leonard leo

Last month, the Supreme Court broke with four decades of precedent and overturned Chevron deference, a cornerstone of administrative law that has been cited by federal courts over 18,000 times. The 6-3 ruling, handed down on party lines in the cases Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce, eliminated a judicial doctrine that had long instructed federal courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous or unclear laws passed by Congress, rather than have judges act as regulatory policy-makers.

Chevron deference was established in the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council for two main reasons. First, because federal agencies are staffed with career civil servants and subject matter experts like scientists, researchers, and data analysts who understand the nitty-gritty details of regulatory policy-making far better than any given judge. Second was the importance of democratic accountability and the separation of powers, with Justice John Paul Stevens writing in the Chevron decision that “federal judges—who have no constituency—have a duty to respect legitimate policy choices made by those who do.”