SCOTUS Gutting Chevron Doctrine Is As Bad As It Sounds

LOADING ERROR LOADING This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. Friday’s ruling upended what’s called the “Chevron doctrine,” a long-standing legal principle that gave federal agencies broad discretion to interpret the instructions Congress hands them for writing rules and regulations. Under the Chevron doctrine, which dates back to a 1984 Supreme Court ruling involving the Chevron oil company, agencies had wide leeway to interpret lawmakers’ instructions and proceed accordingly. As Paul explains in his analysis, the decision represents “a major power grab by the judicial branch, which will now play a bigger role as the final arbiter over which new regulations are allowed to stand and which will be struck down.” Friday’s ruling comes just one day after yet another opinion limiting the power of federal agencies, and two years after a major case that restricted the EPA’s authority. “After forty years of Chevron deference, the Supreme Court made it clear today that our system of government leaves no room for an unelected bureaucracy to co-opt this authority for itself.” But judges have even more freedom to defy public opinion, as this conservative court has done a lot lately ― most famously two years ago in its Dobbs decision, which eliminated the federally guaranteed right to abortion.