In a 6-3 ruling on June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned decades of established legal precedent by curbing the power of unelected federal bureaucrats to lord it over American citizens with no accountability.
The so-called “Chevron deference” – based on the 1984 Chevron v. Natural Resources ruling – required courts to defer to so-called experts from federal agencies if there was any question or ambiguity about the laws that govern them.
So of course, the “experts” always interpreted the laws in a way that expanded their own power. The ruling also stripped courts of their own judicial obligation to interpret those laws themselves by handing it over to agency bureaucrats.
It’s unusual for SCOTUS to reverse its own prior decisions, so this latest ruling sent shockwaves through the political and legal establishments.
But Justice Clarence Thomas clearly explained why the “Chevron deference” was inherently unconstitutional:
It was “not a harmless transfer of power,” Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion. “The Constitution carefully imposes structural constraints on all three branches, and the exercise of power free of those accompanying restraints subverts the design of the Constitution’s ratifiers.”
He then went on to explain that the Founding Fathers purposely designed each of the federal government’s three branches as checks and balances on the others. So “the courts would check the Executive by applying the correct interpretation of the law,” not unaccountable bureaucrats in that same executive branch.
“Chevron was thus a fundamental disruption of our separation of powers. It improperly strips courts of judicial power by simultaneously increasing the power of executive agencies. By overruling Chevron, we restore this aspect of our separation of powers. To safeguard individual liberty, ‘structure is everything.’”
The latest ruling is being hailed by conservatives as a victory in ongoing efforts to curb the administrative state, where unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch have been allowed to usurp the constitutional powers of Congress by enacting regulations that have the force of law, and the constitutional powers of the judiciary by interpreting laws for their own benefit.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan complained that overturning the Chevron deference “gives courts control over matters they know nothing about.”
But as Chief Justice John Roberts countered, the “experts” in legal interpretation have for the last 221 years been members of the judiciary, quoting the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision that introduced judicial review and established SCOTUS as the last word in interpreting laws and the Constitution.