As many prepare for summer getaways, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023-24 term has left us with some not-so-light beach reading. Although much of the media focus has centered on the court overruling Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, that decision was part of a larger constellation of opinions that promises to reshape administrative law in the United States for decades to come. And this legal transformation is taking place at the same time that significant government regulations are being challenged, including the U.S. Department of Labor’s final rules increasing the salary levels for the so-called “white collar” exemptions and classifying workers as independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act as well as myriad other regulations issued by the Federal Trade Commission and National Labor Relations Board, just to name a few.

Relying on the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Justice John Roberts writing for the six-justice majority in Loper Bright, reasoned that “courts, not agencies, will decide ‘all relevant questions of law’ arising on review of agency action.” Going forward it will be the role of a court to discern a statute’s “best meaning” by “deploying its full interpretive toolkit.” Loper Bright instructs that “courts need not and under the APA may not defer to agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”