Supreme Court ends 40-year-old precedent that gave federal agencies oversight and cripples enforcement

Federal agencies, such as the FDA or EPA, have been crippled in enforcement and oversight after the Supreme Court ended more than 40 years of precedent.

In a6-3 decision on Friday, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in an extraordinarily consequential case that will have intense ramifications for federal agencies and Congress.

Moving forward, agencies—including the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Dog Administration, among many others—will need to turn to Congress and the courts to interpret how their respective branches function in ambiguous situations. In the past, they were allowed to use their expertise to interfere with and enforce laws and regulations.

“Even when an ambiguity happens to implicate a technical matter, it does not follow that Congress has taken the power to authoritatively interpret the statute from the courts and given it to the agency,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

Roberts noted the decision does, “not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework. The holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful –including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself –are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology.”

For years, the conservative legal moment targeted the Chevron doctrine, the landmark 1984 ruling, resenting the control it gives to the executive branch over regulations.

Chevron revolved around the interpretation of the word “source” in the 1963 Clean Air Act. The act did not define what a “source” of air pollution was, instead leaving the government to interpret that for themselves. But National Resources Inc., an environmental group, stepped in and