In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, Nos. 22-451 and 22-1219 (2024), plaintiffs urged the U.S. Supreme Court justices to overrule the Chevron doctrine established in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984), and the court agreed. The court held that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous. The court overturned the Chevron doctrine in a 6-3 decision on June 28. As I ponder this new decision, the critical issue for us all is what does this mean for the regulated community?

Chevron Deference

In Chevron, the Supreme Court held that government agencies are best positioned to interpret federal statutes if a question is not specifically addressed, provided the interpretation is reasonable. Since this holding, federal courts have used the Chevron doctrine to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The Chevron analytical framework begins with the court assessing whether Congress has directly addressed the question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the analysis, and the Court will give effect to that clear intent. If the court determines that Congress has not directly addressed the question at issue, rather than imposing its own interpretation of the statute, the court will defer to the agency’s interpretation as long as the interpretation is based on a reasonable construction of the statute.

Overturning Chevron