May I have more mercury fish in my Mississippi River please? Can the algae blooms please be more bloomy? I want my local trout streams full of shit and that pretty sheen of fuels and oils.
This is why republicans on the river confuse me. They spend all their time on public land(water preserves) then vote for guys that want to sell it off.
I wager they don’t think that far ahead. They are in an abused relationship and think it won’t happen to them. When it does, it’s always the other party because they live and breathe denial. I don’t think it’s possible to break this programming anymore. I just hope enough die off to allow our children and grandchildren to have better lives. I have two girls and their fates stress me out every day.
This seems to be truly the most important election of our lifetime. Make a voting plan early! :)
**Register To Vote or Check Wisconsin Voter Registration Status here:**
https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/
This is the exact right response. Make a plan to vote. Make a plan for your friends and family to vote. Volunteer. Donate if you can.
Only by being an engaged citizen can we actually improve our lives and push back on this right wing nonsense.
Removing protections/regulations tells me that conservatives couldn't care less about the health and safety of any living creature, let alone human beings. So why do so many buy their bee ess?
As to how the state regulations are impacted by federal regulations remains a question. Wisconsin regulations are by and large managed by state agencies that work in tandem with federal agencies, but there could still be residual impacts. In my opinion the Supreme Court's ruling is wholly irresponsible for eliminating the Chevron doctrine. I mean, there were solid arguments about how courts shouldn't just let agencies defer to any interpretation of the regulations without solid reasoning for the regulation (for example, the DEA and its scheduling of drugs methodology), but also at the same time government has functioned as if the Chevron doctrine were a solid set in stone document so 40 years of standard practice has now been uprooted. Every regulation being subject to congressional oversight invites dozens and dozens of lawsuits, which will make the government work even less efficiently than it already is.
And knowing how bloodthirsty far right conservatives are these days, they will launch lawsuit after lawsuit and congest the court system.
A lot of how our federal system works is the federal government hands chunks of money to states and says "You can have this money if you do these things with it". So for many things there isn't necessarily a state regulation in place, they're just following the federal rules.
And it's not even just government that will work less efficiently. It adds a lot of uncertainty for business that can't rely on the administrative law being steady.
Lets go back to tradition end the EPA! I want more dead Eagles and other apex avian predaters, i want rain that kills the plants, I want to get a sunburn quicker, I want air to hurt my lungs and be colorful, and most importantly I want my local river to lite on FIRE.
/s
This list is all kept out of reality by the EPA. Relevant regulations to this horrific list: DDT (makes bird eggs soft), sulfer emissions making acid rain specificly coal and diesel (def), ozone destruction from certain refridgerants and spray cans, NOX pollution (catalytic converters and fossil emissions), and finally oil in wastewater limitations which actually did lite rivers on fire (see Cuyahoga River).
That's been the point for decades. Regulations bad, free market good. Except for workers, the environment, the American dream, POC, anyone who is against anything they don't agree with.
I might point out that there's some decent rational behind the ruling. If we wanted something better than we should be pushing our legislator to actually make laws for it.
Personally I think the supreme courts upheaval will net positive in the long run, because we're more likely to get these rules and laws on the book properly rather than depending on organisations outside the democratic process like the various offices within the executive branch.
That is not to day I like the immediate consequences. At all. I am in fact, very concerned.
The agencies are subject to oversight by congress, so if they’re failing at that, then I have no optimism about them making better laws. Worse, as a practical matter trying to get too specific in statute (or US Code) just leaves more room for bad actors to avoid the rules. Legislatures are slow and filled with non-experts, so they’re often bad at regulation anyway. Agencies, with proper oversight, can have experts in the field and move faster (though they can still be sluggish).
The SC needs to reform itself before levying judgment on other branches. It is out of touch, corrupt, and lacking in any democratic legitimacy. The court is supposed to be wise and above the day to day fray of politics, not completely divorced from the reality of the nation they are governing.
Again, the reason I said I think this will net positive is that it will place more pressure on the legislator to legislate. With the regulatory agencies doing all the rule making congress has gotten away bickering and making political grandstands. As things get worse more pressure will be placed upon the to fix things.
It's slower, but more perminate.
As for the supreme court. It is fucked. Especially right now. As far as I can tell the US is build to operate with at least 1/3 of the governemt not corrupt, run well with at least 2/3 not corrupt. To better ensure this they set things up with 3 different methods of selecting whose in charge. Right now the supreme court is more corrupt. But they're operating on the same methods they did when they enshrined all the polices to begin with. Their rational aren't unreasonable either. The results bad, but if you are leaning into the law as an absolute not invalid.
I'm not sure how we could reasonably establish a stable, safe, and democratic system for the SC or even the lower courts without risking a lot. Frankly, it might just be easier to legalize dueling and let the extremists sort it out.
Many legislators don’t want to legislate. They want outdated or non-existent protections for the commoners.
For the court, I’ve been a fan of proposals like ever term a president appoints two justices and the oldest cycle out.
Then in conditions where legislation is required those legislators are more likely to be replaced. Under the prior conditions the executive and judicial branches had moved to fill in.
Then in conditions where legislation is required those legislators are more likely to be replaced. Under the prior conditions the executive and judicial branches had moved to fill in.
Since there aren’t many single-issue OSHA voters, for example, a legislator may have a terrible safety record but stay in power through other issues, such as tax policy or culture wars. Throw in a pinch of gerrymandering and even if a majority of voters want better safety regulations, they won’t happen through legislation.
In an ideal world legislatures would do more, but they’ll never be an effective way to do all the governing needed in a modern world.
Congress is broken because of the filibuster and the Senate may never pass an important piece of legislation again in the current political climate/alignment.
SCOTUS and in particular there the conservatives on the court know this, which is why they issued a ruling that will give them defacto final say over whatever they want the law to be when each case comes in front of them. The fact they overturned *another* decades long precedent while explicitly stating that all previous decisions based on it will not be revisited is as naked an admission as possible that they are taking the simplest, most straightforward route to this end. If they were consistent they would have stated that the old rulings were all subject to review, but they're not because... Reasons.
Lobbying our legislators to pass legislation won't work because half of them (Republicans) only want to break government and let the conservative supreme court dictate everything. Republican senators are perfectly happy to obstruct and let 6-3 majority decisions continue to decimate federal authority.
3 of the 6 conservatives on the court who Trump appointed have overturned multiple separate multi-decade precedents (Roe, Chevron deference) and just recently handed a ton of power to the presidency which conveniently happens to protect Trump. This is literally one of the worst realistic case scenarios that everyone opposed to Trump said would happen if he won.
I know. I never voted for Trump. (Just barely couldn't vote 8 years back, went Democrat every time after). This is damn near worst case, but not unrecoverable.
Congress has been fucked and corrupt for years. What I'm suggesting is that the hole in legislative and regulatory power left by congress refusing to function was filled by the other branches stepping in. These ruling reopen that hole, and may cause an increased demand for congress to do their jobs.
A couple things to note, that seem to be forgotten on reddit amd by the democrats as a whole, are that the power they are giving "themsleves" can be equally siezed by the democrats and that the system is subject to mass upsets with individual action. So far, we've seen no such action recently.
> This is damn near worst case, but not unrecoverable.
I really hope not. November will be instructive to this point. And anyone who does not want hungary style authoritarian christofascism to come to the US really needs to find that excuse to vote for Biden and Democrats in November.
I plan to. And every smaller vote in between. Even if that fails, even if all the neo-facist plans come to fruition, there is hope. People die, ideas change, movements shift focus.
Work for it. Be flexible and unyeilding in the face of opposition. Be willing to make sacrifices of justice and honor if it means achieving a better future.
Too many people, especially on this website, treat defeat as final. Treat every setback and fucked development like the end of the world. They are unwilling to act beyond some small, predestined point. Unwilling to accept their role in the failures that occurs.
As is par for the course these days, people are grossly uninformed about the meaning and impact of this decision, partly because it involves a relatively nuanced area of administrative law. Before this ruling, federal courts were required to defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute if that interpretation was “reasonable.” Now, there is no agency deference—courts will have the ultimate say in determining whether an agency properly interpreted a statute when (for example) the agency promulgates a new rule or takes enforcement action. That’s it.
It’s important to understand that agencies are created by Congress and their powers are limited to whatever authority Congress delegated to the agency in the enabling legislation. So having courts independently scrutinize whether the agency has acted in accordance with the law is (in my opinion) a good thing. This ruling doesn’t prevent agencies from issuing new rules or undertaking new enforcement actions—it simply says that if an agency does that and gets challenged in court, the court will be the ultimate arbiter of whether the agency acted within its legal authority.
The problem is that a lot of the authority that Congress expects the federal agencies to have is the discretion to create and change law as science and political situation and needs of society change.
The law doesn't tell the EPA what substances are and are not atmospheric pollutants, it just empowers the agency to regulate atmospheric pollutants, and it's up to the agency to decide what those are. Whether CO2 counts as an environmental pollutant changed several times over the agency's history, and when those changes were challenged, the courts deferred to the agency's changing defintion.
But if those definitions are to be settled in court, by judges, then they can't change anymore because of stare decisis, and if some judge in the 80s ruled that CO2 wasn't a pollutant, we would be stuck with that ruling forever until there was enough impetus in Congress to spend several months of debate and review and voting and haggling over amendments to rewrite the EPA's mandate to add it explicitly.
Without Chevron, the process of securing Net Neutrality is no longer, "let's vote for Obama who will put people on the FCC who will rewrite the regulations to require Net Neutrality", now it's "we need to get a Senate supermajority and spend a massive public and private lobbying effort to get Congress to spend its limited time and energy to re-define the FCC's mandate specifically to empower it to regulate Net Neutrality and encourage it to do so to override the otherwise permanent opinion of a 75 year old judge who doesn't even know how to type"
On your point about net neutrality, I personally don’t have a problem with Congress explicitly legislating on the issue, rather than having presidential administrations implement their preferred policy every four years through unelected bureaucrats.
To your point about air pollutants—Congress actually did specify in section 112 of the CAA dozens of air pollutants that are considered hazardous.
Your broader point about agency discretion is a good one. For example, the EPA administrator is authorized to classify as criteria air pollutants those pollutants that “in his judgment, cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” To me, this isn’t a matter of statutory interpretation (which is primarily what Chevron was concerned about), but about whether the agency has enough evidence to support its determination that a particular pollutant endangers public health or welfare. If the agency has a solid administrative record supporting its finding, it will be much harder to convince a court that it’s acted outside the bounds of delegated discretion, given the broad wording in the statute.
You’re misunderstanding. Agencies don’t have “zero authority”—as I said, they have only those authorities that congress delegates to them through law. They cannot act beyond the authority that’s been granted to them. The decision reversing Chevron simply says that courts will ultimately determine whether an agency has acted within the scope of the law, when that law is ambiguous or subject to multiple interpretations.
If the courts can reject or overturn everything an agency says, then what's the purpose of the agency?
Are we still trusting the supreme court at this point?
Whats the point of the courts if an agency can just rule however they want in vague areas that might not be within their scope?
Whats the point of police and prosecutors if the courts and just reject or overturn their charges?
The specific situation sucks because it does help the "bad guys" but having a bunch of unelected agencies having legal precedent to basically make law when ever something is vague is imo not the best idea.
Take away the backdrop of this case. Imagine congress passed some laws that were vague that fell under some agency that affected your life or your freedom and the courts would not hear your case because of a this case saying they have authority on anything that is a gray area as long as its reasonable.. and let me tell you these places will make everything reasonable.
You keep talking about “the court” like it’s some monolith. There are 94 federal district courts, 13 federal appellate courts, and one Supreme Court. Are you saying we can’t trust a single member of the judiciary to faithfully interpret the laws that govern administrative agencies? I get people’s mistrust of the Supreme Court, but it hears only a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases that are pending in the federal courts each year.
The court can’t simply overturn a rule because it doesn’t like the rule. The court will examine whether the rule is within the agency’s statutory authority. If the agency is acting in accordance with the law that Congress passed, then the court has no basis to overturn the agency’s decision.
And not all the cases challenging agency decisions go to the Supreme Court. Nearly all of those cases will be heard by lower district and appellate courts throughout the country.
Yeah, that authority you're referring to that Congress delegated to them? That's what the courts just took away and gave to themselves. I don't know if you've ever read regulatory laws, but they're complex, and often involve topics the vast majority of people have a little understanding of (especially environmental ones). Take water safety laws for example. Congress passed laws that basically said "the water people drink has to be safe and not kill them". But there are thousands of chemical pollutants that can be present in water. How do we determine which of these are harmful? What levels of them are acceptable? What effects can it cause if it is present in the water? How should they be removed if they are harmful? In what way and how often should we test water for the presence of them? These are all things that require an advanced STEM degree to understand and give effective answers to; which is by Congress gave the power to determine these things to agencies staffed by experts in relevant fields. Now, instead of the safe levels of lead in your water being decided by scientists and doctors, it will be determined by a judge who may or may not have been bribed by a company that releases plenty of lead. Heck, they could even rule that "safe drinking water" is only defined as "water that does not cause immediate illness upon consumption" and say that contaminants that cause chronic illness like lead or carcinogens don't count. It's pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about.
Have you actually read the opinion? Do you know what it actually means? Or are you just tossing around terms like “environmental destruction” because those are the headlines you’re seeing in the media?
Yes, I've read it
If you don't see how removing the teeth of the agencies traditionally tasked with protecting our air, water and land will effect that, maybe you're the one who needs to read
If the court can ultimately overrule anything they decide, that means they'd be pretty ineffectual right?
The court ultimately gets to determine what power they have.
This is the problem with popular discourse surrounding this decision--people don't understand what it changed or what it means going forward and revert to simplistic platitudes that are simply incorrect.
Under our system of government, the legislature (Congress) passes laws and the courts interpret them. If a law is clear and unambiguous on its face, then the Court must interpret and apply the law according to its plain language--it cannot change or rewrite the law. So, if Congress passes a law saying the agency can or shall do X, and the agency does X, a court cannot overturn the agency's decision. Nothing about the Court's decision in Loper changes that.
What Chevron (and now Loper) deal with are situations where an agency acts under statutory authority that is ambiguous--i.e., subject to multiple reasonable interpretations. Under Chevron, the court would have to defer to the agency's interpretation of the law, so long as it was reasonable. Under Loper, there is no deference--the court is the ultimate arbiter of what the law means and authorizes. And the court could ultimately determine that, notwithstanding the law's ambiguity, the agency was nonetheless authorized to take whatever action it did. Removing judicial deference to agency interpretations of law doesn't mean agencies are powerless to act--it simply means that courts will independently review whether their action complies with the law.
Also, this is nothing new. Fundamental to the American system of government is the idea that the judiciary has authority to declare what the law is and whether the other branches of government (Congress or the Executive) are acting in accordance with the law. This goes all the way back to Marbury v. Madison shortly after the founding of the republic. And it cuts both ways--just as a court can strike down an agency's unlawful rulemaking, it can also strike down government laws, practices, or acts that unconstitutionally infringe upon citizens' civil rights. Loper just takes this fundamental component of our government and applies it to the administrative state.
I’m not trying to convert anyone. My only point is that the popular discourse on this decision is incredibly uninformed and largely rooted in people’s partisan beliefs, rather than the reality of how our government is supposed to work. It’s an important issue and it’s unfortunate that people aren’t engaging in critical thinking about what it really means and does.
Does it make you feel better that you've explained exactly the problem that we're all already talking about, but with more words?
We all understand this already... Christ...
Based on the discussion in this thread, it’s pretty obvious that very few people understand this decision.
And if you think the judiciary interpreting the law is a problem…you need a lesson in remedial civics.
Almost certainly not. A lot of Executive Orders have relied on Chevron Deference for their legality.
The doctrine of Chevron Deference was that when Congress writes a law empowering or delegating authority to an executive or independent federal agency, the courts should *defer* to the agency itself to interpret its own mandate.
So in order for a regulation to be overturned in court, assuming it doesn't touch any other areas of law like civil rights, the argument against the regulation's legality needs to be so strong that no reasonable person would interpret the law as allowing them to act that way, which is called "overcoming chevron" or "waiving chevron".
Without chevron deference, the executive branch and other federal agencies' wiggle room in the laws is at the whim of whatever judge most recently looked at it. The FCC no longer gets to decide whether internet-over-coax counts as a "telecommunication service" or not, which it has changed its mind back and forth on several times, a judge gets to do that now.
Republicans are fucking terrorists.
Yes
Both sides are jerking eachother off under the table... wake up kid
idk that would imply they're outside the government not inside it
All this because one guy won the presidency with a minority of votes in 2016. Crazy
Don't forget Mitch McConnell, who blocked a hearing and vote for Garland's appointment to the USSC.
Don’t forget RBG not retiring when she should have as well.
May I have more mercury fish in my Mississippi River please? Can the algae blooms please be more bloomy? I want my local trout streams full of shit and that pretty sheen of fuels and oils.
#MORE PFAS IN MY DRINKING WATER
Forever chemical me alt-right daddy!
I don't know about you, but I just love skies full of leaded gasoline and iron shavings in my bread.
This is why republicans on the river confuse me. They spend all their time on public land(water preserves) then vote for guys that want to sell it off.
I wager they don’t think that far ahead. They are in an abused relationship and think it won’t happen to them. When it does, it’s always the other party because they live and breathe denial. I don’t think it’s possible to break this programming anymore. I just hope enough die off to allow our children and grandchildren to have better lives. I have two girls and their fates stress me out every day.
This seems to be truly the most important election of our lifetime. Make a voting plan early! :) **Register To Vote or Check Wisconsin Voter Registration Status here:** https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/
This is the exact right response. Make a plan to vote. Make a plan for your friends and family to vote. Volunteer. Donate if you can. Only by being an engaged citizen can we actually improve our lives and push back on this right wing nonsense.
It's OK everyone. Corporations always do what's right!!! /s
Removing protections/regulations tells me that conservatives couldn't care less about the health and safety of any living creature, let alone human beings. So why do so many buy their bee ess?
As to how the state regulations are impacted by federal regulations remains a question. Wisconsin regulations are by and large managed by state agencies that work in tandem with federal agencies, but there could still be residual impacts. In my opinion the Supreme Court's ruling is wholly irresponsible for eliminating the Chevron doctrine. I mean, there were solid arguments about how courts shouldn't just let agencies defer to any interpretation of the regulations without solid reasoning for the regulation (for example, the DEA and its scheduling of drugs methodology), but also at the same time government has functioned as if the Chevron doctrine were a solid set in stone document so 40 years of standard practice has now been uprooted. Every regulation being subject to congressional oversight invites dozens and dozens of lawsuits, which will make the government work even less efficiently than it already is. And knowing how bloodthirsty far right conservatives are these days, they will launch lawsuit after lawsuit and congest the court system.
A lot of how our federal system works is the federal government hands chunks of money to states and says "You can have this money if you do these things with it". So for many things there isn't necessarily a state regulation in place, they're just following the federal rules. And it's not even just government that will work less efficiently. It adds a lot of uncertainty for business that can't rely on the administrative law being steady.
Lets go back to tradition end the EPA! I want more dead Eagles and other apex avian predaters, i want rain that kills the plants, I want to get a sunburn quicker, I want air to hurt my lungs and be colorful, and most importantly I want my local river to lite on FIRE. /s This list is all kept out of reality by the EPA. Relevant regulations to this horrific list: DDT (makes bird eggs soft), sulfer emissions making acid rain specificly coal and diesel (def), ozone destruction from certain refridgerants and spray cans, NOX pollution (catalytic converters and fossil emissions), and finally oil in wastewater limitations which actually did lite rivers on fire (see Cuyahoga River).
Republicans simply want the rich to get richer while the rest of us watch the world burn. Is that so awful?
This is really, really awful
That's been the point for decades. Regulations bad, free market good. Except for workers, the environment, the American dream, POC, anyone who is against anything they don't agree with.
I might point out that there's some decent rational behind the ruling. If we wanted something better than we should be pushing our legislator to actually make laws for it. Personally I think the supreme courts upheaval will net positive in the long run, because we're more likely to get these rules and laws on the book properly rather than depending on organisations outside the democratic process like the various offices within the executive branch. That is not to day I like the immediate consequences. At all. I am in fact, very concerned.
The agencies are subject to oversight by congress, so if they’re failing at that, then I have no optimism about them making better laws. Worse, as a practical matter trying to get too specific in statute (or US Code) just leaves more room for bad actors to avoid the rules. Legislatures are slow and filled with non-experts, so they’re often bad at regulation anyway. Agencies, with proper oversight, can have experts in the field and move faster (though they can still be sluggish). The SC needs to reform itself before levying judgment on other branches. It is out of touch, corrupt, and lacking in any democratic legitimacy. The court is supposed to be wise and above the day to day fray of politics, not completely divorced from the reality of the nation they are governing.
Again, the reason I said I think this will net positive is that it will place more pressure on the legislator to legislate. With the regulatory agencies doing all the rule making congress has gotten away bickering and making political grandstands. As things get worse more pressure will be placed upon the to fix things. It's slower, but more perminate. As for the supreme court. It is fucked. Especially right now. As far as I can tell the US is build to operate with at least 1/3 of the governemt not corrupt, run well with at least 2/3 not corrupt. To better ensure this they set things up with 3 different methods of selecting whose in charge. Right now the supreme court is more corrupt. But they're operating on the same methods they did when they enshrined all the polices to begin with. Their rational aren't unreasonable either. The results bad, but if you are leaning into the law as an absolute not invalid. I'm not sure how we could reasonably establish a stable, safe, and democratic system for the SC or even the lower courts without risking a lot. Frankly, it might just be easier to legalize dueling and let the extremists sort it out.
Many legislators don’t want to legislate. They want outdated or non-existent protections for the commoners. For the court, I’ve been a fan of proposals like ever term a president appoints two justices and the oldest cycle out.
Then in conditions where legislation is required those legislators are more likely to be replaced. Under the prior conditions the executive and judicial branches had moved to fill in.
Then in conditions where legislation is required those legislators are more likely to be replaced. Under the prior conditions the executive and judicial branches had moved to fill in.
Since there aren’t many single-issue OSHA voters, for example, a legislator may have a terrible safety record but stay in power through other issues, such as tax policy or culture wars. Throw in a pinch of gerrymandering and even if a majority of voters want better safety regulations, they won’t happen through legislation. In an ideal world legislatures would do more, but they’ll never be an effective way to do all the governing needed in a modern world.
Congress is broken because of the filibuster and the Senate may never pass an important piece of legislation again in the current political climate/alignment. SCOTUS and in particular there the conservatives on the court know this, which is why they issued a ruling that will give them defacto final say over whatever they want the law to be when each case comes in front of them. The fact they overturned *another* decades long precedent while explicitly stating that all previous decisions based on it will not be revisited is as naked an admission as possible that they are taking the simplest, most straightforward route to this end. If they were consistent they would have stated that the old rulings were all subject to review, but they're not because... Reasons. Lobbying our legislators to pass legislation won't work because half of them (Republicans) only want to break government and let the conservative supreme court dictate everything. Republican senators are perfectly happy to obstruct and let 6-3 majority decisions continue to decimate federal authority. 3 of the 6 conservatives on the court who Trump appointed have overturned multiple separate multi-decade precedents (Roe, Chevron deference) and just recently handed a ton of power to the presidency which conveniently happens to protect Trump. This is literally one of the worst realistic case scenarios that everyone opposed to Trump said would happen if he won.
I know. I never voted for Trump. (Just barely couldn't vote 8 years back, went Democrat every time after). This is damn near worst case, but not unrecoverable. Congress has been fucked and corrupt for years. What I'm suggesting is that the hole in legislative and regulatory power left by congress refusing to function was filled by the other branches stepping in. These ruling reopen that hole, and may cause an increased demand for congress to do their jobs. A couple things to note, that seem to be forgotten on reddit amd by the democrats as a whole, are that the power they are giving "themsleves" can be equally siezed by the democrats and that the system is subject to mass upsets with individual action. So far, we've seen no such action recently.
> This is damn near worst case, but not unrecoverable. I really hope not. November will be instructive to this point. And anyone who does not want hungary style authoritarian christofascism to come to the US really needs to find that excuse to vote for Biden and Democrats in November.
I plan to. And every smaller vote in between. Even if that fails, even if all the neo-facist plans come to fruition, there is hope. People die, ideas change, movements shift focus. Work for it. Be flexible and unyeilding in the face of opposition. Be willing to make sacrifices of justice and honor if it means achieving a better future. Too many people, especially on this website, treat defeat as final. Treat every setback and fucked development like the end of the world. They are unwilling to act beyond some small, predestined point. Unwilling to accept their role in the failures that occurs.
As is par for the course these days, people are grossly uninformed about the meaning and impact of this decision, partly because it involves a relatively nuanced area of administrative law. Before this ruling, federal courts were required to defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute if that interpretation was “reasonable.” Now, there is no agency deference—courts will have the ultimate say in determining whether an agency properly interpreted a statute when (for example) the agency promulgates a new rule or takes enforcement action. That’s it. It’s important to understand that agencies are created by Congress and their powers are limited to whatever authority Congress delegated to the agency in the enabling legislation. So having courts independently scrutinize whether the agency has acted in accordance with the law is (in my opinion) a good thing. This ruling doesn’t prevent agencies from issuing new rules or undertaking new enforcement actions—it simply says that if an agency does that and gets challenged in court, the court will be the ultimate arbiter of whether the agency acted within its legal authority.
The problem is that a lot of the authority that Congress expects the federal agencies to have is the discretion to create and change law as science and political situation and needs of society change. The law doesn't tell the EPA what substances are and are not atmospheric pollutants, it just empowers the agency to regulate atmospheric pollutants, and it's up to the agency to decide what those are. Whether CO2 counts as an environmental pollutant changed several times over the agency's history, and when those changes were challenged, the courts deferred to the agency's changing defintion. But if those definitions are to be settled in court, by judges, then they can't change anymore because of stare decisis, and if some judge in the 80s ruled that CO2 wasn't a pollutant, we would be stuck with that ruling forever until there was enough impetus in Congress to spend several months of debate and review and voting and haggling over amendments to rewrite the EPA's mandate to add it explicitly. Without Chevron, the process of securing Net Neutrality is no longer, "let's vote for Obama who will put people on the FCC who will rewrite the regulations to require Net Neutrality", now it's "we need to get a Senate supermajority and spend a massive public and private lobbying effort to get Congress to spend its limited time and energy to re-define the FCC's mandate specifically to empower it to regulate Net Neutrality and encourage it to do so to override the otherwise permanent opinion of a 75 year old judge who doesn't even know how to type"
On your point about net neutrality, I personally don’t have a problem with Congress explicitly legislating on the issue, rather than having presidential administrations implement their preferred policy every four years through unelected bureaucrats. To your point about air pollutants—Congress actually did specify in section 112 of the CAA dozens of air pollutants that are considered hazardous. Your broader point about agency discretion is a good one. For example, the EPA administrator is authorized to classify as criteria air pollutants those pollutants that “in his judgment, cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” To me, this isn’t a matter of statutory interpretation (which is primarily what Chevron was concerned about), but about whether the agency has enough evidence to support its determination that a particular pollutant endangers public health or welfare. If the agency has a solid administrative record supporting its finding, it will be much harder to convince a court that it’s acted outside the bounds of delegated discretion, given the broad wording in the statute.
So what's the point of having agencies if their authority is zero?
You’re misunderstanding. Agencies don’t have “zero authority”—as I said, they have only those authorities that congress delegates to them through law. They cannot act beyond the authority that’s been granted to them. The decision reversing Chevron simply says that courts will ultimately determine whether an agency has acted within the scope of the law, when that law is ambiguous or subject to multiple interpretations.
If the courts can reject or overturn everything an agency says, then what's the purpose of the agency? Are we still trusting the supreme court at this point?
Whats the point of the courts if an agency can just rule however they want in vague areas that might not be within their scope? Whats the point of police and prosecutors if the courts and just reject or overturn their charges? The specific situation sucks because it does help the "bad guys" but having a bunch of unelected agencies having legal precedent to basically make law when ever something is vague is imo not the best idea. Take away the backdrop of this case. Imagine congress passed some laws that were vague that fell under some agency that affected your life or your freedom and the courts would not hear your case because of a this case saying they have authority on anything that is a gray area as long as its reasonable.. and let me tell you these places will make everything reasonable.
I can't believe people are still trusting the court
You keep talking about “the court” like it’s some monolith. There are 94 federal district courts, 13 federal appellate courts, and one Supreme Court. Are you saying we can’t trust a single member of the judiciary to faithfully interpret the laws that govern administrative agencies? I get people’s mistrust of the Supreme Court, but it hears only a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases that are pending in the federal courts each year.
The court can’t simply overturn a rule because it doesn’t like the rule. The court will examine whether the rule is within the agency’s statutory authority. If the agency is acting in accordance with the law that Congress passed, then the court has no basis to overturn the agency’s decision. And not all the cases challenging agency decisions go to the Supreme Court. Nearly all of those cases will be heard by lower district and appellate courts throughout the country.
> The court can’t simply overturn a rule because it doesn’t like the rule. Why not? They've proven they can absolutely do that
Yeah, that authority you're referring to that Congress delegated to them? That's what the courts just took away and gave to themselves. I don't know if you've ever read regulatory laws, but they're complex, and often involve topics the vast majority of people have a little understanding of (especially environmental ones). Take water safety laws for example. Congress passed laws that basically said "the water people drink has to be safe and not kill them". But there are thousands of chemical pollutants that can be present in water. How do we determine which of these are harmful? What levels of them are acceptable? What effects can it cause if it is present in the water? How should they be removed if they are harmful? In what way and how often should we test water for the presence of them? These are all things that require an advanced STEM degree to understand and give effective answers to; which is by Congress gave the power to determine these things to agencies staffed by experts in relevant fields. Now, instead of the safe levels of lead in your water being decided by scientists and doctors, it will be determined by a judge who may or may not have been bribed by a company that releases plenty of lead. Heck, they could even rule that "safe drinking water" is only defined as "water that does not cause immediate illness upon consumption" and say that contaminants that cause chronic illness like lead or carcinogens don't count. It's pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about.
I think this could go both ways.
Environmental destruction or.... What else do you see happening?
Have you actually read the opinion? Do you know what it actually means? Or are you just tossing around terms like “environmental destruction” because those are the headlines you’re seeing in the media?
Yes, I've read it If you don't see how removing the teeth of the agencies traditionally tasked with protecting our air, water and land will effect that, maybe you're the one who needs to read
Explain to me how the ruling “removes the teeth” of those agencies.
If the court can ultimately overrule anything they decide, that means they'd be pretty ineffectual right? The court ultimately gets to determine what power they have.
This is the problem with popular discourse surrounding this decision--people don't understand what it changed or what it means going forward and revert to simplistic platitudes that are simply incorrect. Under our system of government, the legislature (Congress) passes laws and the courts interpret them. If a law is clear and unambiguous on its face, then the Court must interpret and apply the law according to its plain language--it cannot change or rewrite the law. So, if Congress passes a law saying the agency can or shall do X, and the agency does X, a court cannot overturn the agency's decision. Nothing about the Court's decision in Loper changes that. What Chevron (and now Loper) deal with are situations where an agency acts under statutory authority that is ambiguous--i.e., subject to multiple reasonable interpretations. Under Chevron, the court would have to defer to the agency's interpretation of the law, so long as it was reasonable. Under Loper, there is no deference--the court is the ultimate arbiter of what the law means and authorizes. And the court could ultimately determine that, notwithstanding the law's ambiguity, the agency was nonetheless authorized to take whatever action it did. Removing judicial deference to agency interpretations of law doesn't mean agencies are powerless to act--it simply means that courts will independently review whether their action complies with the law. Also, this is nothing new. Fundamental to the American system of government is the idea that the judiciary has authority to declare what the law is and whether the other branches of government (Congress or the Executive) are acting in accordance with the law. This goes all the way back to Marbury v. Madison shortly after the founding of the republic. And it cuts both ways--just as a court can strike down an agency's unlawful rulemaking, it can also strike down government laws, practices, or acts that unconstitutionally infringe upon citizens' civil rights. Loper just takes this fundamental component of our government and applies it to the administrative state.
There's always one guy who explains how things are working exactly as they should haha Go convert someone else
I’m not trying to convert anyone. My only point is that the popular discourse on this decision is incredibly uninformed and largely rooted in people’s partisan beliefs, rather than the reality of how our government is supposed to work. It’s an important issue and it’s unfortunate that people aren’t engaging in critical thinking about what it really means and does.
Does it make you feel better that you've explained exactly the problem that we're all already talking about, but with more words? We all understand this already... Christ...
Based on the discussion in this thread, it’s pretty obvious that very few people understand this decision. And if you think the judiciary interpreting the law is a problem…you need a lesson in remedial civics.
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Executive orders are only temporary though
Almost certainly not. A lot of Executive Orders have relied on Chevron Deference for their legality. The doctrine of Chevron Deference was that when Congress writes a law empowering or delegating authority to an executive or independent federal agency, the courts should *defer* to the agency itself to interpret its own mandate. So in order for a regulation to be overturned in court, assuming it doesn't touch any other areas of law like civil rights, the argument against the regulation's legality needs to be so strong that no reasonable person would interpret the law as allowing them to act that way, which is called "overcoming chevron" or "waiving chevron". Without chevron deference, the executive branch and other federal agencies' wiggle room in the laws is at the whim of whatever judge most recently looked at it. The FCC no longer gets to decide whether internet-over-coax counts as a "telecommunication service" or not, which it has changed its mind back and forth on several times, a judge gets to do that now.