In Landmark Victory for Civil Liberties, NCLA Persuades Supreme Court to Overturn Chevron Deference
2024年6月29日 - 12:29AM
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 6-3 to overturn the 1984
Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council case and with it the
unconstitutional Chevron doctrine. It did so in the New Civil
Liberties Alliance’s case, Relentless Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce,
argued in tandem with Loper Bright Enterprises, et al. v. Raimondo.
The Court vacated and remanded the First Circuit’s decision that
upheld a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and
National Marine Fisheries Service rule requiring fishing companies
like NCLA’s clients to pay for at-sea government monitors on their
fishing boats. NCLA celebrates this monumental victory, which will
curtail abuses of administrative power for years to come.
The Court recognized that the text of the
Administrative Procedure Act commands courts to review agency rules
like this one de novo. Although the government claimed the Supreme
Court must nevertheless uphold Chevron out of stare
decisis respect for its prior precedents, the Court decided
that the unworkable Chevron doctrine is not entitled
to stare decisis. Chevron destabilizes the law and runs
afoul of the rule-of-law values that stare
decisis protects. So, it is once again the job of the federal
courts to say what the law is.
“Chevron was a judicial invention that required
judges to disregard their statutory duties,” Chief Justice Roberts
said. “And the only way to ‘ensure that the law will not merely
change erratically, but will develop in a principled and
intelligible fashion,’ is for us to leave Chevron behind.” This
decision rightly prevents every federal agency from wielding
deference against Americans, a pivotal reform whose full impact
will be revealed with time.
Concurring opinions discussed two core
constitutional problems with Chevron deference that NCLA founder
Philip Hamburger has long emphasized. First, employing such
deference abandons a judge’s duty to provide independent judgment.
Second, when a federal court defers to an agency’s legal
interpretation, the litigants opposing that agency—like the
fishermen opposing NOAA in Relentless—do not have their case judged
by an impartial adjudicator, which violates the core constitutional
promise of due process.
The government claimed Chevron upholds
Congress’s power to delegate policy decisions to Executive Branch
agencies, but the Court ruled that a gap or ambiguity in a statute
confers no statutory authority to agencies. Rather, interpreting
ambiguity in a statute is a legal action constitutionally
reserved for Article III courts, which have that expertise. The
Magnuson-Stevens Act directs fishermen to pay for monitoring in
only three specific cases, and not in the New England herring
fishery. This can only mean one thing: the government itself must
pay, as it did for 20 years before the agencies invented this rule.
This case will now return to a lower court, where NCLA and its
clients will defeat NOAA’s abusive rule and restore the industry’s
status quo ante.
In the wake of today’s ruling, NCLA announces
that we are creating the “Relentless Working Group” to ensure that
every federal agency adheres to and fully implements this decision.
This new NCLA-led working group will bring together a coalition of
public-interest groups and others to relentlessly fight rear-guard
actions to prevent agencies from thwarting or ignoring this
opinion—or from sneaking new forms of deference in the back door.
Congress cannot delegate judicial power—which it does not possess
in the first place—to be administered by executive agencies.
NCLA released the following
statements:
“Today is a really special day and the
culmination of almost a decade of work to protect the rights of
fishermen. We finally saw a return to ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ as
inscribed above the Supreme Court entrance. No more will fishermen
and other American citizens lose their rights through judicial
deference to government agencies. From now on, NOAA and other
federal agencies will have to think about the consequences of their
actions without the benefit of Chevron. We finally have an even
playing field in the courts, and the government will have to pay
its own regulators’ salaries without forcing that cost directly on
hard-working fishermen. I’m so grateful.”— Meghan Lapp,
Fisheries Liaison & General Manager, Seafreeze, Ltd.
“This ruling is long overdue. To allow agencies
to pick the pocket of the regulated without congressional
authorization is against all the principles of representative
government and our constitutional structure.”— John Vecchione,
Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA
“NCLA’s fishermen clients have landed the
biggest catch of their lives by persuading the U.S. Supreme Court
to take its thumb off the scale when ordinary Americans are
contesting unlawful government regulations. When NCLA was founded
less than seven years ago, taking down Chevron deference was
priority number one, because agencies have used it so often to
violate people’s civil liberties. That ability ends today! It is
deeply gratifying to have overturned Chevron so quickly. The
dismantling of the unlawful Administrative State has officially
begun.”— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA
“Today’s decision vindicates the rule of
law. By ending Chevron deference, the Court has taken a major
step to shut down unlawful power grabs by federal agencies and to
preserve the separation of powers. Going forward, judges will
be charged with interpreting the law faithfully, impartially, and
independently, without deference to the government. This is a
win for individual liberty and the Constitution.”— Roman
Martinez, Latham & Watkins partner who delivered oral argument
in the Relentless case
For more information visit the case page
here and watch the case video here.
ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights
group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to
protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the
Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other
pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and
federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that
will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.
Ruslan Moldovanov
New Civil Liberties Alliance
202-869-5237
ruslan.moldovanov@ncla.legal