Just days before Neil Gorsuch will plunge into the U.S. Supreme Court's menu of regulatory challenges, a Washington federal appeals judge on Tuesday turned to the newest justice to bolster her own concerns about the deference that courts give to agencies' interpretation of their rules.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in the case Waterkeeper Alliance v. Environmental Protection Agency, took up a challenge to an environmental rule about certain reporting requirements associated with the air pollutants from animal waste. (Spoiler alert: the agency lost. The court vacated the rule.)

The resolution of the case gave the panel judges another chance—a regular trip in the D.C. Circuit—to turn to the bedrock 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. That ruling said judges must defer to an agency's interpretation of any ambiguity in the law. This seminal case has received substantial newfound attention—Gorsuch is famously opposed to the Chevron ruling, which he has called a “judge-made doctrine for the abdication of the judicial duty.”