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Supreme Court Will Consider Doctrine Case That Could Defang the Deep State

Nick R. HamiltonJune 4, 2024 - 10:14 am

The Supreme Court has taken on a potential landmark case regarding the Chevron deference doctrine.

The case could change the way unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies are allowed to decide how to interpret laws when they are unclear.

The doctrine has become a sticking point for conservatives.

Many see the doctrine as giving the deep state too much power to control the federal government.

In effect, agency bureaucrats use the doctrine to get the power to change laws by reinterpreting them.

However, most of those longtime bureaucrats are liberal Democrats, according to Republicans.

David Doniger, a lawyer who helped create the doctrine in 1984, said:

“Initially this doctrine was embraced by judges and scholars of all stripes as a neutral principle for how you sort things out when Congress leaves some of the questions unanswered.”

But as time went on, the doctrine served to essentially give lawmaking power to unelected bureaucrats, and most of the time it went in a decidedly liberal direction.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler wrote about the doctrine for the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.

“It has made it too easy for agencies to revise regulatory requirements and too difficult for courts to police the boundaries of agency authority,” Adler wrote.

Conservatives on the court have commented on the doctrine before, most recently in 2022.

At the time, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito that “the whole project deserves a tombstone no one can miss.”
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The current case was brought by herring fishermen in Maine.

The fishermen balked at being told by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that they would have to pay for government observers to make sure they weren’t overfishing the area.

The Chevron doctrine gives the EPA the right to decide how the observers should be paid.

Those bureaucrats then decided the fishermen should pay.

Prominent conservatives, including billionaire Charles Koch, are paying for the case.

The express purpose of the case is to bring a challenge to the doctrine before the nation’s high court.

If the doctrine is struck down, it could have almost a Roe V. Wade kind of impact on the federal government.

There could be some confusion and chaos as courts try to figure out how to decide who should interpret laws when they are ambiguous.

If the case goes against the doctrine, it will take the teeth out of America’s unelected bureaucracy.

As such, it could save President Donald Trump from having to follow through on his promise to gut the deep state.

https://slaynews.com/news/supreme-court-consider-doctrine-case-defang-deep-state/