@Leseerlaubnis:
This is a disaster for every modern society.
Back to the old days where the priests had the final say.
Canada is not much better, our lying supreme court (7/9 judges appointed by Steve Harper) put the oil and gas industry (AER, 100% financed and controlled by the industry it self regulates) above the law in Ernst vs AER, granting it immunity even for violating the charter, Canada’s top law.
Politicians plunk like minded and extreme worshipping judges to the bench in Canada too:
Emily Galvin-Almanza@GalvinAlmanza:
It’s a great moment to explain that the law is just humans in rooms. Not magic or eternal, just people in special outfits and special titles, and remind students that we can’t just try to understand what the law is, we have to talk expansively about what it could become.
Lynda hates GOP thugs@IvanasStairCam:
I’m so fucking tired of listening to lawyers. Will we take it to the streets before the Extreme Court makes protesting illegal?Too late, Felonius Trump will do it, while Biden is still Pres.
Galling and pathetic.
Judges hatch from lawyers, which are not more competent, educated or intelligent than specialists in medicine and environmental/climate/w sciences, etc. In my experience, too many lawyers – notably those privileged by big money or being old white men in racist misogynistic North America – are limited in their thinking via egos bigger than brains, trained by law schools and the status quo, to do as the rich demand, not what justice demands.
Art Berman@aeberman12 June 28, 2024:
“This decision will profoundly undermine bedrock laws like the Clean Air Act that are meant to protect public health.”
–Union of Concerned Scientists
Art Berman@aeberman12 June 29, 2024:
… The Chevron decision is a win for law & another massive loss for the ecosystem—the basis of human survival & prosperity.
Steve Kennedy@skennedy2504:
Having worked in both science and the law, I really can’t emphasize enough how insane it is for judges to have the final word on any kind of science policy
Robert Reich@RBReich:
Clarence Thomas reversed his position on the Chevron doctrine after receiving gifts from billionaires with ties to orgs who wanted it overturned.
His wife’s nonprofit also received cash from a conservative group pushing for the change.
Our highest court is beyond compromised.
Dr. Robert Rohde@RARohde:
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Chevron deference may seem wonky, but it is a nuclear bomb in the war on expertise.
Judges, often with no technical expertise to speak of, will be empowered to second-guess every technical decision from the FDA, EPA, etc.
Dr. Sandra Steingraber @ssteingraber1:
What I want my reproductive rights friends to understand: overthrowing Chevron = overthrowing Roe. You know how our lives are jeopardized bc judges don’t understand fallopian tubes? Now they get to know better than EPA scientists how much, say, benzene exposure is ok for you.
The courts used to defer to medical/scientific expertise. If your OB GYN said pregnancy termination is recommended to safeguard your health, the courts didn’t assume they knew better. Ditto regulatory agency scientists who say “actually lead paint is bad for kids at all levels.”
@democracynow:
The Supreme Court’s “Chevron” ruling Friday guts decades of precedent that gave federal agencies the authority to regulate public health, the environment, worker protections and more. Former EPA official Mustafa Ali (@EJinAction) calls it a “devastating decision.”
The Supreme Court’s overturning of “Chevron v. NRDC” is a “power grab,” says @ElieNYC.
“It’s taking power out of our hands, out of the democracy’s hands, and putting it in the hands of the court.”Yes, it’s taking power away from the people but it’s putting that power into the hands of the rich, rape religions, notably the catholic church and corporations. The religious judges on SCOTUS are nobodies, little pawns to be used by fascism and spat out when no longer useful.
Randall S@ShabbyShambles:
SCOTUS have been doing this ever since Barret another catholic, with a big oil daddywas put on the court. It isn’t just Roe, its everything.
The SCOTUS catholic majority are simply doing what their rich masters (the kid-raping misogynistic rich and catholic church and polluting health-harming corporations) demand in exchange for the dirty lying fuckers being plunked on America’s highest court. Tit for tat, with much worse ahead like granting immunity to felon madman pedophile Trump (while I bet never allowing the same immunity for sane Democrat presidents) and putting rights of mass murdering Israelis and their terrorist fake christian evangelical Zionists (many of whom are anti-semitic) above rights of Americans.
And why Steve Harper’s past (and future under the Picklehead) fascist rule of Canada will harm us and our land, water, air, wildlife etc. for decades to come, via his like minded misogynistic anti-science judges. Good thing Russ Brown’s unscrupulous “creepy” behaviour led to him step down from the lying supreme court of Canada. One down, endless more inappropriate judges to go, notably the lying pro-genocidal Zionist ones.
Grace Alexander@GraceAl38236563:
“Science: How Hard Can It Be, Really?”
Signed,
Justice Roberts — History major
Alito — Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Thomas — English Literature
Gorsuch — Political Science
Kavanaugh — History
Coney-Barrett — English Literature
Petzie (AMW)@AmwPetzie:
This is a devastating decision for Democracy.That’s the intention. Just wait until Trump and Picklehead are put into position by their rich masters and Harper and his evil white supremacist pro polluter fascist women-hating IDU
SCOTUS Overturns Chevron: Guts Federal Environmental Protections by theenergyage, June 29, 2024
The Supreme Court overturns Chevron doctrine, gutting federal environmental protections, Scrapping the legal precedent could send a “convulsive shock” to decades of federal environmental, financial, and healthcare regulations by Jake Bittle & Zoya Teirstein, June 28, 2024, Grist
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 according to their expertise and scientific evidence. The impact of the decision to scrap the so-called Chevron deference will take years to become clear, but it could allow for far more legal challenges against regulations by agencies like the EPA and the Department of the Interior that have a huge role in the climate fight.
Federal courts have long deferred to federal agencies to interpret laws that are unclear and need further clarification. In 1984, a shorthanded Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that federal agencies have the final say on ambiguous policies, which allowed those agencies broad authority to make decisions without fear of judicial override.
In Supreme Court filings, the Biden administration said 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 who live and breathe the science, financial principles, and safety concerns that federal agencies specialize in,” Kym Meyer, the 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 big cases involving the executive branch; Roberts noted during the oral arguments for the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case, also on the docket this session, that the court has gone “14 or 16” years since issuing a decision citing the Chevron precedent. Instead, the court in several recent decisions has outlined its own standard for evaluating regulations. This standard, which the court’s conservative justices call the “major questions doctrine,” prohibits agencies from making rules on issues of “economic and political magnitude” without clear directives from Congress. The court has never outlined what constitutes an issue of such magnitude, but it cited the “major questions” test in a landmark 2022 case that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Lower courts, however, still cite the Chevron deference in many cases, and federal agencies win most of them: An analysis of more than 1,500 circuit court decisions between 2003 and 2013 found that courts applied Chevron in 77 percent of regulatory disputes, and that agencies won many more of cases than they did cases where courts did not use Chevron. The Department of the Interior, which handles many issues related to climate change, oil leasing, endangered species, and Indigenous affairs, was one of the agencies that relied on Chevron the most.
The Biden administration and numerous legal scholars had urged the court to keep the precedent in place, arguing that overturning it would create regulatory chaos as hundreds of plaintiffs sued to challenge past rules. In his decision, Roberts rebuffed the idea that the court’s move to throw out Chevron would cause a deluge of lawsuits against past regulation, saying 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 of that claim, saying she found the majority too “sanguine” about the impact of tossing Chevron, 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, the 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, which means they may be in the position of making more policy choices.”
The main case in question this year, Loper Bright, concerned a National Marine Fisheries Service regulation that requires herring fishers to pay for monitors on their boats. The underlying law in question provides for monitors to ride on boats and make sure fishermen aren’t overfishing, but it doesn’t say whether the government can require fishing boat companies to pay for them. A commercial fishing company represented by lawyers who have ties to conservative energy billionaire Charles Koch’s political organization is suing to overturn the monitor rule — and also asking the court to throw out the Chevron standard altogether.
The original Chevron decision upheld an attempt to weaken environmental regulations, rather than strengthen them. The Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan sought to loosen the standard for calculating air pollution emissions from industrial facilities, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, sued to argue that the EPA didn’t have the authority to offer a new interpretation of the Clean Air Act. NRDC won at first, but Chevron appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which sided with Reagan’s EPA.
But over the past decade, many conservatives have come to believe that the precedent allows the executive branch to overreach its authority, and overturning it has become a rallying cry for many right-wing activists and legal scholars.
“There’s a feeling that Chevron favors regulation,” said Burger. “And if you take away the deference and you give power to courts, then the increasing number of conservative judges in the federal court system have more authority, and that’s going to have the effect of chilling agencies.”
SCOTUS Decision (114-page PDF) Download
“Today’s ruling sidelines the role of agency expertise, and instead shifts power to judges who do not have the expertise of agency staff who live and breathe the science, financial principles, and safety concerns that federal agencies specialize in.”Kym Meyer, the litigation director for the Southern Environmental Law Center
An analysis of more than 1,500 circuit court decisions between 2003 and 2013 found that courts applied Chevron in 77 percent of regulatory disputes, and that agencies won many more of cases than they did cases where courts did not use Chevron. The Department of the Interior, which handles many issues related to climate change, oil leasing, endangered species, and Indigenous affairs, was one of the agencies that relied on Chevron the most. Full story
Dissenting Opinion
JUSTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE JACKSON join dissenting (begins on page 82 of 114-page PDF)
“That rule has formed the backdrop against which Congress, courts, and agencies—as well as regulated parties and the public—all have operated for decades. It has been applied in thousands of judicial decisions. It has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds—to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest.”
More
Supreme Court overturns 1984 Chevron precedent, curbing power of federal government
The 6-3 ruling, overturning a precedent from 1984, will shift the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches and hands an important victory to conservatives who have sought for years to rein in the regulatory authority of the “administrative state.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that “Republican-backed special interests have repeatedly turned to the Supreme Court” and that “once again, the Supreme Court has decided in the favor of special interests.”
What SCOTUS just did to broadband, the right to repair, the environment, and more
By overturning Chevron, the Supreme Court has declared war on an administrative state that touches everything from net neutrality to climate change. The same bloc of six conservative justices that formed the majority in West Virginia v. EPA also overturned the longstanding precedent of Roe v. Wade — an even older case than Chevron — in the same month. When two cases calling for an end to Chevron deference worked their way up to the Supreme Court this year, the writing was on the wall — and once again, those same six justices overturned Chevron.
Supreme Court just made it harder for federal agencies to regulate in sweeping ruling
Writing for the court’s conservative supermajority, Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly overturned a 40-year-old precedent that had instructed lower court judges to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous federal statutes. Acknowledging that some of the court’s most conservative members had initially proposed or embraced that idea, Roberts said that time and experience had proved the approach “unwise,” “misguided,” and “unworkable.”
Supreme Court guts agency power in seismic Chevron ruling
Roberts noted the court’s decision did not call into question prior cases that relied on Chevron, including holdings pertaining to the Clean Air Act, because they “are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology.” Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissenting opinion, wrote that “In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden — involving the meaning of regulatory law.”
The decision is the latest upending longstanding precedents
The court has now overturned major precedents in each of the last three terms: on abortion in 2022, on affirmative action in 2023 and now on the power of administrative agencies. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said the ruling amounted to the Supreme Court’s latest judicial power grab. “A rule of judicial humility,” she wrote, “gives way to a rule of judicial hubris.”
Supreme Court Chevron ruling hamstrings the executive branch
“What this case does is it massively deregulates courts,” James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, said of Friday’s decision. “So now that the Supreme Court has given the lower courts all this extra leash to second-guess agency decisions, the question is what do they do with it?” He noted that former President Donald Trump prioritized stocking the federal courts with conservative judges — including three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Chevron.
Justices Limit Power of Federal Agencies, Imperiling an Array of Regulations
A foundational 1984 decision had required courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes, underpinning regulations on health care, safety and the environment. There have been 70 Supreme Court decisions relying on Chevron, along with 17,000 in the lower courts. The decision is all but certain to prompt challenges to the actions of an array of federal agencies, including those regulating the environment, health care and consumer safety.
Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
Overview
Oral Argument – February 29, 1984
Refer also to: