The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority upended decades of precedent governing the ability of federal agencies to set regulations in a ruling on Friday
The case came before the court after two fishing companies ― Relentless and Loper Bright Enterprises ― challenged regulations imposed in 2020 by the National Marine Fisheries Service that required fishing boats to pay the salary of the federal inspectors who ride on them. Lawyers for the fishing companies argued that the court should not only overturn the regulations, but also eliminate the deference afforded to agencies to write such regulations by the court’s precedent in Chevron.
The court’s new doctrine provides significantly less deference to agencies, while granting judges more power to strike down regulations if the court determines that Congress did not explicitly delegate authority to enact the specific regulation in question. The decision is a product of the changing ideological and partisan makeup of the courts and the executive branch.By overturning its 1984 precedent in Chevron v.
The conservative justices made this clear during arguments in the Relentless and Loper Bright cases, when Justice Samuel Alito alluded to the fact that conservative interpretations of law are more prevalent in the judiciary today than they were when Chevron was decided.