesn't (and cannot feasibily) lay out every single individual rule necessary to ensure the clean water that it seeks to protect and provide.
For example, it contains a section that requires Water Quality Standards to be set by each state, for themselves. However, if a state does not create them, the act authorizes the EPA to create a standard for them.
That's not the EPA "creating laws", it's the EPA implementing the congressionally-passed CWA.
Permanently Deleted
They’re not “passing laws.” They define the minute technical details that Congress can’t cover completely or doesn’t understand. Here’s an example:
Elected Congress: Don’t sell moldy sausage.
Unelected FDA: Ok, here’s how long you can safely store sausage below this temperature. If that date is passed or the sausage has been exposed to higher temperature for this amount of time, it must be discarded to greatly reduce the possibility of selling moldy sausage.
Unelected Judge: Mom said if it’s not green it’s not moldy. Just don’t sell green sausage boys.
Unelected SCOTUS: Yup, that’s how it’s done.
This shifts balance from unelected officials who can be fired by the president (administrative officials) towards unelected officials who can't be (judges). It doesn't actually reduce regulatory power, just puts that regulatory power under the supervision and review of even less accountable officials.