The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a landmark 40-year-old decision that gave federal agencies broad regulatory power, upending their authority to issue regulations unless Congress has spoken clearly.
The court split along ideological lines in the dispute, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority.
The court’s ruling in a pair of related cases is a significant victory for the conservative legal movement, which has long aimed to unwind or weaken the 1984 decision in Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council. Critics of that landmark ruling, which involved a challenge to a regulation enacted by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act, have said the so-called Chevron doctrine gives unelected federal bureaucrats too much power in crafting regulations that touch on major areas of American life, such as the workplace, the environment and health care.
“Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedure Act] requires,” Roberts wrote for the court.
The framework required courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of laws passed by Congress if it is reasonable. Calls for it to be overturned came from not only conservative legal scholars, but some of the justices themselves who have said courts are abdicating their responsibility to interpret the law.
