SCOTUS Repudiates Doctrine That Gave Agencies a License To Invent Their Own Authority
In two cases that the Supreme Court decided today, herring fishermen in Rhode Island and New Jersey challenged regulatory fees they said were never authorized by Congress. They asked the Court to reconsider, or at least clarify, a doctrine based on its 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which required that judges defer to a federal agency's "permissible" or "reasonable" interpretation of an "ambiguous" statute. Critics have long complained that Chevron deference allowed bureaucrats to usurp a judicial function and systematically disadvantaged "the little guy" in dis...