This article was written by Tristan Justice and published in The Federalist.
The Supreme Court curbed the unmitigated power of federal agencies with a new landmark ruling delivered Friday.
In a 6-3 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the high court overturned a 40-year precedent that gave federal agencies broad authority to implement regulations under ambiguous language unless Congress had explicitly prohibited such rules. Chief Justice John Roberts, however, writing the majority opinion to overturn the 1984 precedent in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, stated that “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
The 1984 Chevron doctrine established the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to enforce the Clean Air Act, allowing federal bureaucrats to read their own interpretations into what Congress authorized agencies to do. Justice Roberts wrote that the precedent gave bureaucratic agencies too much power and argued for the judiciary to step in, noting that the “Administrative Procedures Act requires courts to exercise independent judgment.”
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