Courts no longer owe deference to an administrative agency's interpretation of its ambiguous statutory mandate. //

The Court held that the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs the operations of administrative agencies,

requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled.

Thomas agreed with the Court’s decision but wrote separately “to underscore a more fundamental problem: Chevron deference violates our Constitution’s separation of powers, as I have previously explained at length.”

The violation, Thomas elaborated, stemmed from Chevron‘s mandate that judges surrender their judicial responsibility “to exercise . . . independent judgment in interpreting and expounding upon the laws.” //

The challengers also argued that Chevron is an abdication of judicial responsibility because courts have the duty to interpret the law, but Chevron deference substitutes the agency’s interpretation. The challengers criticized Chevron for “upend[ing] basic principles of constitutional due process of law” because it required deference to an agency’s interpretation when that agency is a litigant before the court. //

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | June 28, 2024 at 1:04 pm

Chevron is overruled.

Most important decision in decades … 4 decades, precisely.

And courts in the future need to keep in mind, in addition to this, that Congress is disallowed from delegating any of its Constitutional authority to any other entity unless specifically allowed to do so in the Constitution. To do so is to, de facto, amend the Constitution.