July 26, 2023 — U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is throwing his weight behind a push to scrap a decades-old legal doctrine giving federal regulators wide-ranging powers.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit filed in 2020 by New Jersey commercial fisherman, challenging a federal rule requiring them to pay for monitors to go out on fishing vessels to collect data to craft new regulations.
The lawsuit, pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, calls for scrapping the fish monitoring rules but also seeks to blunt the powers of federal agencies by overturning the so-called Chevron deference. Critics say the legal principle violates the separation of powers doctrine by giving the federal government authority over congressional spending.