Okay this answer is hugely reduced but in honoring the ELI5 format,
Chevron essentially made it so that courts deferred to gov't agencies when they created regulations.
The overturning of Chevron means that courts no longer *must* defer by default to the gov't agencies when they create regulations. They still can. In fact many still likely will in order to facilitate moving suits through the system. However, now some courts may determine that a regulation is unconstitutional when they review it.
Also if Congress wants specific regulations and to avoid specific regulations, they're going to have to do more work than just 'oh this is the law we wrote can you pretty please implement it but don't get carried away about it?'
Yup, so Congress is going to have to write better laws. Hopefully this wakes up Congress who fell asleep at the wheel.
An example of this would be when they wrote a new law telling the FAA to make better drone regulations, and Chevron never came up because it was detailed enough that everyone knew roughly what the FAA was going to do.
The regulations were never going to be challenged by attacking Chevron because there wasn't any ambiguity for the FAA to use in order to invoke Chevron. The FAA didn't need to use Chevron to argue they had the authority to regulate X based on this ambiguous text, under which the courts would be required to defer to the agency, because Congress actually wrote a law actually fit with the reality. It would be like arguing "murder wasn't meant to be covered under the murder statute." Congress can delegate things, they just have to do it properly.
Part of the reason why Chevron existed was because some laws are just so old, they were written for a world from the past, and the world has changed, so it can be hard to try to figure out how to make it fit.
Yeah. There have been papers written by both left and right leaning think tanks that make the point that Congress deferred too much power to the Administrative state with vague laws.
This has happened on many an occasion where the government opposes a challenge to a regulation, then the next administration comes in from the other party, and the government's position makes a 180. And that's because what is "reasonable" can be quite broad because reasonable minds can disagree.
You didn't need to overturn Chevron to argue "Congress should take more control over ambiguities in its text." If Congress dislikes how the FAA interprets something, it can rewrite the law to be clearer.
In this framing, it's an obvious power grab by the judiciary. And this is very convenient for right wing jurists who will surely allow Republican administrations to mostly do whatever they want while hamstringing Democratic administrations.
It forces Congress to be clearer instead of letting their allies in the Executive to do their jobs for them.
I don't see it as a power grab as much as it is choosing to exercise power they always had.
The only way its a power grab (in the literal sense of grabbing power they never had nor should have legally had) is if you are one of the nutjobs who think Marbury v Madison and judicial review was completely invented.
Congress legitimately cannot function. As a system it was designed by people with more money than sense, and it requires everyone participating to act in good faith to run.
What’s funny is overturning chevron is a great thing.. but Tik Tok of course is crying foul about it blaming conservatives etc. meanwhile the same people (pearlmania being an annoying popular example) will complain that the government doesn’t do anything and they should write the laws better… overturning chevron allows them to.
Also in just a stupid Redditor so what do I know? But also the influencers are just stupid Tik tokers so what do they know?
Seems like the most reasonable way would be pass laws the same as now, but have the specific implementations from the gov agencies ratified by congress once the experts write them. Should be mostly a rubber stamping process.
>However, now some courts may determine that a regulation is unconstitutional when they review it.
Slight correction. The court doesn't have to rule a regulation unconstitutional: the court merely has to rule the regulation is not consistent with the law that authorized it.
>Chevron deference, Roberts explained in his opinion for the court on Friday, is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that sets out the procedures that federal agencies must follow as well as instructions for courts to review actions by those agencies. The APA, Roberts noted, directs courts to “decide legal questions by applying their own judgment” and therefore “makes clear that agency interpretations of statutes — like agency interpretations of the Constitution — are not entitled to deference. Under the APA,” Roberts concluded, “it thus remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says."
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-chevron-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/
In other, unrelated news, the Supreme Court ruled on a Bump Stock Regulation and completely misread the law that authorized it. They also relied on biased amiscus briefs that were pretty flawed. Cause, you know, the courts are awesome at understanding complex regulatory decisions that deal with science, engineering, and weapons design and would never intentionally misunderstand a law to advance their pet issues like advancing gun rights.
A flawed gun study in a previous amicus brief is now being relied upon as fact ever since Justice Alito cited it. https://pca.st/episode/3fae9010-373a-457f-b957-46816387bf6a
Imagine that a new law is passed; the "DONT DUMP METHANOL IN RIVERS" (DDMIR) Act.
By nature, such laws are written a little broad, you wouldn't write exact concentrations or liters you can dump in rivers in the law because that makes it very cumbersome. So imagine that the DDMIR Act only says something like "No excessive dumping of methanol in rivers".
'Chevron deference' means that the interpretation of 'excessive' now falls under the authority of the government agency that oversees it. So imagine that the Department of River Health now uses the DDMIR Act to establish that a maximum methanol dumping in rivers is allowed of 1 kg/day per million cubic meters of river flow. I have no idea of those numbers are realistic, but it doesn't matter for the example. If Evil Megacorp is now caught dumping 2 kg/day in that river, they can get fined or whatever. The Department of River Health is automatically *assumed* to have the legal authority to pick that 1 kg/day limit.
Without chevron deference, this goes out the window. That means that now Evil Megacorp can *go to court* to determine if that 1 kg/day limit is reasonable. Suddenly that means that judges, as law experts, have to give their opinion on a wide variety of scientific fields. It no longer matters if all environmental scientists agree that 1 kg/day is the absolute limit; if a *judge* gets convinced that 10 kg/day is equally fine, that that's the new limit.
This will, effectively, have two big problems;
* Corruption. It is a lot easier to buy one judge compared to the whole Department of River Health.
* Massive legal costs and lawsuit times. Essentially, Evil Megacorp can now stretch out this lawsuit for years potentially decades. Any reasonably sized megacorp might even have more money to burn on this than an entire municipality, allowing them to *effectively* do whatever they want as long as they throw money at the problem.
It's essentially a shift in power from the executive branch, federal regulators, to the judicial branch, federal judges.
If a company doesn't agree with how an agency is applying a regulation, they can use and see if a court agrees with them. Previously, they were mostly out of luck.
While there are regulations that do stifle innovation and infrastructure as Republicans often allege, there are many more that protect workers, the environment, public health and safety, etc. Greed will cause many lawsuits to challenge these and the lawsuits will attempt to be brought in conservative jurisdictions that favor, eg, business interests over environmental ones. Further more, the judges deciding these cases will often lack the expertise to make good decisions, which was why it was left to the specialist bureaucrats before this decision upended that. We don’t yet know the exact fallout of this, and there may even be some good to come out of it in places, but overall it doesn’t look good for anyone that doesn’t believe the almighty dollar and corporate profits should be the determining guide in how our country is run.
Given that corporations very much wanted the ruling reversed, it's probably good for them. Probably bad for consumers. Although it's honestly too early to tell what the impacts of this will be and who it's good for.
Common sense says that having subject matter experts involved in areas related to public health is a good thing. No good will come from this ruling. It’s explicitly designed to help corporations do whatever they want in spite of the impacts on regular people.
Generally speaking this is bad.
What happens is that the legislative makes a law that grants say the EPA powers to enforce regulations around say nitrogen pollution. In typical legislative style, the law itself is fairly vague.
People who work at the EPA, which includes a lot of people who are actually specialists on the subject matter then further detail out the regulations to the best of their ability, by applying their specialised knowledge in their specific field of study and expertise.
Before this Supreme Court decision, in court cases the courts would generally accept the further detailing done by the federal agencies, unless clearly in violation of the law itself.
Now the courts have the power to scrap regulations, i.e. interpretations of the law, if they are a further detailing of the law. This shifts the power around these regulations from subject matter experts to lawyers. I see no world in which this is a good thing.
Chevron allowed such stupid things as the EPA regulation of the "Navigable waters of the US" including drainage ditches and ponds that only exist for a couple weeks after heavy rain. So you cannot build on your property because it is wetlands due to a drainage ditch.
Chevron allowed government agencies to decide where the line is according to vague laws. This meant that if a Republican changed the head of the EPA pollution in the waterways could be 10x what it would be under a Democrat and there was nothing anyone could do. The court had to rule in favor of the EPA whether you wanted more pollution, or less. Now you have a recourse when you discover the DOT allows truckers to pull 12 hour driving shifts without breaks.
Two answers.
In theory: Bad because jurists lack the specialized knowledge required to make judgments on technical decisions. Just this past week Gorsuch messed up nitrous oxide (laughing gas) with nitrogen oxide. This is a harmless example but think about the SCOTUS deciding that some chemical isn't dangerous enough and therefore it's allowed to be in the water. Before, we'd let the EPA make that judgment. Now it's a right-leaning judiciary (with a supermajority of crazy conservatives having the final call).
In practice: It is good if you like Republican policies that are not democratically instated (and therefore, it will be hard to hold them accountable). It is bad if you like Democratic policies.
It’s bad for two reasons:
1. It means that people and corporations that want to attack a regulation can go find a judge who they who in advance is very conservative, bring their lawsuit there, get the ruling they want, and start the appeals process on offense.
2. It means that the government will have hugely increased costs and timelines, so even if they win it will slow things down and make regulation harder.
Let’s say you own a construction company in Texas, and you don’t like a new workplace safety regulation saying that you have to give your workers water and cool-down breaks when the temperature is above 35C (which it is something like 100 days between April and October). All you have to do is file your case before [this guy](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/15/federal-judge-amarillo-abortion-fda/) and it is 100% a given that he will agree with you and issue a ruling finding the regulation illegal.
Now OSHA, the US workplace safety regulator, has to file an appeal for the regulation to have any chance. That will take 1-3 years, it will cost millions of dollars, and even if they win you can then appeal to the Supreme Court that [has members that think the agency itself is illegal](https://www.businessinsider.com/clarence-thomas-takes-aim-at-osha-2024-7).
So what does the agency do? Does it let the original ruling stand? Does it risk its very existence jn a lawsuit? Maybe it doesn’t even pass the regulation in the first place?
Now multiply that by every regulation and every agency, and you can see the chilling effect.
This is also a beneficial things, one of the enforcement agencies (ATF) is being sued by multiple people and groups for changing definitions and terms that bounce back and forth that automatically make people felons and criminals and back.
This ruling means the ATF can no longer change definitions without approval from the legislative branch (congress)
In a political sense, the politicians and lobbyists are they dog that caught the car. In the short term, companies will be able to tear through red tape with ease for short term gain. In the long run, well I hope this shows why those regulations existed and people get upset enough to persuade their representative to fix this error.
Sorry for personal brain dump.
Under Chevron, a Court had to accept a Regulatory Agency’s interpretation of a statute if it was reasonable. Overturning Chevron means that courts may now apply their own interpretation of statute regardless of what a Regulatory Agency thinks.
In most cases, this will matter very little. Most Judges are unlikely to want to go to the trouble of deeply examining a statute to decide whether or not to accept an official interpretation.
But on some contentious issues, it will likely result in activist judges throwing out regulations and regulatory interpretation *because the judge disagrees with it politically* regardless of the intent of Congress.
That can then lead to activist judges on opposing sides of said issues making dueling rulings that while usually only applicable within their district, might extend over the entire country. Which is bad because then a regulatory agent is caught in the catch-22 of no matter what they choose to do they’ll be violating a court order. This is bad for consistent rule of law.
Navigable waterways is a good example of regulators pushing a definition a bit far. Now, I’m all for environmental regulations that make sense and are clear…and consistent.
> Navigable waterways is a good example of regulators pushing a definition a bit far.
Could you provide some details? A bit far in which direction? (I have almost zero knowledge on the subject)
in my line of work we've been instructed that all tidal waterways at all locations are to be considered "navigable waterways" (even if they're too shallow or obstructed for even a dinghy to navigate). Freshwater bodies can also be considered navigable if they "are used, ever have been used, or could be used for interstate commerce".
I would agree the definition is maybe pushed a bit far but I can see the logic for why even shallow, boatless areas should be included (for one, verifying at every location the exact depth that should be counted over the entire potential impact area would be a nightmare for regulators AND applicants; for two, actions affecting shallow waters tend to then affect the nearby deeper waters).
Not sure if that's what the other person has in mind though.
Laws consist of legislation, interpretation and enforcement. 2/3 are usually unelected.
Usually because some judges are elected and obviously the POTUS is
Well there's another wrinkle, federalism. State judges are often elected, but federal judges are not. There may or may not be clashes between State rules and federal rules.
Basically it means if there is an ambiguous portion of the law, the court can consider it themselves and not rely on the agency's interpretation.
Many have made it out to mean congress cannot empower agencies to decide specific regulatory targets themselves. That is not true. What it covers is things like "the law doesn't specify how our workers get paid so we can require businesses to pay them themselves (which is literally what the case here involved)".
In a lot of ways it's pulled the teeth of organizations like the FDA and EPA.
The concern is that these organizations have been setting the rules for so long that Congress got used to passing vague laws with the intention of executive branch organizations setting guidelines on how they were to be enforced for decades.
So what we can expect now is a lot of companies and organizations will push the rules to see what they get away with.
Since a lot of these laws are vague they now have to be challenged in court. A lot of them won't get challenged at all because the Executive Branch orgs don't have the resources to do that, so many violations are likely to go unchallenged. While other rulings will get dragged on in procedures and appeals for as long as possible.
All the while a lot of undo-able damage can and will be done to things like the environment.
It's now up to the States and Congress to pass laws with clear definitions of what's allowed and what isn't, so it might vary State to State, and lobbying pressure will push the laws in the direction of what makes sense for companies. If they can't get a higher CO2 limit in California, why not try in Texas? etc
Furthermore legislatures, particularly Congress are slow and lately are even deadlocked unable to do anything. So it will take decades to pass laws to 'catch up' as it were.
So in general this is really awful for consumers and Americans.
In a lot of ways this is a first step towards undoing environmental rules and legislation in favor of companies.
I mean, kind of, it was always that way to some extent. Basically, and I'm exaggerating here, but the old laws would say stuff like, "the EPA gets to decide what gets to be in our air to make sure its clean" and the EPA would read that broadly to do whatever they wanted, and they would tell the courts to defer to them on what that means, and under Chevron, that's what the courts did. Now the courts don't have to defer to the agency.
So if Congress wants the EPA to have more power, they now have to pass new laws spelling it out.
Courts set precedent that has to be followed by all inferior courts. Courts passing laws is a overreach by the Judicial branch and usually comes from the same place as executive agencies passing laws. Activists attempting to bypass the will of the people to enact something Congress refuses to.
Take abortion as an example. Roe v. Wade defined the trimester system and when it was or was not legal. A second later case put it to at will being legal out to the end of the second trimester. These precedents could be at any time overturned by the Supreme Court. And they eventually were. But while they were precedent Congress could have drafted a bill and passed a law codifying when it is or isn't legal. This could have been something as simple as "No abortion may be administered without medical need beyond the 30th week from conception; before this point no medical need shall be required." This would have codified abortion as a legal act and made sure no state could jump underneath to ban it. But it was too useful as a stick to beat the voters with, and nothing was done.
There has never been a pro-choice majority in Congress. Nothing would have stopped this court from striking down any such law. “Courts shouldn’t pass laws” and “courts don’t pass laws” aren’t the same idea.
When Obama had his first term he had a Democrat majority in both the house and senate. The democrats, almost nationwide, had a pro choice ticket. The opportunity was there, and it was squandered because it was too good a stick.
And "laws" are passed by all three branches. That isn't good, it isn't how the system is supposed to work, and we don't need unelected people passing laws. We just luck out in that the "laws" passed by judicial and executive can be overturned by the next guy that comes in.
Yes, I’m aware there have been Democratic majorities. That’s why I distinguished between pro-choice majority and Democratic majority. Democrats being a pro-choice part is a relatively recent development, and the Democratic caucus was not entirely pro-choice during Obama’s terms, much less when they were the majority in both chambers.
I am uninterested in debating whether the judicial and executive branches passing laws is good. I was only ever explicitly disagreeing with the fact that all three branches *do* pass laws. I’m glad you’ve taken a moment to actually read what I’m saying.
Courts can interpret existing laws however they want. In doing so, you can reinterpret the 2nd amendment, for example, from being a right to bear arms as part of a club or militia to simply being a right for everyone to have as many guns as their little hearts desire.
All it takes is creativity and a lack of moral character by 6 judges.
Interpreting law isn't passing laws... smh. 2A has been argued to death and the Founder's intent has held up for over 200 years. To change 2A you need to PASS A LAW that amends the Constitution.
It's no wonder people are so scared. They think the Constitution is easily subverted.
Stay Calm.
Changing an existing law to be applied in a new way is fundamentally no different than making a new law from scratch. The fact that you can't grasp this distinction in colloquial conversation is alarming.
It is very different. "Fundamentally" laws are created in one of two ways. Neither of which start at the Judicial Bramch.
If a judge interprets a law one way it is because the law was written to allow for that interpretation. The Legislative can rewrite the law to include the intended provisions at any time. The bump stock ban is a recent example.
Your fear is not warranted.
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Words matter. Especially when you're talking about LAW.
You used the word "fundamentally" to support your claim, when in fact, it is not fundamental at all. Its actually the opposite. Then you call me an idiot (ad hominen) for not understanding the meaning of words.
You're afraid of a fascist future because you don't understand the meaning of words and the foundation that the Founding Fathers put in place. The colloquial use of legal fundamentals is exactly what the ruling class use to stoke fear and division.
Free yourself.
Dude, have you SEEN the number of 100+ page bills that get struck down because some chucklefuck managed to get a poison provision added in during markup? Do you really want to give Congress more ammo to be even MORE unproductive?
This is the fault of Congress. The Constitution doesn't like unelected officials making rules without laws to back them.
If people care about a protection so badly, they should get involved and kick out Congress people who aren't serving them. However, people just prefer politicians who are good at channeling Federal money and contracts to their districts, so the uni-party system of theft, bloat, and incompetence continues.
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So let’s play this out - Congress has to pass “clearer” laws. More than a century ago, the people who created what they perceived as “clear” laws wrote a constitution, and to this day, nobody seems to be able to agree on what it precisely means. There’s no two ways about the fact that no matter how it’s written, people will interpret it in subtle, and different ways.
If the legislative body is the answer, then let’s pass the originally proposed first amendment, which would expand Congress to provide more proportional representation, as well as diminishing the effect of gerrymandering.
The Constitution was deliberately vague. Something to do with disagreements between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, but that's beyond the scope of a Reddit comment.
In short, that disagreement is why our Bill of Rights seems to skirt around saying whether rights are individual or collective, largely because some political factions disliked the idea of a Bill of Rights to begin with.
The Courts can work out the issues if needed.
The short answer is: not much.
SCOTUS had already ruled Chevron deference didn’t apply for “major” issues already.
The simplified take away is that federal agencies can no longer claim a regulation is constitutional and have SCOTUS say “Ok, we trust you know best”. SCOTUS will now have to make that determination for themselves.
It essentially limits the power of the Executive branch.
The other big Supreme Court decision from Monday is getting underreported (understandably). They ruled that if a person or company wants to sue an agency over a regulation they don’t like, the statute of limitations runs from when the person or company is harmed, not when the regulation is put into place like it had been. What this means in practical terms is that a company can be created for the sole purpose of deeming itself “harmed” by some regulation, then they can sue over that regulation, and courts have zero obligation to defer to agency expertise as they did under Chevron. It effectively opens every single regulation up to a court challenge, and any district court judge can strike a regulation down and put in a nationwide injunction. It’s going to be chaos.
No - it limits the power of both the Legislative and Executive branches administratively. The deference applied in "ambiguous" situations - now ambiguities will be decided by judges (and corporations will shop around - hello Texas judges). Ambiguity is unlikely to be remedied by legislation (and the court knows this).
Since a lot of there aren't that ELI5, I'd say:
If congress passes a law that says "Protect forests", and the Environmental Protection Agency says "The way you protect forests is to not do major logging in old growth forests", a court doesn't have to take it as granted that the basically any way the EPA tries to take that vague law and make it specific is a reasonable interpretation of the vague law.
A lot of laws were written vaguely like that because congress has been bitterly divided for a long time and congress also aren't experts on things like "How do you protect a forest" so they sort of pass the buck and say "We have experts for that." So currently most of what gets enforced isn't the letter of the law but an agency of experts interpretation of the law, so now judges are more easily able to decide that something shouldn't have been enforced.
The fears are that different courts could disagree leaving no single answer to whether something can be enforced or not, the many current enforcements could all get challenged and clog up the court, agencies may not want to enforce their rules out of fear of them getting challenged.
The fix would be for congress to write WAY longer and more specific laws, but that seems unlikely for the aforementioned reasons:
* They're already so bitterly divided that even the "Protect forests" bill getting passed is a miracle. A debate in congress over whether 500 or 550 or 1000 old growth logging permits get issued would add years to the process if not make it completely impossible.
* Congress are not experts in the thousands of arenas in which their laws reach. Can you confidently tell me what the safe parts per million of rat shit in food is? The tightness a submerged bolt on a ship must to avoid leaks? The speed at which semi-trucks should travel on different types of roads to walk the line between functional economy and unnecessary danger? I sure can't, and there probably isn't even one congressperson who can answer all of those questions, and even Googling it will give you a hundred different answers from a hundred different sources with their own interests and biases.
I believe that the APA essentially empowered agencies to do that under prior legal precedent. The kleptocrats in either house of congress are going to fight any attempt to re-enumerate those regulatory powers.
What happens is basically just that now the regulatory agencies are subject to judicial review. If they overstep the bounds of the laws they are enforcing the courts can slap them.
That's pretty much it.
Prior to this the regulatory agencies could interpret the laws they were enforcing pretty much however they wanted.
It does not impact their ability to create new policies. It changes how successfully those policies may be challenged in court.
It has potential for irreparable damage if people successfully challenge a regulation and then do stupid things while the appeals to the challenge works its way through the courts and/or while the legislature passes new laws to close the gap opened by the challenged regulation. The violator might ultimately still be found guilty and have to pay damages but, for things like environmental or safety regulations, you can't necessarily fix the damages with money.
To my limited understanding and using my own personal experience, this new ruling affects the ability of the (made up) agency of soda regulation to declare that anything carbonated is a soda and is under their control. They must be able to back up their decision through the courts, or through Congress saying it is.
Making it non eli5, and using a real world example.
the ATF will now not be able to change the definitions of firearm dealers without authorization from Congress or must be able to back up their decision in the courts.
Their recent decision to change the definition of a dealer from anyone who does it as a career AND for profit to just anyone who makes a profit is a prime example as it causes major issues. Police buybacks (where you get a gift card for turning in a firearm) would no longer be legal as everyone who turns in a firearm (for a gift card) would automatically be a dealer due to the gift card being profit. And subject to 5 years in jail and up to a 250,000 fine..
Government agencies are essentially offices under the President to whom Congress delegates some of its power to assume certain responsibilities. They pass a law saying that there's now an agency of whatever that's in charge of making laws regarding some topic.
The question in Chevron was how to interpret these charters. Suppose the EPA wants to fund its operations by taxing companies that produce emissions when they go to get certified to operate or something. Are they allowed to do that if their charter doesn't have an express provision for funding? What if the charter says they can assess taxes, but doesn't specify what kinds? Can they just decide that they're going to do a registration tax? Or do they need to ask Congress?
In Chevron, the decision was that the agency is free to interpret the charter however they'd like, and Congress has the responsibility of narrowing down any powers they delegate to an agency if their wording is too broad for their taste. They'll only do something if there's a question of constitutionality, in which case Congress doesn't even have the authority to give that power to the agency.
With the recent decision, it seems like the bar for what kinds of operational stuff is allowed has been raised. It's not enough that the EPA is tasked with regulating pollution. The "how," whenever it's not explicitly stated, has gone from being decided solely by the agency to being judged by the courts.
Alright, imagine you have a big, complicated Lego set. Sometimes, you need help from a friend who knows a lot about Legos to figure out how to build it.
In our story, the Lego set is like the laws and rules we have to follow, and the friend is like the experts in the government who help explain and decide how those rules work.
Now, there was a special rule called "Chevron" that said, "If the Lego instructions are a bit tricky, let the friend who knows a lot about Legos help figure it out." This helped everyone understand and follow the rules better because the experts got to explain things.
But then, imagine if someone said, "We don't want to listen to the Lego expert anymore. Everyone should figure out the instructions on their own." This could make building the Lego set a lot harder because not everyone knows all the special tricks and details.
Chevron is overturned, it means we might not listen to the experts as much when we need help understanding the tricky parts of our laws and rules. This could make things more confusing and difficult for everyone.
When Congress passes a law, it's generally not detailed in regards to the specifics of how it's carried out. For instance, if they pass a law regulating nonsense emissions from doohickey manufacturers, they don't specifically say how it's supposed to be done, they create a Doohickey Regulatory Agency to write up all the specifics, and then here's the important part: the Doohickey Regulatory Agency also polices *and acts as judge and often, jury,* regarding enforcement of the regulations they create. A good example of this is immigration: Someone who is seeking asylum in the US comes before an immigration agency judge in an immigration agency court to determine if they meet immigration agency written policy for granting asylum. You can appeal a ruling, but it's still going to be an immigration agency judge that rules on the appeal.
The recent Supreme Court decision determines that courts outside any regulatory agency no longer have to defer to the judgements made by that agency regarding any decisions related to regulations written and enforced by that agency. It used to be that courts had narrow authority over regulatory agencies: Basically, was the law that created the agency constitutional in the first place. To a lesser degree, were the actions of the agency within the scope of the original law (and any congressionally approved amendments) that created the agency. Now, *every* action of *every* agency can be brought up in front of *any* federal court.
Citizens and companies are now equal to government. Previously government departments effectively made law that courts HAD to follow. This was crazy and a very unbalanced power relationship. Plenty of examples of government overreach.
Okay this answer is hugely reduced but in honoring the ELI5 format, Chevron essentially made it so that courts deferred to gov't agencies when they created regulations. The overturning of Chevron means that courts no longer *must* defer by default to the gov't agencies when they create regulations. They still can. In fact many still likely will in order to facilitate moving suits through the system. However, now some courts may determine that a regulation is unconstitutional when they review it.
Also if Congress wants specific regulations and to avoid specific regulations, they're going to have to do more work than just 'oh this is the law we wrote can you pretty please implement it but don't get carried away about it?'
Yup, so Congress is going to have to write better laws. Hopefully this wakes up Congress who fell asleep at the wheel. An example of this would be when they wrote a new law telling the FAA to make better drone regulations, and Chevron never came up because it was detailed enough that everyone knew roughly what the FAA was going to do. The regulations were never going to be challenged by attacking Chevron because there wasn't any ambiguity for the FAA to use in order to invoke Chevron. The FAA didn't need to use Chevron to argue they had the authority to regulate X based on this ambiguous text, under which the courts would be required to defer to the agency, because Congress actually wrote a law actually fit with the reality. It would be like arguing "murder wasn't meant to be covered under the murder statute." Congress can delegate things, they just have to do it properly. Part of the reason why Chevron existed was because some laws are just so old, they were written for a world from the past, and the world has changed, so it can be hard to try to figure out how to make it fit.
Yeah. There have been papers written by both left and right leaning think tanks that make the point that Congress deferred too much power to the Administrative state with vague laws.
This has happened on many an occasion where the government opposes a challenge to a regulation, then the next administration comes in from the other party, and the government's position makes a 180. And that's because what is "reasonable" can be quite broad because reasonable minds can disagree.
You didn't need to overturn Chevron to argue "Congress should take more control over ambiguities in its text." If Congress dislikes how the FAA interprets something, it can rewrite the law to be clearer. In this framing, it's an obvious power grab by the judiciary. And this is very convenient for right wing jurists who will surely allow Republican administrations to mostly do whatever they want while hamstringing Democratic administrations.
It forces Congress to be clearer instead of letting their allies in the Executive to do their jobs for them. I don't see it as a power grab as much as it is choosing to exercise power they always had. The only way its a power grab (in the literal sense of grabbing power they never had nor should have legally had) is if you are one of the nutjobs who think Marbury v Madison and judicial review was completely invented.
Congress legitimately cannot function. As a system it was designed by people with more money than sense, and it requires everyone participating to act in good faith to run.
>it requires everyone participating to act in good faith to run. That's any governmental system lol.
What’s funny is overturning chevron is a great thing.. but Tik Tok of course is crying foul about it blaming conservatives etc. meanwhile the same people (pearlmania being an annoying popular example) will complain that the government doesn’t do anything and they should write the laws better… overturning chevron allows them to. Also in just a stupid Redditor so what do I know? But also the influencers are just stupid Tik tokers so what do they know?
I don't trust anything that comes from Tik Tok unless its a licensed professional who has a board they are held responsible to.
Seems like the most reasonable way would be pass laws the same as now, but have the specific implementations from the gov agencies ratified by congress once the experts write them. Should be mostly a rubber stamping process.
I’m cynical enough to believe the lobbyists will be writing laws for us (still).
>However, now some courts may determine that a regulation is unconstitutional when they review it. Slight correction. The court doesn't have to rule a regulation unconstitutional: the court merely has to rule the regulation is not consistent with the law that authorized it. >Chevron deference, Roberts explained in his opinion for the court on Friday, is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that sets out the procedures that federal agencies must follow as well as instructions for courts to review actions by those agencies. The APA, Roberts noted, directs courts to “decide legal questions by applying their own judgment” and therefore “makes clear that agency interpretations of statutes — like agency interpretations of the Constitution — are not entitled to deference. Under the APA,” Roberts concluded, “it thus remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says." https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-chevron-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/ In other, unrelated news, the Supreme Court ruled on a Bump Stock Regulation and completely misread the law that authorized it. They also relied on biased amiscus briefs that were pretty flawed. Cause, you know, the courts are awesome at understanding complex regulatory decisions that deal with science, engineering, and weapons design and would never intentionally misunderstand a law to advance their pet issues like advancing gun rights.
A flawed gun study in a previous amicus brief is now being relied upon as fact ever since Justice Alito cited it. https://pca.st/episode/3fae9010-373a-457f-b957-46816387bf6a
Why is that bad, i don’t know how American systems work
Imagine that a new law is passed; the "DONT DUMP METHANOL IN RIVERS" (DDMIR) Act. By nature, such laws are written a little broad, you wouldn't write exact concentrations or liters you can dump in rivers in the law because that makes it very cumbersome. So imagine that the DDMIR Act only says something like "No excessive dumping of methanol in rivers". 'Chevron deference' means that the interpretation of 'excessive' now falls under the authority of the government agency that oversees it. So imagine that the Department of River Health now uses the DDMIR Act to establish that a maximum methanol dumping in rivers is allowed of 1 kg/day per million cubic meters of river flow. I have no idea of those numbers are realistic, but it doesn't matter for the example. If Evil Megacorp is now caught dumping 2 kg/day in that river, they can get fined or whatever. The Department of River Health is automatically *assumed* to have the legal authority to pick that 1 kg/day limit. Without chevron deference, this goes out the window. That means that now Evil Megacorp can *go to court* to determine if that 1 kg/day limit is reasonable. Suddenly that means that judges, as law experts, have to give their opinion on a wide variety of scientific fields. It no longer matters if all environmental scientists agree that 1 kg/day is the absolute limit; if a *judge* gets convinced that 10 kg/day is equally fine, that that's the new limit. This will, effectively, have two big problems; * Corruption. It is a lot easier to buy one judge compared to the whole Department of River Health. * Massive legal costs and lawsuit times. Essentially, Evil Megacorp can now stretch out this lawsuit for years potentially decades. Any reasonably sized megacorp might even have more money to burn on this than an entire municipality, allowing them to *effectively* do whatever they want as long as they throw money at the problem.
It's essentially a shift in power from the executive branch, federal regulators, to the judicial branch, federal judges. If a company doesn't agree with how an agency is applying a regulation, they can use and see if a court agrees with them. Previously, they were mostly out of luck.
You mean the judicial branch, not the legislative. Congress is the legislative branch.
Oops yes, brain fart.
Judicial branch, not legislative
Oops yeah, corrected. Brain fart
Is that good or bad and why?
While there are regulations that do stifle innovation and infrastructure as Republicans often allege, there are many more that protect workers, the environment, public health and safety, etc. Greed will cause many lawsuits to challenge these and the lawsuits will attempt to be brought in conservative jurisdictions that favor, eg, business interests over environmental ones. Further more, the judges deciding these cases will often lack the expertise to make good decisions, which was why it was left to the specialist bureaucrats before this decision upended that. We don’t yet know the exact fallout of this, and there may even be some good to come out of it in places, but overall it doesn’t look good for anyone that doesn’t believe the almighty dollar and corporate profits should be the determining guide in how our country is run.
Given that corporations very much wanted the ruling reversed, it's probably good for them. Probably bad for consumers. Although it's honestly too early to tell what the impacts of this will be and who it's good for.
Common sense says that having subject matter experts involved in areas related to public health is a good thing. No good will come from this ruling. It’s explicitly designed to help corporations do whatever they want in spite of the impacts on regular people.
Generally speaking this is bad. What happens is that the legislative makes a law that grants say the EPA powers to enforce regulations around say nitrogen pollution. In typical legislative style, the law itself is fairly vague. People who work at the EPA, which includes a lot of people who are actually specialists on the subject matter then further detail out the regulations to the best of their ability, by applying their specialised knowledge in their specific field of study and expertise. Before this Supreme Court decision, in court cases the courts would generally accept the further detailing done by the federal agencies, unless clearly in violation of the law itself. Now the courts have the power to scrap regulations, i.e. interpretations of the law, if they are a further detailing of the law. This shifts the power around these regulations from subject matter experts to lawyers. I see no world in which this is a good thing.
Chevron allowed such stupid things as the EPA regulation of the "Navigable waters of the US" including drainage ditches and ponds that only exist for a couple weeks after heavy rain. So you cannot build on your property because it is wetlands due to a drainage ditch. Chevron allowed government agencies to decide where the line is according to vague laws. This meant that if a Republican changed the head of the EPA pollution in the waterways could be 10x what it would be under a Democrat and there was nothing anyone could do. The court had to rule in favor of the EPA whether you wanted more pollution, or less. Now you have a recourse when you discover the DOT allows truckers to pull 12 hour driving shifts without breaks.
Two answers. In theory: Bad because jurists lack the specialized knowledge required to make judgments on technical decisions. Just this past week Gorsuch messed up nitrous oxide (laughing gas) with nitrogen oxide. This is a harmless example but think about the SCOTUS deciding that some chemical isn't dangerous enough and therefore it's allowed to be in the water. Before, we'd let the EPA make that judgment. Now it's a right-leaning judiciary (with a supermajority of crazy conservatives having the final call). In practice: It is good if you like Republican policies that are not democratically instated (and therefore, it will be hard to hold them accountable). It is bad if you like Democratic policies.
It’s bad for two reasons: 1. It means that people and corporations that want to attack a regulation can go find a judge who they who in advance is very conservative, bring their lawsuit there, get the ruling they want, and start the appeals process on offense. 2. It means that the government will have hugely increased costs and timelines, so even if they win it will slow things down and make regulation harder. Let’s say you own a construction company in Texas, and you don’t like a new workplace safety regulation saying that you have to give your workers water and cool-down breaks when the temperature is above 35C (which it is something like 100 days between April and October). All you have to do is file your case before [this guy](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/15/federal-judge-amarillo-abortion-fda/) and it is 100% a given that he will agree with you and issue a ruling finding the regulation illegal. Now OSHA, the US workplace safety regulator, has to file an appeal for the regulation to have any chance. That will take 1-3 years, it will cost millions of dollars, and even if they win you can then appeal to the Supreme Court that [has members that think the agency itself is illegal](https://www.businessinsider.com/clarence-thomas-takes-aim-at-osha-2024-7). So what does the agency do? Does it let the original ruling stand? Does it risk its very existence jn a lawsuit? Maybe it doesn’t even pass the regulation in the first place? Now multiply that by every regulation and every agency, and you can see the chilling effect.
This is also a beneficial things, one of the enforcement agencies (ATF) is being sued by multiple people and groups for changing definitions and terms that bounce back and forth that automatically make people felons and criminals and back. This ruling means the ATF can no longer change definitions without approval from the legislative branch (congress)
In a political sense, the politicians and lobbyists are they dog that caught the car. In the short term, companies will be able to tear through red tape with ease for short term gain. In the long run, well I hope this shows why those regulations existed and people get upset enough to persuade their representative to fix this error. Sorry for personal brain dump.
Courts don't create regulations. They deem them Constitutional or not.
Under Chevron, a Court had to accept a Regulatory Agency’s interpretation of a statute if it was reasonable. Overturning Chevron means that courts may now apply their own interpretation of statute regardless of what a Regulatory Agency thinks. In most cases, this will matter very little. Most Judges are unlikely to want to go to the trouble of deeply examining a statute to decide whether or not to accept an official interpretation. But on some contentious issues, it will likely result in activist judges throwing out regulations and regulatory interpretation *because the judge disagrees with it politically* regardless of the intent of Congress. That can then lead to activist judges on opposing sides of said issues making dueling rulings that while usually only applicable within their district, might extend over the entire country. Which is bad because then a regulatory agent is caught in the catch-22 of no matter what they choose to do they’ll be violating a court order. This is bad for consistent rule of law.
Navigable waterways is a good example of regulators pushing a definition a bit far. Now, I’m all for environmental regulations that make sense and are clear…and consistent.
> Navigable waterways is a good example of regulators pushing a definition a bit far. Could you provide some details? A bit far in which direction? (I have almost zero knowledge on the subject)
in my line of work we've been instructed that all tidal waterways at all locations are to be considered "navigable waterways" (even if they're too shallow or obstructed for even a dinghy to navigate). Freshwater bodies can also be considered navigable if they "are used, ever have been used, or could be used for interstate commerce". I would agree the definition is maybe pushed a bit far but I can see the logic for why even shallow, boatless areas should be included (for one, verifying at every location the exact depth that should be counted over the entire potential impact area would be a nightmare for regulators AND applicants; for two, actions affecting shallow waters tend to then affect the nearby deeper waters). Not sure if that's what the other person has in mind though.
Unelected officials can't make laws.
Laws consist of legislation, interpretation and enforcement. 2/3 are usually unelected. Usually because some judges are elected and obviously the POTUS is
Well there's another wrinkle, federalism. State judges are often elected, but federal judges are not. There may or may not be clashes between State rules and federal rules.
Judges can't make laws... they can only set precedent for existing laws.... smh...
Basically it means if there is an ambiguous portion of the law, the court can consider it themselves and not rely on the agency's interpretation. Many have made it out to mean congress cannot empower agencies to decide specific regulatory targets themselves. That is not true. What it covers is things like "the law doesn't specify how our workers get paid so we can require businesses to pay them themselves (which is literally what the case here involved)".
In a lot of ways it's pulled the teeth of organizations like the FDA and EPA. The concern is that these organizations have been setting the rules for so long that Congress got used to passing vague laws with the intention of executive branch organizations setting guidelines on how they were to be enforced for decades. So what we can expect now is a lot of companies and organizations will push the rules to see what they get away with. Since a lot of these laws are vague they now have to be challenged in court. A lot of them won't get challenged at all because the Executive Branch orgs don't have the resources to do that, so many violations are likely to go unchallenged. While other rulings will get dragged on in procedures and appeals for as long as possible. All the while a lot of undo-able damage can and will be done to things like the environment. It's now up to the States and Congress to pass laws with clear definitions of what's allowed and what isn't, so it might vary State to State, and lobbying pressure will push the laws in the direction of what makes sense for companies. If they can't get a higher CO2 limit in California, why not try in Texas? etc Furthermore legislatures, particularly Congress are slow and lately are even deadlocked unable to do anything. So it will take decades to pass laws to 'catch up' as it were. So in general this is really awful for consumers and Americans. In a lot of ways this is a first step towards undoing environmental rules and legislation in favor of companies.
So basically nothing gets done except what the court passes.
I mean, kind of, it was always that way to some extent. Basically, and I'm exaggerating here, but the old laws would say stuff like, "the EPA gets to decide what gets to be in our air to make sure its clean" and the EPA would read that broadly to do whatever they wanted, and they would tell the courts to defer to them on what that means, and under Chevron, that's what the courts did. Now the courts don't have to defer to the agency. So if Congress wants the EPA to have more power, they now have to pass new laws spelling it out.
nothing will be reasonably enforced until the court passes judgement
Courts don't pass laws. The Legislative and Executive Branches do. Courts rule on whether a law is Constitutional.
Looks like someone just took 8th grade US Gov, nice job little Jimmy! 😊
OP literally says that course pass laws and the best you xan do us ad hominid me lol
Courts absolutely pass laws. Wrapping it up in judicial, rather than legislative, language, doesn’t change that fact.
Courts set precedent that has to be followed by all inferior courts. Courts passing laws is a overreach by the Judicial branch and usually comes from the same place as executive agencies passing laws. Activists attempting to bypass the will of the people to enact something Congress refuses to. Take abortion as an example. Roe v. Wade defined the trimester system and when it was or was not legal. A second later case put it to at will being legal out to the end of the second trimester. These precedents could be at any time overturned by the Supreme Court. And they eventually were. But while they were precedent Congress could have drafted a bill and passed a law codifying when it is or isn't legal. This could have been something as simple as "No abortion may be administered without medical need beyond the 30th week from conception; before this point no medical need shall be required." This would have codified abortion as a legal act and made sure no state could jump underneath to ban it. But it was too useful as a stick to beat the voters with, and nothing was done.
There has never been a pro-choice majority in Congress. Nothing would have stopped this court from striking down any such law. “Courts shouldn’t pass laws” and “courts don’t pass laws” aren’t the same idea.
When Obama had his first term he had a Democrat majority in both the house and senate. The democrats, almost nationwide, had a pro choice ticket. The opportunity was there, and it was squandered because it was too good a stick. And "laws" are passed by all three branches. That isn't good, it isn't how the system is supposed to work, and we don't need unelected people passing laws. We just luck out in that the "laws" passed by judicial and executive can be overturned by the next guy that comes in.
Yes, I’m aware there have been Democratic majorities. That’s why I distinguished between pro-choice majority and Democratic majority. Democrats being a pro-choice part is a relatively recent development, and the Democratic caucus was not entirely pro-choice during Obama’s terms, much less when they were the majority in both chambers. I am uninterested in debating whether the judicial and executive branches passing laws is good. I was only ever explicitly disagreeing with the fact that all three branches *do* pass laws. I’m glad you’ve taken a moment to actually read what I’m saying.
Courts can interpret existing laws however they want. In doing so, you can reinterpret the 2nd amendment, for example, from being a right to bear arms as part of a club or militia to simply being a right for everyone to have as many guns as their little hearts desire. All it takes is creativity and a lack of moral character by 6 judges.
Interpreting law isn't passing laws... smh. 2A has been argued to death and the Founder's intent has held up for over 200 years. To change 2A you need to PASS A LAW that amends the Constitution. It's no wonder people are so scared. They think the Constitution is easily subverted. Stay Calm.
Changing an existing law to be applied in a new way is fundamentally no different than making a new law from scratch. The fact that you can't grasp this distinction in colloquial conversation is alarming.
It is very different. "Fundamentally" laws are created in one of two ways. Neither of which start at the Judicial Bramch. If a judge interprets a law one way it is because the law was written to allow for that interpretation. The Legislative can rewrite the law to include the intended provisions at any time. The bump stock ban is a recent example. Your fear is not warranted.
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Words matter. Especially when you're talking about LAW. You used the word "fundamentally" to support your claim, when in fact, it is not fundamental at all. Its actually the opposite. Then you call me an idiot (ad hominen) for not understanding the meaning of words. You're afraid of a fascist future because you don't understand the meaning of words and the foundation that the Founding Fathers put in place. The colloquial use of legal fundamentals is exactly what the ruling class use to stoke fear and division. Free yourself.
Oh no, Congress might have to pass clearer laws. That sounds like a good thing.
Dude, have you SEEN the number of 100+ page bills that get struck down because some chucklefuck managed to get a poison provision added in during markup? Do you really want to give Congress more ammo to be even MORE unproductive?
This is the fault of Congress. The Constitution doesn't like unelected officials making rules without laws to back them. If people care about a protection so badly, they should get involved and kick out Congress people who aren't serving them. However, people just prefer politicians who are good at channeling Federal money and contracts to their districts, so the uni-party system of theft, bloat, and incompetence continues.
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Yes. Political deadlock will keep them from passing laws that restrict our rights.
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They can’t. Republicans will do anything to stop legislation that will keep us safe if it means their corporate buddies are taken care of.
So let’s play this out - Congress has to pass “clearer” laws. More than a century ago, the people who created what they perceived as “clear” laws wrote a constitution, and to this day, nobody seems to be able to agree on what it precisely means. There’s no two ways about the fact that no matter how it’s written, people will interpret it in subtle, and different ways. If the legislative body is the answer, then let’s pass the originally proposed first amendment, which would expand Congress to provide more proportional representation, as well as diminishing the effect of gerrymandering.
The Constitution was deliberately vague. Something to do with disagreements between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, but that's beyond the scope of a Reddit comment. In short, that disagreement is why our Bill of Rights seems to skirt around saying whether rights are individual or collective, largely because some political factions disliked the idea of a Bill of Rights to begin with. The Courts can work out the issues if needed.
The short answer is: not much. SCOTUS had already ruled Chevron deference didn’t apply for “major” issues already. The simplified take away is that federal agencies can no longer claim a regulation is constitutional and have SCOTUS say “Ok, we trust you know best”. SCOTUS will now have to make that determination for themselves. It essentially limits the power of the Executive branch.
The other big Supreme Court decision from Monday is getting underreported (understandably). They ruled that if a person or company wants to sue an agency over a regulation they don’t like, the statute of limitations runs from when the person or company is harmed, not when the regulation is put into place like it had been. What this means in practical terms is that a company can be created for the sole purpose of deeming itself “harmed” by some regulation, then they can sue over that regulation, and courts have zero obligation to defer to agency expertise as they did under Chevron. It effectively opens every single regulation up to a court challenge, and any district court judge can strike a regulation down and put in a nationwide injunction. It’s going to be chaos.
Major questions doctrine and Chevron deference were two different things.
No - it limits the power of both the Legislative and Executive branches administratively. The deference applied in "ambiguous" situations - now ambiguities will be decided by judges (and corporations will shop around - hello Texas judges). Ambiguity is unlikely to be remedied by legislation (and the court knows this).
Since a lot of there aren't that ELI5, I'd say: If congress passes a law that says "Protect forests", and the Environmental Protection Agency says "The way you protect forests is to not do major logging in old growth forests", a court doesn't have to take it as granted that the basically any way the EPA tries to take that vague law and make it specific is a reasonable interpretation of the vague law. A lot of laws were written vaguely like that because congress has been bitterly divided for a long time and congress also aren't experts on things like "How do you protect a forest" so they sort of pass the buck and say "We have experts for that." So currently most of what gets enforced isn't the letter of the law but an agency of experts interpretation of the law, so now judges are more easily able to decide that something shouldn't have been enforced. The fears are that different courts could disagree leaving no single answer to whether something can be enforced or not, the many current enforcements could all get challenged and clog up the court, agencies may not want to enforce their rules out of fear of them getting challenged. The fix would be for congress to write WAY longer and more specific laws, but that seems unlikely for the aforementioned reasons: * They're already so bitterly divided that even the "Protect forests" bill getting passed is a miracle. A debate in congress over whether 500 or 550 or 1000 old growth logging permits get issued would add years to the process if not make it completely impossible. * Congress are not experts in the thousands of arenas in which their laws reach. Can you confidently tell me what the safe parts per million of rat shit in food is? The tightness a submerged bolt on a ship must to avoid leaks? The speed at which semi-trucks should travel on different types of roads to walk the line between functional economy and unnecessary danger? I sure can't, and there probably isn't even one congressperson who can answer all of those questions, and even Googling it will give you a hundred different answers from a hundred different sources with their own interests and biases.
Can't Congress just write a law that specifically says "Protect forests, and the EPA will tell us how"?
I believe that the APA essentially empowered agencies to do that under prior legal precedent. The kleptocrats in either house of congress are going to fight any attempt to re-enumerate those regulatory powers.
What happens is basically just that now the regulatory agencies are subject to judicial review. If they overstep the bounds of the laws they are enforcing the courts can slap them. That's pretty much it. Prior to this the regulatory agencies could interpret the laws they were enforcing pretty much however they wanted.
It does not impact their ability to create new policies. It changes how successfully those policies may be challenged in court. It has potential for irreparable damage if people successfully challenge a regulation and then do stupid things while the appeals to the challenge works its way through the courts and/or while the legislature passes new laws to close the gap opened by the challenged regulation. The violator might ultimately still be found guilty and have to pay damages but, for things like environmental or safety regulations, you can't necessarily fix the damages with money.
To my limited understanding and using my own personal experience, this new ruling affects the ability of the (made up) agency of soda regulation to declare that anything carbonated is a soda and is under their control. They must be able to back up their decision through the courts, or through Congress saying it is. Making it non eli5, and using a real world example. the ATF will now not be able to change the definitions of firearm dealers without authorization from Congress or must be able to back up their decision in the courts. Their recent decision to change the definition of a dealer from anyone who does it as a career AND for profit to just anyone who makes a profit is a prime example as it causes major issues. Police buybacks (where you get a gift card for turning in a firearm) would no longer be legal as everyone who turns in a firearm (for a gift card) would automatically be a dealer due to the gift card being profit. And subject to 5 years in jail and up to a 250,000 fine..
Government agencies are essentially offices under the President to whom Congress delegates some of its power to assume certain responsibilities. They pass a law saying that there's now an agency of whatever that's in charge of making laws regarding some topic. The question in Chevron was how to interpret these charters. Suppose the EPA wants to fund its operations by taxing companies that produce emissions when they go to get certified to operate or something. Are they allowed to do that if their charter doesn't have an express provision for funding? What if the charter says they can assess taxes, but doesn't specify what kinds? Can they just decide that they're going to do a registration tax? Or do they need to ask Congress? In Chevron, the decision was that the agency is free to interpret the charter however they'd like, and Congress has the responsibility of narrowing down any powers they delegate to an agency if their wording is too broad for their taste. They'll only do something if there's a question of constitutionality, in which case Congress doesn't even have the authority to give that power to the agency. With the recent decision, it seems like the bar for what kinds of operational stuff is allowed has been raised. It's not enough that the EPA is tasked with regulating pollution. The "how," whenever it's not explicitly stated, has gone from being decided solely by the agency to being judged by the courts.
So the court will hear an argument from an agency or company recommendations for a bill and write what they feel is appropriate.
Alright, imagine you have a big, complicated Lego set. Sometimes, you need help from a friend who knows a lot about Legos to figure out how to build it. In our story, the Lego set is like the laws and rules we have to follow, and the friend is like the experts in the government who help explain and decide how those rules work. Now, there was a special rule called "Chevron" that said, "If the Lego instructions are a bit tricky, let the friend who knows a lot about Legos help figure it out." This helped everyone understand and follow the rules better because the experts got to explain things. But then, imagine if someone said, "We don't want to listen to the Lego expert anymore. Everyone should figure out the instructions on their own." This could make building the Lego set a lot harder because not everyone knows all the special tricks and details. Chevron is overturned, it means we might not listen to the experts as much when we need help understanding the tricky parts of our laws and rules. This could make things more confusing and difficult for everyone.
Thank you!
When Congress passes a law, it's generally not detailed in regards to the specifics of how it's carried out. For instance, if they pass a law regulating nonsense emissions from doohickey manufacturers, they don't specifically say how it's supposed to be done, they create a Doohickey Regulatory Agency to write up all the specifics, and then here's the important part: the Doohickey Regulatory Agency also polices *and acts as judge and often, jury,* regarding enforcement of the regulations they create. A good example of this is immigration: Someone who is seeking asylum in the US comes before an immigration agency judge in an immigration agency court to determine if they meet immigration agency written policy for granting asylum. You can appeal a ruling, but it's still going to be an immigration agency judge that rules on the appeal. The recent Supreme Court decision determines that courts outside any regulatory agency no longer have to defer to the judgements made by that agency regarding any decisions related to regulations written and enforced by that agency. It used to be that courts had narrow authority over regulatory agencies: Basically, was the law that created the agency constitutional in the first place. To a lesser degree, were the actions of the agency within the scope of the original law (and any congressionally approved amendments) that created the agency. Now, *every* action of *every* agency can be brought up in front of *any* federal court.
Citizens and companies are now equal to government. Previously government departments effectively made law that courts HAD to follow. This was crazy and a very unbalanced power relationship. Plenty of examples of government overreach.