January 17, 2024 –– The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case today, brought by fishing interests who are friends of Saving Seafood, which could upend the Chevron doctrine. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases, Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo, Sec. of Comm. (22-451) and Relentless, Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce (22-1219).
From National Public Radio:
Judges are supposed to follow a two-step procedure. First, they’re supposed to ask whether the law is clear when someone challenges a federal rule. Then, if the law is not clear, if there’s an ambiguity, the court is supposed to defer to the agency interpretation if it’s reasonable.
In practice, that’s meant that courts often defer to people inside federal agencies who are experts on things like pollution, banking and food safety.
But all of it could be upended by a conservative supermajority on the court at the request of an unlikely set of plaintiffs: a group of herring fishermen based in Cape May, N.J.
One of them is Bill Bright, a first-generation fisherman whose family has followed him to the sea.
“My boys are working on the boats,” Bright said. “And my daughters, we have a shoreside business and they run that. So we’re all, the whole family is, in the seafood business 100%.”
Bright said he welcomes regulations to keep the herring population strong in the Northeastern United States. But he said the fisheries service went too far when the government mandated that vessel owners like him had to pay for observers on the boats to make sure they’re following the rules.
Paul Clement, a former solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, has argued more than 100 times before the Supreme Court. He represents the herring fishermen.
“Can’t think of a better way to mark the 40th anniversary of the Chevron decision than with an overruling,” Clement said. “In our view, this really has gotten out of control.”
He said the current system means Congress never has to weigh in and reach a compromise on the toughest policy questions, because one side or the other can just wait for a change in the executive branch every four or eight years, and the rules will swing back and forth based on the views of the political party in power.
“I think it’s really as simple as this: which is when the statute is ambiguous, and the tie has to go to someone, we think the tie should go to the citizen and not the government,” Clement added. “And one of the many problems with the Chevron rule is it basically says that when the statutory question is close, the tie goes to the government, and that just doesn’t make any sense to us.”