A little fish at the Supreme Court could take a big bite out of regulatory power

WASHINGTON — Business and conservative interest groups that want to limit the power of federal regulators think they have a winner in the Atlantic herring and the boats that sweep the modest fish into their holds by the millions. David Doniger, a senior lawyer for the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said the real agenda of Chevron opponents is “to hobble modern government.” The Supreme Court could limit the damage, but it’s unclear it will, Doniger said. Health care groups led by the American Cancer Society warn of “the tremendous disruption that overruling Chevron would cause to publicly funded health insurance programs specifically, to the stability of this country’s health care system generally, and to the health and wellbeing of the patients and consumers we serve.” Defenders of the decision may face a difficult climb. Gorsuch, as an appeals court judge, noted that court decisions “permit executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design.” The public face of the court fight is the fishermen who ply the waters off the East Coast for herring and other fish. The Supreme Court itself hasn’t invoked the Chevron decision since Trump’s justices began arriving on the court in 2017, the first year of the Republican’s administration.