The Supreme Court on Friday killed off a judicial doctrine that has protected many federal regulations from legal challenges for decades — delivering a major victory for conservatives and business groups seeking to curb the power of the executive branch.
The 6-3 decision divided the court along ideological lines. Its fallout will make it harder for President Joe Biden or any future president to act on a vast array of policy areas, from wiping out student debt and expanding protections for pregnant workers to curbing climate pollution and regulating artificial intelligence.
Known as Chevron deference, the Reagan-era doctrine required judges to defer to agencies’ “reasonable” interpretations of “ambiguous” federal laws. Now, judges will be freer to impose their own readings of the law — giving them broad leeway to upend regulations on health care, the environment, financial regulations, technology and more.
Because we know how well things have turned out when courts, such as the Supreme Court, rules on things it believes are “ambiguous”.
Supreme Court Jan. 6 ruling https://archive.is/3YrYN
The obstruction of an official proceeding statute makes it a felony crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison to “obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding.”
But the law, first passed in the wake of the 2001 Enron scandal, is vague about what constitutes an official proceeding and what conduct would constitute an illegal effort to obstruct one.
the law, as originally conceived in 2002, was intended to criminalize the type of evidence destruction and witness tampering that stymied Congressional investigators during the Enron collapse. It was not meant, they argue, to apply to any form disruptive conduct that interferes with any act of Congress.
But federal prosecutors and lower courts have ruled that the statute’s language is vague enough to encompass the type of disruption that brought the Congressional certification of the 2020 electoral vote to a halt during the Jan. 6 riot.
the court concluded the obstruction charge was only intended to apply in limited circumstances involving tampering with physical evidence. It doesn’t apply to the type of behavior that disrupted Congress’ certification of the 2020 vote, the majority ruled.
That’s the worst part. They just gave themselves a huge amount of extra power and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
If you want any proof that the court is corrupt, there it is. They are a court that can give themselves new powers.
They just gave themselves a huge amount of extra power…If you want any proof that the court is corrupt, there it is.
Interpreting the law is a power the courts have always had; it’s their core function. It wasn’t until Chevron when the courts willingly gave a portion of this power to the executive. Now they are simply taking it back; a power they always had that the executive abused.
The executive has “abused” it to do things like stop factories dumping toxic chemicals in rivers.
As I asked you below, how do you think our pro-corporate justice system will rule on such matters?
Surely this decision will be a net positive for the average American and won’t be used as part of a malicious scheme to widen the wealth gap. /s
Friday June 28th, 2024. The day the Supreme Court forcibly sodomized America.
Speaking of which, I await their ‘legalize rape’ decision which I’m guessing will be on the docket by 2026.
Fuck it, why not rule that it all has to go through the Fifth Circuit too?
This means that anyone who doesn’t like a particular rule or regulation can pick a venue with a friendly judge, challenge it in court, and likely get the outcome they want. Even if judge shopping wasn’t a major problem right now, this would still be a bad idea. The reason Chevron told judges to defer to agencies in matters where the interpretation is ambiguous is because those agencies have the experience and and expertise to understand the issues involved far better than a judge who has to try to master the subject from inside the courtroom.
This is all the more crazy in light of the recent racial gerrymandering decision, where Alito not only ignored the deference that appeals courts are supposed to show to trial courts (where the case is actually experienced and not just summed up in a brief) but then says that the judicial branch must defer to the legislators when they claim that they are being fair. So judges can just override the executive branch in subjects that they likely do not understand, but they can’t actually contradict the legislature over something like whether a policy is violating someone’s constitutional rights, despite that being one of their core functions for the past couple of centuries.
The reason Chevron told judges to defer to agencies in matters where the interpretation is ambiguous is because those agencies have the experience and and expertise to understand the issues involved far better than a judge who has to try to master the subject from inside the courtroom.
Chevron didn’t only apply in areas of niche expertise it also applied to the whole statute. Meaning questions on what words like “other” meant or questions like what a “reasonable measure” was couldn’t be heard by judges even though they normally decide those issues. The agencies like the DEA under Chevron could interpret criminal statutes to have new meaning without any legislative action.
Perhaps it’s culling was a bit much but it was far to broad.
This is a weird power grab from the court. Chevron already allows that the courts can decide what Congressional intent it. The deference to agencies only comes once they determine the law is ambiguous. In a different world, where we had expert courts full of engineers and analysts, this might even produce better results than the current system, but we do not, and Judges opining on technical fields are probably the only thing worse than engineers opining on the use of language, LOL.
I suppose if Trump wins and guts the career professionals in the executive branch and replaces them with partisan hacks at every level, we could end up glad this ruling happened, but agencies already had to act with a certain respect for internal rules and “reasonableness”. What’s more likely is that this SCOTUS will make sure it passes the final word on every significant regulatory question that arises in the next 20 years, and somehow magically the status quo that was being abused will become the law, even when it has only the thinnest threads of non-technical justification. Or worse, everything is now up for re-litigation and nobody knows WTF anything will mean anymore.
