The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favour of a group of fishermen who had challenged a decades-old law. Legal Principles They say this gives the administrative state too much power over their business.
In a 6-2 decision, in which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate, the majority of the Court held that the federal rule promulgated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which requires fishermen to pay $700 a day for “marine surveillance,” is outside the limits set by Congress for the federal agency.
Judges In January, arguments were heard in two cases stemming from lawsuits brought by New Jersey fishermen and Rhode Island herring fishermen challenging NOAA’s rule, which they said threatened to ruin their livelihoods.
The court’s decision rejected what is known as the Chevron Doctrine — a legal principle established in the 1980s that says if a federal regulation is challenged, courts should accept the agency’s interpretation of whether Congress gave it the authority to issue the rule, as long as the agency’s interpretation is reasonable and Congress hasn’t directly answered the question.
“The Chevron case is dismissed,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s majority.
He wrote, “Courts must exercise independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the executive branch’s judgment can help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect that authority while also ensuring that the agency acts within it.”
“But courts are not required to, and under the APA they cannot, accept an agency’s interpretation of a law simply because the law is ambiguous,” he added.
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He said Chevron was “a judicial invention that caused judges to neglect their statutory duties.”
“And the only way to ensure that the law will not just change randomly, but evolve in a principled and sensible way,” he said, citing Vasquez v. Hillery, “is for us to leave Chevron behind.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a separate concurrence that Chevron deference “permits the executive branch to exercise powers not granted to it.”
“The Chevron honor was not a ‘harmless transfer of power,'” Thomas wrote.
He added, “‘The Constitution has carefully placed structural constraints on the three branches, and the exercise of power free from these constraints destroys the structure the Constitution’s ratifiers designed.’ In particular, the Founders envisioned that ‘the courts would check the executive by enforcing the correct interpretation of the law.'”
He said, “Chevron was a fundamental disruption of our separation of powers. It improperly usurped judicial power from the courts by increasing the power of executive agencies. By striking down Chevron, we restore this aspect of the separation of powers.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch also wrote a separate concurrence, stating, “Today, the Court is placing a tombstone on Chevron that no one can ignore. In doing so, the Court returns judges to the interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the nation’s founding.”
Fishermen from New England and New Jersey rallied outside the Supreme Court Wednesday morning. (New Civil Liberties Alliance and Cause of Action)
These cases were seen as a David vs. Goliath contest between East Coast fishermen and the power of the federal government.
Fishermen argued that the cost of mandatory sea patrols reduces their business by 20%.
Jerry Lyman, CEO of the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association (NEFSA), applauded Friday’s decision, saying: “Federal officials typically ignore the reasonable concerns expressed by American fishermen about excessive regulation.”
“We are grateful to the Supreme Court for stopping this trend. And we are especially grateful to the fisherman-plaintiffs of Relentless and Loper Bright, who have spent years fighting for their brother and sister fishermen everywhere.”
Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued on behalf of the fishermen, said the court’s ruling “ends an interpretive method that for too long has seriously distorted the way the political branches have operated. Courts should ask what the law means, not whether it is vague, and in close cases, the onus should be on citizens, not the government.”
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Members of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association protest outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday. (New Civil Liberties Alliance and Cause of Action)
“We are gratified that the Court has restored the Constitutionally prescribed separation of powers,” he said.
Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the majority, stating that the Chevron Rule “has formed the backdrop against which Congress, courts, and agencies—as well as regulated parties and the public—have all operated for decades. It has been applied in thousands of judicial decisions.” Jackson joined the dissent only with regard to the Relentless case.
“It has become part of the fabric of modern government, supporting all sorts of regulatory efforts — like keeping the air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest,” Kagan said.
“Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of any political branch of government,” Kagan wrote, citing the Chevron case decided nearly 40 years ago.
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“Those were the days when we knew what we didn’t. When we knew what happened between the courts and the agencies, Congress generally considered the agencies to be the better choice for resolving ambiguities and filling gaps in regulatory statutes,” he said.
He added, “Because the agencies are ‘experts in the field.’ And because they are part of a political branch that claims to make international policy. And because Congress has tasked them, not us, with enforcing laws that involve open questions.”
He added, “Fundamentally, Chevron aims to honor the allocation of responsibility — delegating primary authority over regulatory matters to the agencies, not the courts.”
William Lane, a partner at Wiley Rein LLP and a former Justice Department official, called the decision “a major victory for Americans seeking to challenge the federal government in court.”
Lane said in a statement to Fox News Digital, “Chevron gave the government a huge advantage over private parties. When I was a DOJ lawyer, I could tell judges, ‘It doesn’t matter whether the other side has a good interpretation of an ambiguous law — we have a reasonable interpretation too, so you have to listen to us.'”
“The government can’t make that argument anymore. The Supreme Court has just leveled the playing field, which is very good news for anyone concerned about government overreach,” he said.
