This is a case of “It was about time.” This week, the United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Relentless, Inc. V. Department of Commerce, a case that could have a dramatic impact on the way federal regulations are issued.
The question is whether the courts should give deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of laws that could have multiple meanings. This practice is known as Chevron Deference.
This means that the court will be deciding whether or not to limit the power of the president to issue regulations to combat pollution, and climate change, or protect consumers in the absence of clear authorization from Congress.
This would be a major step forward for anti-regulation interests, whose hopes have been boosted by the recent doubts expressed by conservative justices about Chevron. This is just one of many major cases that have been brought before the high court in this term.
Law is the only source of regulation. Any new law comes from Congress. Every regulation that is issued by a government agency must be authorized by a statute, voted upon, and approved by Congress. In recent years federal agencies have overstepped their regulatory authority. We can only hope that the Supreme Court will impose a slap on the door of the worst offenders.
Of course, there are the usual doomsayers.
David Doniger is the senior strategic director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Climate and Clean Energy Program.
Doniger said, “These protections require that a government has some capability to respond effectively. This case is about destroying this ability.”
If the Court rules to reduce these regulatory powers, then one could point out to Mr. Doniger, that the Constitution limits the government’s ability to respond, and not any court decision. It’s a common response, especially from the Left, that any court decision they don’t like is “illegitimate,” or to ignore the courts entirely, as in the Andrew Jackson-like phrase “they have made their ruling now let them enforce.”
The Chevron Deference was first described in 1984.
…the “Chevron deference” was coined after a landmark case, Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 468 U.S. 837 (1984). The Chevron deference refers to the doctrine of judicial deference given to administrative actions. In Chevron, the Supreme Court set forth a legal test as to when the court should defer to the agency’s answer or interpretation, holding that such judicial deference is appropriate where the agency’s answer was not unreasonable, so long as Congress had not spoken directly to the precise issue at question.
This entire issue seems to hinge on the definition of “unreasonable.” Most people would not find it unreasonable for a commercial airliner to undergo a documented safety inspection every year. However, a regulation that requires the use of at least 75% “renewable fuel” would be considered unreasonable.
In the Relentless case, commercial fishing operations are required under certain circumstances to have federal observers aboard during operations. This is an overreach. Under some circumstances, they may also be responsible for the salary of these federal observers. The First Circuit already approved this practice which, by any sane standard, seems to be “unreasonable”. This is especially true when the stated reason given by the government for the requirement, was that their Congressional appropriation wasn’t enough to cover these salaries.
The agency claimed that the annual Congressional appropriations to pay federal observers were insufficient and asserted the right to force fishing vessels to enter into contracts with the federal observer. The First Circuit approved the practice without specifying whether it was “a product of Chevron Step One or Step Two.”
If left unchecked, it doesn’t require much imagination to see where this presumption could lead.
The next scheduled Relentless debate is on Wednesday.
