The Supreme Court’s Overturning of the Chevron Doctrine Could Impair Environmental and Climate Regulations

The Supreme Court of the United States has overturned a 40-year ruling — Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — that instructed lower courts to give deference to federal agencies when federal laws are seen as ambiguous. The decision means agencies will have a harder time regulating the environment, workplace safety, public health and other major issues.

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, said the court “gravely erred” when it gave agency regulators deference in the interpretation of federal laws back in 1984.

“Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” Roberts wrote, as Inside Climate News reported. “Courts do.”

The Biden administration has argued that resolving legal ambiguities involves policymaking that is better decided by political players than judges. In response, Roberts said the elected officials of Congress expect courts to interpret the meaning of laws, which can be changed by Congress.

“To the extent that Congress and the Executive Branch may disagree with how the courts have performed that job in a particular case, they are of course always free to act by revising the statute,” Roberts wrote in the opinion.

However, Congress has increasingly included environmental and health-related policy within budget legislation that leaves its intent open to interpretation. This means the overturning of Chevron will give more power to courts and less to federal agencies with expertise on the matters.

The decision makes it potentially easier for those who oppose federal regulations to initiate new litigation to challenge them, bringing increased uncertainty to industries and business, reported The New York Times.

“If Americans are worried about their drinking water, their health, their retirement account, discrimination on the job, if they fly on a plane, drive a car, if they go outside and breathe the air — all of these day-to-day activities are run through a massive universe of federal agency regulations,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University expert in administrative law, as The New York Times reported. “And this decision now means that more of those regulations could be struck down by the courts.”

The decision is a big victory in a long drive to reduce federal government power.

The ruling could bolster conservative efforts to counter rules by Biden’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to limit human-caused global heating from oil and gas, vehicles and power plants, reported CNN.

“There is no substantive area that this doctrine does not touch,” said Kent Barnett, a professor at University of Georgia School of Law specializing in administrative law, as CNN reported.

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Over the years, courts have invoked Chevron to uphold regulations, and it has become one of administrative law’s most-cited cases. Industry advocates have called for courts to abandon it as an instrument of government overreach.

“What would happen in a world without Chevron? If this Goliath of modern administrative law were to fall?” wrote associate Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, then a judge in a federal appeals court, in an immigration case in 2016, as reported by Inside Climate News. “It seems to me that in a world without Chevron very little would change — except perhaps the most important things.”

In most cases involving Chevron deference, agencies are using broad legal authority given to them by Congress before the recognition or understanding of climate change.

Depending on the case, agencies have been given differing degrees of direction from Congress. For instance, vehicle rules in the Clean Air Act are more explicit than power plant regulations.

In almost all cases involving challenges to Biden policies, the opposition has found what they view as mistakes in the legal interpretation of agencies or legal ambiguities.

“It’s very hard to write statutes in technical, controversial areas and not have a shred of ambiguity,” said Heinzerling in an interview before the Supreme Court decision, as Inside Climate News reported. “Even if someone is really trying to be careful, people with enough money and enough lawyers can, after the fact, really bring ambiguity out of something that was intended to be clear.”

The overturning of Chevron means the burden of legal interpretation of regulatory law has been placed on judges, who usually look to knowledge of the most recent technology and science in the interpretation of regulatory law.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan issued a biting dissent, saying “a cornerstone of administrative law” had been removed by the decision.

Chevron deference “has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds — to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest,” Kagan wrote.

Kagan added that federal agencies had been tasked by Congress to address regulatory interpretation, which usually involves technical or scientific subject matter.

“Agencies have expertise in those areas,” Kagan wrote in the dissent. “Courts do not.”