No. of Recommendations: 2
Two
monumental rulings (really 3, but 2 of them pertain to the same thing) out of SCOTUS today.
First up: As anticipated, the
Chevron doctrine is dead.
In
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and
Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commercehttps://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451... (can't find
Restless)
...the Supreme Court has changed how federal agencies can go about rulemaking: They can't do it unless Congress has given them the authority to:
The Court granted certiorari in these cases limited to the question
whether Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council,
Inc., 467 U. S. 837, should be overruled or clarified. Under the Chevron doctrine, courts have sometimes been required to defer to “permissible” agency interpretations of the statutes those agencies administer—even when a reviewing court reads the statute differently. Id., at
843. In each case below, the reviewing courts applied Chevron’s framework to resolve in favor of the Government challenges by petitioners
to a rule promulgated by the National Marine Fisheries Service pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U. S. C. §1801 et seq., which
incorporates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §551
et seq.
Held: The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their
independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within
its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is
overruled. Pp. 7–35.Roberts writes for the majority:
Many or perhaps
most statutory ambiguities may be unintentional. And when courts
confront statutory ambiguities in cases that do not involve agency interpretations or delegations of authority, they are not somehow relieved of their obligation to independently interpret the statutes. Instead of declaring a particular party’s reading “permissible” in such a
case, courts use every tool at their disposal to determine the best reading of the statute and resolve the ambiguity. But in an agency case as
in any other, there is a best reading all the same—“the reading the
court would have reached” if no agency were involved. Chevron, 467
U. S., at 843, n. 11. It therefore makes no sense to speak of a “permissible” interpretation that is not the one the court, after applying all
relevant interpretive tools, concludes is best.
Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided
because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory
ambiguities. Courts do. Boom. There goes a lot of the administrative state in one shot.
Another significatnt decision today was
City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson, which was an attempt to reverse a 9th Circuit ruling that declared that removal of homeless camps on public land constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In this case Gorsuch writes:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175...Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the
public policy responses required to address it. The question this case
presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. A handful of federal judges cannot begin to “match” the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding “how best to
handle” a pressing social question like homelessness. Robinson, 370
U. S., at 689 (White, J., dissenting). The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.
Pp. 34–35. Indeed. Those of us on the west coast have had to put up with tent camps all over our parks and cities for years thanks to the 9th Circuit's ruling. Now we have a chance at reclaiming our public spaces.
