What They're Saying About The Supreme Court's Decision Striking Down Chevron
A compilation of labor attorneys' posts and union opinions.
By Peter List, Editor | June 28, 2024
On Friday, June 28th, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in a case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (here). The Court’s decision rolls back a 40-year precedent called the Chevron Doctrine (or Chevron Deference).
In Friday ruling, notes the SCOTUS blog, the Supreme Court “cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretion of ambiguous laws.”
As the proverbial ink is not yet dry on the Court’s decision, there will surely be more written in the days and weeks ahead.
However, to provide some context about how this may impact workplaces, we are providing reactions from employer-side law firms and unions below.
From the attorneys at FisherPhillips:
Landmark SCOTUS Ruling Strips Power From Federal Agencies: How Today’s Decision Will Impact Your Workplace
What Does This Mean for Employers?
Much of your daily life as an employer has been shaped by federal agencies that have benefitted from courts’ deference to agencies under the Chevron doctrine to mold their agendas. We previously covered how this decision will dismantle workplace regulations and the three biggest wage and hour steps employers can take in a post-Chevron world. Today’s decision does not change anything in terms of prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework – in fact, SCOTUS specifically stated that those cases remain valid legal precedent despite the Court’s change in interpretive methodology. But it does open the door for new challenges to agency actions.
Here are some agency rules and positions we foresee coming under attack in the coming months and years now that employers will be able to wrest back power from the federal government:
From the attorneys at Jackson Lewis:
Go Fish! U.S. Supreme Court Overturns ‘Chevron Deference’ to Federal Agencies: What It Means for Employers
The Court’s Decision
In Loper Bright, the Court’s majority held that courts may not defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute merely because the statute is ambiguous. A court must exercise independent judgment in interpreting a statute and reviewing the agency interpretation of the statute. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which Congress enacted to curb overzealous agencies, the Court said, prescribes how courts are to review such agency actions. The APA makes clear that agencies are not entitled to deference when interpreting statutes, the majority explained.
However, an agency’s interpretation, as reflected in a regulation or other agency action, may have some sway, the Court said. A court may look to the agency charged with enforcing a statute for guidance in interpreting its meaning. An agency’s interpretation may be “especially useful” if it was issued concurrently with the statute itself and has “remained consistent over time,” the Court observed. Further, if a statute expressly authorizes an agency to act, courts must respect that delegation of authority, but “consistent with constitutional limits,” the court must ensure the agency has acted within those limits. At bottom, though, the essential question for a reviewing court is: “Does the statute authorize the challenged agency action?”
From the Liberty Justice Center:
U.S. Supreme Court Overturns Chevron Doctrine: The Liberty Justice Center Praises Supreme Court’s Decision to Roll Back Administrative State’s Power
Before today’s ruling, the Chevron doctrine effectively required courts to take the side of the federal regulator whenever an individual challenged a regulation that the agency enacted under a federal law deemed ambiguous in its scope. Since the Supreme Court adopted it in 1984, Chevron deference has been widely applied by courts to nearly every federal and state agency decision across the country.
In today’s decision, however, the Supreme Court struck down that doctrine and returned the role of statutory interpretation to its rightful place with the judicial branch. This change significantly rolls back administrative agencies’ ability to determine the scope of their own power.
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The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus briefs in Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo are available here.
From the attorneys at Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute:
U.S. Supreme Court Rolls Back “Deference” to Federal Agencies and Opens Up More Challenges to Regulations
How does this decision affect labor and employment law?
This approach will affect how agencies make policy—including labor and employment agencies. Most federal labor and employment agencies rely on some form of deference. For example, the Department of Labor (DOL) often uses deference principles to write overtime rules under then Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) relies on deference when it makes rules under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. And the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) relies on deference when it writes rules and decides cases under the National Labor Relations Act.
These agencies will now face a new landscape in federal court. If the agencies are challenged by private people or companies about the meaning of a statute, they can no longer expect to start the case with a leg up. Instead, they will be on equal footing with the challengers. The question will no longer be whether the agency’s position is reasonable. Instead, the question will be which side’s interpretation of the statute is the “best” one.
From the attorneys at Seyfarth Shaw:
Chevron is Dead. Long Live the Administrative State.
…in the case of the NLRB, courts rarely relied upon Chevron in granting deference to its decisions. But the Court’s reasoning in overruling Chevron leaves little room for continued deference to NLRB decisions, except in limited circumstances like that noted in the majority opinion’s discussion of NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U.S. 111 (1944), in which deference was granted because the issue was primarily one of fact and not law. When reviewing NLRB decisions going forward, courts will likely follow Loper Bright’s instruction to respect the Board’s legal determinations, but not provide outright deference to them.
Looking Forward
Today’s decision in Loper Bright is not the end of the administrative state, but under the current Supreme Court majority, agency power is likely to continue eroding.
From the AFL-CIO:
AFL-CIO President Condemns Supreme Court Decision Weakening Federal Agencies
The AFL-CIO condemns today’s decision, which awards authority to the judiciary that should stay with policy experts in the federal government. Extremist politicians and their corporate allies have schemed for decades to undermine regulatory agencies, and this disheartening decision is a huge gift to those same interests. Today, a right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court has eroded the federal government’s ability to ensure that the law is enforced and that working people are protected. This ruling paves the way for corporate challenges to the actions of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, and other agencies with a duty to protect workers’ lives and rights, which would allow employers to get away with retaliation, union-busting and maintaining dangerous workplace conditions.
From the American Federation of Teachers:
AFT’s Weingarten Responds to Supreme Court Decision Limiting Chevron Doctrine
“The Supreme Court’s shameful decision turns democracy on its head. It fundamentally changes the role of unelected judges from interpreters of law to makers of law—and there is nothing in the Constitution that warrants that. By eliminating deference to public agencies, the court has undermined the ability of experts to set strong rules to protect consumers, workers and the public from corporations and other lawbreakers.
“This decision has real-life consequences for American families. It shifts power away from agencies with public-focused missions toward courtrooms and corporate lawyers adept at poking holes in regulations. It injects legal uncertainty into areas like workplace safety rules, overtime pay policies and collective bargaining rights interpretations—all of which have long relied on agencies’ Chevron-backed expertise. It will make it easier for employers to steal wages from their workers, and it could stop the Department of Health and Human Services from directly negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare.
“Given this cataclysm, Congress should urgently enact Chevron deference into law by passing the Stop Corporate Capture Act (H.R. 1507), a comprehensive blueprint for modernizing, improving and strengthening the regulatory system. That would ensure public input into regulatory decisions, promote scientific integrity and restore our government’s ability to help the workers and consumers it is meant to serve.”
As stated above, as the ruling was just released today, there is bound to be many more opinions out there in the coming days and weeks. However, for now, we wanted to give you some of the early opinions that are out there.