End Bureaucratic Abuse
The Supreme Court is reexamining a dreadful decision it made 40 years ago that ended up vastly increasing the powers of government. Will the Court now rectify its mistake? Our future freedoms depend on it.
The High Court will decide two cases that could overturn a now notorious decision from 1984, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Chevron ruling held that courts should defer to actions taken by a government agency unless the law specifically says otherwise. If there was any alleged ambiguity in a law, the agency could pretty much do whatever it wanted. This came to be known as Chevron deference.
The case arose when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Ronald Reagan reversed a previous decision made by the agency. The reversal prompted a lawsuit against the EPA, and a federal appeals court sided with the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned that appeals court decision, saying, in effect, that if there was a legitimate question over what a law meant, courts were to abide by the agency’s interpretation.
At the time courts in the U.S. were becoming notorious for making laws on their own, such as how schools should be run. They were guilty of usurping the legislative branch.
Supporters of the decision saw Chevron as a way to curb such judicial overreach.
In a classic case of good intentions going very badly, however, Chevron ended up giving the executive agencies vast, unaccountable powers. Starting with the Clinton administration, presidents who couldn’t get particular programs through Congress turned increasingly to federal agencies to enact them instead.
The result has been a tremendous increase in government powers—a situation in which we’re being ruled not by laws passed by Congress but by an avalanche of executive orders and agency regulations.
Did Congress ever pass a law mandating the end of the internal combustion engine for cars and trucks and its replacement by heavy electric batteries? No. It’s being done by government decree.
Chevron has also increasingly neutered Congress. Legislators deliberately pass vague and ambiguous laws so that agencies take the heat for how they’re implemented. Or they encourage agencies to create programs or enact regulations instead of their having to go through the hard work of legislating a specific law. It’s passing the buck—and undermining the Constitution. Too much power has passed to federal regulators.
The Chevron ruling has also led to government inconsistencies, as one administration changes the rulings of a previous administration.
The immediate issue before the High Court concerns whether a federal agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, can force owners of certain fishing boats to pay the cost of government conservation monitors who tag along on their vessels as they work. The litigants rightly say Congress never gave them that power.
The High Court should smash our overreaching, powergrabbing bureaucracies.