In what is one of the most significant cases issued by the USSC in decades, the USSC reversed the position the USSC had supported since 1984 of favoring agency interpretations of statutes.
In the recent case of Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, the USSC refused to follow what is known as the Chevron decision (Chevron v Natural Resources), a 1984 decision.
Chevron, by the USSC, held that when there is a conflict over what a given party contends a statute intends, as opposed to a position by a governmental agency, such as the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the courts were required to give Deference to the given agency position-- if the statute was not clear on the issue at hand. That is, if there was some question as to the meaning of what a given statute stated, then the court was required to give support (Deference) to the interpretation/position held by the given agency in question. This requirement of Deference has now been eliminated by the USSC.
The USSC stated:
“The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their
independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within
its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency inter-
pretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is
overruled.”
Because of this important decision, many future decisions of government agencies will be challenged when a statute is not clear on an issue and an agency takes a stand that, as viewed by a party impacted by the agency’s position, is not supported by a reading of the given statute.
There is a concept in the law, today, known as stare decisis. This principle of stare decisis means that “a prior decision is left to stand.” In other words, previous judgments of courts that are higher courts within the same jurisdiction are normally followed, if the facts and setting are very comparable to the current case. This posture would generally mean that before a lower court decides a case where there were very similar cases already decided in higher courts in the given jurisdiction, the court deciding the current case should be guided by the prior case(s) as precedent for the current case before the court.
The current USSC, when deciding Loper Bright, was aware of the potential disruption that a decision such as Loper Bright might cause. Thus, the USSC stated that the intent of the Court with the Loper Bright decision was to apply in most instances to future decisions, i.e., the Loper Bright position is generally prospective in nature. This means there will probably be very few changes because of prior agency decisions that were rendered before the Loper Bright decision.
What we will probably be seeing for current cases coming up for decision by courts is a greater number of challenges to an agency position where a statute is not clear on a given point.
Such challenges may involve tax issues when the IRS is involved in asserting the meaning of a given statute, such as a given IRS Code Section. It may also involve agency decisions in many other governmental bodies, such as the SEC, FDIC, FCC, FDA, etc.
Loper Bright has given the courts the freedom to consider what a statute was intended to mean; it has reduced a government agency’s ability to rely on the assumption that the agency’s conclusion will always be given deference by courts.
By
Professor Mark Lee Levine, University of Denver
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