The Supreme Court on Friday threw into question the future of climate and environmental regulation in the United States, scrapping a decades-old legal precedent that gave federal agencies leeway to interpret laws based on their expertise and scientific evidence. The impact of the decision to discard the so-called Chevron deference will take years to become clear, but it could lead to more legal challenges against regulations by agencies like the EPA and the Department of the Interior, which play significant roles in the climate fight.

Federal courts have long deferred to federal agencies to interpret ambiguous laws. In 1984, a shorthanded Supreme Court ruled that federal agencies have the final say on such policies, allowing them broad authority without fear of judicial override.

In Supreme Court filings, the Biden administration warned that overruling the Chevron deference would be a “convulsive shock to the legal system.” Environmental organizations also condemned the decision.

“Today’s ruling sidelines the role of agency expertise, and instead shifts power to judges who do not have the expertise of agency staff,” Kym Meyer, litigation director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement.

Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the decision “undermines vital protections for the American people at the behest of powerful polluters.”

Writing for a 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that “courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.” He called the Chevron decision a “fundamental disruption of our separation of powers,” one that “improperly strips courts of judicial power by simultaneously increasing the power of executive agencies.”

The current conservative Supreme Court no longer relies much on Chevron to decide major cases involving the executive branch. Roberts noted during oral arguments for the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case that the court has gone “14 or 16” years since citing Chevron. Instead, recent decisions have outlined a new standard for evaluating regulations, known as the “major questions doctrine,” which prohibits agencies from making rules on issues of “economic and political magnitude” without clear directives from Congress. The court cited this test in a landmark 2022 case that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Lower courts, however, still cite Chevron in many cases. An analysis of over 1,500 circuit court decisions between 2003 and 2013 found that courts applied Chevron in 77% of regulatory disputes, with agencies winning a significant majority of those cases. The Department of the Interior, handling climate change, oil leasing, endangered species, and Indigenous affairs, was one of the agencies that relied heavily on Chevron.

The Biden administration and numerous legal scholars urged the court to keep the precedent, arguing that overturning it would create regulatory chaos as numerous plaintiffs sued to challenge past rules. In his decision, Roberts rebuffed the idea that throwing out Chevron would cause a deluge of lawsuits, stating the decision shouldn’t call into question the numerous past cases that relied on the precedent.

“The holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful — including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself — are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology,” he wrote, referring to a legal principle that argues judges should leave intact most past decisions.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan expressed skepticism, arguing the precedent helped keep “air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest.” She accused the conservative bloc of trying to turn the Supreme Court “into the country’s administrative czar.”

“What’s at stake [in the decision] is whether courts are going to defer to agencies interpreting statutes,” said Michael Burger, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, “or whether courts are going to stop doing that, and with more regularity take it on themselves to interpret the statutes even when they’re ambiguous.”

The main case in question this year, Loper Bright, concerned a National Marine Fisheries Service regulation requiring herring fishers to pay for monitors on their boats. A commercial fishing company represented by lawyers tied to conservative energy billionaire Charles Koch’s political organization is suing to overturn the monitor rule — and asking the court to throw out the Chevron standard altogether.

The original Chevron decision upheld an attempt to weaken environmental regulations. The EPA under Ronald Reagan sought to loosen the standard for calculating air pollution emissions, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued, arguing the EPA didn’t have the authority to reinterpret the Clean Air Act. NRDC won initially, but Chevron appealed to the Supreme Court, which sided with Reagan’s EPA.

Over the past decade, many conservatives believe the precedent allows the executive branch to overreach, making overturning it a rallying cry for right-wing activists and legal scholars.

“There’s a feeling that Chevron favors regulation,” said Burger. “And if you take away the deference and give power to courts, then the increasing number of conservative judges in the federal court system have more authority, which will likely chill agencies.”

Original Story at www.sierraclub.org