A group of commercial fishing companies, backed by lawyers paid by the Koch network of right-wing lobbyists, have brought two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court that could decimate federal regulations addressing workplace safety, clean water, breathable air, the climate crisis, safe food, and much more.
The two cases narrowly challenged a 2020 federal regulation requiring owners of fishing boats in the Atlantic herring fishery to pay for monitors that collect data and oversee operations. However, central to the cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, is the so-called Chevron doctrine that was established in a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that instructed judges to defer to federal regulatory agencies’ reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress had not specifically addressed the issue.
As they responded to oral arguments on Jan. 17, the Supreme Court’s extremist conservative majority appeared likely to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine. If the high court overturns Chevron, it will gut federal agencies’ ability to implement congressionally passed regulations, and take policy decisions away from scientists and experts, placing them in the hands of unelected judges, who have no expertise on these issues. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Tishan Weerasooriya, senior associate of policy and political affairs with the group Stand Up America, who talks about what’s at stake in this critically important Supreme Court case.
TISHAN WEERASOORIYA: So essentially what this comes down to is ripping 40 years of precedent and power away from experts and scientists at agencies and giving it to unelected, inexpert judges and courts. So when Congress passes vague or ambiguous laws for the last 40 years, judges and courts yielded to experts and scientists at agencies on how best to implement that law. And let me boil it down and provide you an example. Talking about EPA water standards, right? EPA has the ability to ensure that the water we drink is free from pollutants and toxic chemicals. And on its face, that feels like a common sense thing, having experts and scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency who have spent decades in their field writing safety standards to ensure toxic chemicals don’t enter our water.
However, if conservative justices get their way in both these cases and they overturn the Chevron doctrine, they’ll take this power away from scientists and experts and give it to themselves. So in essence, 800-plus unelected inexpert judges from around the country will get to decide intricate policy issues rather than the experts at our agencies and on its face, that is what both cases mean. That is what is at stake with both these cases.
SCOTT HARRIS: When this case came before the court’s justices, tell us a bit about the response of the individual justices and the growing concern that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is poised to overturn the Chevron doctrine.
TISHAN WEERASOORIYA: And that is something that for years we have always been concerned about. Justice Gorsuch, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito — they have all indicated that they want to overturn this doctrine. They have all indicated in the previous decisions that they are open to overturning this doctrine. And our suspicions were confirmed when Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett, they all also during oral arguments, echoed the same sentiments that Justice Gorsuch and the others mentioned. That this doctrine should be overturned and only causes more harm to an American people. Whereas all of us on the other side, we discuss and we talk about the safety standards and the decades’ worth of precedent that the experts and scientists have been working on to provide safety standards in the healthcare, in labor standards, work protection, civil rights — all of this work, all the conservative justices have indicated that they do want to overturn this.
SCOTT HARRIS: Tishan, what would the future look like if as expected the court’s extremist conservative majority overturns the Chevron doctrine, as well as 40 years of precedent, here?
TISHAN WEERASOORIYA: I think it will be chaos and uncertainty. So right now, basically what Chevron doctrine means is that all the judges, 800-plus judges from across the country, they yield when laws are ambiguous or laws are vague, which are passed by Congress. They are supposed to yield to the experts at these agencies. If this is overturned, that means any judge in the federal circuit will basically get to decide policy issues. So no longer is it scientists who spent years working on these policy issues. It can be random judges in Texas, random judges in South Dakota that suddenly get to decide what drug is safe for everyday Americans across the country to use; what is the limit for toxins in our drinking water that is safe to use. So now all of a sudden it’s no longer experts, no longer scientists. Judges from across the country will get to decide what that means.
And as you mentioned before, this is not just environmental. This also goes to worker protections, labor standards, health care. So much is at stake and so much can be undone. Just the stability of our country can be undone by overturning this doctrine.
And one thing that I expect to see is that if it is overturned, we’ll see far more lawsuits from organizations like the Federalist Society and other conservative-leaning organizations filing just to create more havoc and to strip away safety standards that oil companies, coal companies want to use. So I think if this is overturned, there’ll be a lot more chaos, a lot more uncertainty for what everyday Americans will have to live with.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Tishan Weerasooriya (16:08) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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