In a landmark case that may have significant long term impact on reining in federal agency overreach, the Supreme Court of the United States in a vote of 6–3 overturned the so-called “Chevron Deference.”  This 40-year old bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine many critics contend has been a key factor in the unparalleled explosive growth and broad reach of the U.S. government in recent decades.  In essence, the doctrine gave deference to agency interpretations of their own regulations (no matter how unprecedented or afield from any statutory language); leaving the public/taxpayers to have to overcome this burden of proof in order to prevail in any legal matter. 

SCOTUS’ opinion will now help level the playing field, forcing agencies to carry more evidentiary and material information burden to win over challenges or to sustain their aggressive compliance polices over the states, businesses, and the general public. The new ruling came from two related cases taken-up together: Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

Background:
As noted in recent publications on the new decision, “[i]n the landmark ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council in 1984, the [Supreme] court held that while courts “must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress,” where courts find Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue and “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”  In other words, the agency gets to determine how to interpret the statute as it sees fit.  At the time of the decision, no one anticipated the abuses of an unaccountable bureaucratic federal government leviathan intent on expanding its own authority and reach -- which has come to be called the “deep state.”