In late June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a case with the potential for outsized impacts on the work that Maine Audubon does. The majority decision for Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et al. overturned a longstanding doctrine giving federal agencies the “benefit of the doubt” when executing laws.
The Court’s doctrine of siding with administrative agencies when they made reasonable policy choices is known as Chevron Deference, based on the 1984 case where it was first articulated. Since its arrival 40 years ago, the doctrine has been a crucial pillar for federal agencies working to implement laws regarding environmental protection, health care, banking, consumer protection, and many other facets of our current government. This principle in administrative law acknowledges that agencies have specialized expertise and are better equipped than courts to make policy judgments within their areas of expertise.
Maine Audubon relies heavily upon federal laws to achieve protections for Maine’s environment. Laws like the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and many more are fundamental to the work we do, and pieces of each of these laws have been held up in court with the help of Chevron Deference. The Court’s ruling leaves the state of these laws, and Maine Audubon’s reliance on them, in a state of uncertainty.
In an effort to help our members and supporters understand the recent ruling and its potential implications, we wanted to provide a brief explainer on why Chevron Deference was so important, and what may happen under the Supreme Court’s new ruling.
What is Chevron Deference?
The Constitution sets up the federal government to work like this: Congress (made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives) passes laws; Federal courts (led by the Supreme Court) determine whether those laws are in line with the Constitution; and the Executive Branch (which includes the President as well as federal agencies like the Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and others) executes the laws.
When Congress passes a law that regulates something – how much pollution is in the air, how much lead can be in food, etc. – it moves to federal agencies in the Executive Branch to do the work. The laws Congress sends over aren’t fully complete, but rather they leave details to the agencies to work out. For example, Congress could pass a law that says “limit the amount of carbon monoxide in the air,” but it doesn’t say exactly what level of carbon monoxide is acceptable. Congress isn’t made up of experts in pollution levels, it just sets the policy and lets the issue experts in the agencies, working through extensive public processes, develop regulations to implement the laws. So, the agency would examine the science and listen to the public to determine what level of carbon dioxide to aim for.
But people—and corporations—don’t like to be regulated, and sometimes take federal agencies to court saying that their determinations are wrong. They may say “the agency’s decision on carbon monoxide levels is too strict” or “the agency wasn’t supposed to limit carbon monoxide in the way they decided to.”
These cases would come to federal courts, who then had to decide whether the agency’s decisions were right or wrong. However, like Congress, judges aren’t policy experts either. So, in a case involving Chevron in 1984, the Supreme Court said, essentially, “we will defer to agency decisions so long as they’re reasonable.”
The Court’s deference to agency decisions in regulatory matters became known as Chevron Deference. The idea then articulated by the court was that we should rely on agencies (experts who are accountable to the public via elections) rather than unelected judges. The 1984 case includes the quote: “federal judges—who have no constituency—have a duty to respect legitimate policy choices made by those who do.“
How does Chevron Deference help?
Federal regulations are constantly being challenged in court, and Chevron Deference is then constantly used to protect the authority of the federal agencies to make decisions where Congress left things unclear. Slate.com says that Chevron has been cited 18,000 times in federal courts since 1984, and in every area of regulatory law: energy policy, education, food and drug safety, labor, the environment, consumer protection, finance, health care, housing, law enforcement etc.
One example of Chevron Deference’s usefulness is the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had to make lots of decisions about how to interpret and implement the Endangered Species Act in its time, and Chevron has repeatedly been invoked in court to allow their interpretations.
What Did the Supreme Court Decide?
In June, the court released its ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et al.,a case that arose over a dispute between fishermen and the National Marine Fisheries’ Service (NMFS). The Supreme Court, which would typically have relied on Chevron Deference to rule in favor of NMFS, used the case as an opportunity to overturn the Chevron decision in its entirety. From now on, the six majority justices wrote, courts do not need to defer to an agency interpretation of a law, but rather the judges should decide for themselves whether an agency has acted within its authority.
What Does This Mean Moving Forward?
Several things may happen next. No federal rules or laws are automatically changed, but this ruling opens the door wide open for new lawsuits against thousands of agency decisions across the federal government. Those decisions may take years to work their way through courts, and it’s impossible to know how different courts may rule in any one particular case. However, it’s likely that such challenges will occur in courts that have been stacked with judges inhospitable to federal power. However, the loss of certainty granted by Chevron Deference is likely to have a chilling effect on in-process federal rules and regulations while agencies evaluate their own vulnerabilities.
This ruling is likely to have a more immediate effect in Congress. There, those who oppose regulatory “overreach” may be empowered to work to weaken existing laws, though their bills are unlikely to pass in the current Administration. Congress is likely to ramp up attempts to return to existing laws to provide clarifications or directly empower agencies to take particular actions, or codify Chevron Deference (as this bill would do). However, the current lack of cooperation in Congress is likely to weigh down the speed of any response.
For our part, Maine Audubon will keep on doing what we can to protect Maine’s wildlife and habitat. We have worked through many different political climates in our long history, and we’re not going to let this decision prevent us from fulfilling our mission. We appreciate your continued support.
