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The Supreme Court has taken on a potential landmark case regarding the Chevron deference doctrine.

The case could change the way unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies are allowed to decide how to interpret laws when they are unclear.

The doctrine has become a sticking point for conservatives.

Many see the doctrine as giving the deep state too much power to control the federal government.

In effect, agency bureaucrats use the doctrine to get the power to change laws by reinterpreting them.

However, most of those longtime bureaucrats are liberal Democrats, according to Republicans.

David Doniger, a lawyer who helped create the doctrine in 1984, said:

“Initially this doctrine was embraced by judges and scholars of all stripes as a neutral principle for how you sort things out when Congress leaves some of the questions unanswered.”

But as time went on, the doctrine served to essentially give lawmaking power to unelected bureaucrats, and most of the time it went in a decidedly liberal direction.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler wrote about the doctrine for the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.

“It has made it too easy for agencies to revise regulatory requirements and too difficult for courts to police the boundaries of agency authority,” Adler wrote.

Conservatives on the court have commented on the doctrine before, most recently in 2022.

At the time, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito that “the whole project deserves a tombstone no one can miss.”

The current case was brought by herring fishermen in Maine.

The fishermen balked at being told by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that they would have to pay for government observers to make sure they weren’t overfishing the area.

The Chevron doctrine gives the EPA the right to decide how the observers should be paid.

Those bureaucrats then decided the fishermen should pay. ...

If the doctrine is struck down, it could have almost a Roe V. Wade kind of impact on the federal government.

There could be some confusion and chaos as courts try to figure out how to decide who should interpret laws when they are ambiguous.

If the case goes against the doctrine, it will take the teeth out of America’s unelected bureaucracy.

As such, it could save President Donald Trump from having to follow through on his promise to gut the deep state.

the potency of the intersection of west virginia vs EPA and loper vs raimondo should not be under-estimated.

they held that agencies cannot decide major questions of economic or political significance without congressional say so and ended “chevron deference” whereby courts deferred to “experts” at agencies about the interpretation of their own governing and regulatory statutes.

it was an endless game of “hide the ball” where congress would pass some platitudinous and vague regulatory law to avoid admitting what was meant to be and then leave it to the bureaucrats to decide what it meant by grabbing whatever power they deemed desirable.

over 18,000 cases of regulatory deference were decided on “chevron.” it was the SCOTUS equivalent of “trust the experts” and allowed these technocratic fiefdoms to grow and run riot unchecked and unbalanced by anything save their own ambition. it’s how we got the CDC imposing rent moratoriums, the fed acting as an agent of stimulus, the SEC pushing ESG, and the EPA becoming the boss of everything from cars to powerplants to whether you can gather rainwater in a barrel.

corner post v board put 40 years of past regulation back on the table as new businesses can challenge old regs without constraint from a statute of limitations. no more “it’s the law because it has been the law” as a defense.

the true genius of the DOGE roadmap lies in making the choke points work for us rather than rate limit us. to challenge each regulation in court is impossible. it’s too slow, too expensive, too absurd. it would take centuries.

instead, these new rulings flip the burden of proof. no longer is it “prove the EPA should not have this power” it’s “prove that it should and until you do, we’re turning it off.” this is as it should be. the idea that regulators get to do whatever they want and self-interpret their own vague rules until proven guilty of overreach is outlandish. it’s the opposite of a rights based republic. but with the burden on them to have to show that any power is rightful BEFORE they may exercise it or resume its application, the game is very different.