Supreme Court Power Grab Overturns 40-Year Precedent In Huge Win For Corporations

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 court’s decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, which overturns its 1984 finding in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, will cause a sea change in how federal agencies are able to regulate everything from climate change to artificial intelligence to labor and workplace practices. It marks a huge win for corporations, as it will be significantly harder for the government to write rules.

“Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority,” Roberts wrote.

The decision is also a major power grab by the judicial branch, which will now play a bigger role as the final arbiter over which new regulations are allowed to stand and which will be struck down.

The ruling concerns two cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce. Jackson joined her liberal colleagues, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, in dissenting in Relentless, which was a 6-3 decision, but recused herself from Loper Bright Enterprises.

The issue of whether to overturn Chevron 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.

In Chevron, the Supreme Court