January 16, 2024 — A slender, silvery fish, sold for bait and canned as sardines, has the potential to play an outsize role in weakening the power of federal agencies to regulate vast areas of American life — overturning long-standing Supreme Court precedent in the process.
For 40 years, courts have generally deferred to the judgment of federal agencies when it comes to turning laws passed by Congress into detailed regulations designed to protect the environment, consumers and the workplace.
They did so because of the precedent set in 1984 in Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which requires judges to defer to the reasonable interpretation of federal agency officials charged with administering ambiguous federal laws.
But as the court has moved to the right in recent years, the conservative majority has been less likely to invoke that ruling, which outside groups have long seen as giving unaccountable bureaucrats too much power.
Now the high court is reviewing a pair of challenges to federal rules requiring commercial fishermen to pay for at-sea monitors — cases that could lead to the demise of Chevron, much as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022 overturned the historic Roe v. Wade ruling and eliminated the nationwide right to abortion.