Last month’s demise of the judicial Chevron deference doctrine has been well chronicled. In Loper Bright Enterprises, the Supreme Court left no doubt that a federal court reviewing an agency’s interpretation of a statute can no longer base its decision upon a presumption of the agency’s rationality amidst congressional silence.

Citing sources as varied as Marbury v. Madison, the Federalist Papers, and decades old law review articles, the 6-person majority ruled that the Administrative Procedure Act precluded any judicial presumption of superior agency judgment. The decision thus provided the Court’s high note to its battle cry against the “administrative state” sounding since 2022.