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Today, the SCOTUS will hear oral arguments in two cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce, that present the question of whether the Court should overturn the 40-year-old “Chevron Doctrine,” which provides that when Congress implicitly delegates authority under a statute to an administrative agency, federal courts are required to defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretations of that statute.

Chevron deference has long been a prime target of conservative opponents of the “administrative state,” and they scored a big victory with the SCOTUS’s 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA, which narrowed the scope of Chevron by limiting administrative agencies’ ability to assert their authority over “major questions” absent a clear delegation of that authority from Congress. However, in this excerpt from the Solicitor General’s brief, the Biden Administration warns that overturning Chevron is a much bigger step, with potentially enormous consequences:

[O]verruling Chevron would be a convulsive shock to the legal system. All three Branches of government, regulated parties, and the public have arranged their affairs for decades with Chevron as the backdrop against which Congress legislates, agencies issue rules and orders, and courts resolve disputes about those agency actions. Given its central importance, overruling Chevron would threaten substantial disruption in federal programs such as Social Security and would upset settled expectations in virtually every area of federal law. And if Chevron were overruled, the federal courts would inevitably be required to resolve policy questions properly left to the “political branch[es].”

As a practical matter, Columbia Prof. Thomas Merrill observes that overturning Chevron would be a recipe for judicial gridlock when it comes to resolving challenges to agency actions: “If every court of appeals were required to apply de novo review to every question of law that arises in a regulatory context, the courts of appeals would be overwhelmed.” On the other hand, advocates of overturning the doctrine argue that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, has no constitutional basis and has licensed Congress to pass vague laws delegating authority to administrative agencies (hmm. . . what laws could they possibly be thinking of?).

Whatever side you think has the better of the argument, it seems fair to say that the SCOTUS’s decision in these cases has the potential to make sweeping changes in the way federal regulatory agencies operate and the role that the federal courts play in overseeing their actions.  If you’re interested in listening to oral arguments in the cases, you can tune in here for a live feed.

– John Jenkins