Judges aren't perfect and they aren't completely apolitical. If they were, we wouldn't need appeals courts and SCOTUS.
With Chevron in place, that imperfection was somewhat managed by deferring to the experts in the executive branch who were tasked with implementing the rules provided by Congress.
Without Chevron, a non-expert judge has to decide whose experts they believe.
Additionally, the removal of Chevron opens to doors to a massive number of cases that likely wouldn't be filed under Chevron. So, we're also adding caseload to an already overburdened justice system.
But experts aren't perfect either... I'm not sure how good of an argument this is if it just boils down to trusting a different set of experts and believing one is somehow inherently better than another? Or maybe I misunderstand.
Fair question... with Chevron, the experts in the executive were just presumed to be acting in good faith, particularly in the face of vague legislation.
The bar to overturning those executive rules is now potentially much lower.
Take the ATF's bump stock ban (overturned prior to Chevron being killed, IIRC)...
- Congress has effectively banned machine guns (for normal people to own)
- ATF decides bump stocks make machine guns
- Bump stock owner sues ATF, claiming they overreached
- Courts initially upheld ATF rule (deferring to ATF experts)
- Appeals courts overturned lower court ruling, claiming bump stocks don't meet the definition spelled out by Congress.
As much as I hate it, the appeals court is technically correct. The law passed by Congress was narrowly tailored and bump stocks don't meet that rule.
So, this was a case where Chevron was actually "worse" than "no-Chevron".
But, it's easy enough to imagine the reverse. Congress says "hey EPA, make the air clean!" with little or no guidance on the mechanism they want followed. EPA does its best, but now gets sued by any big industry that wants to pollute. With Chevron in place, implementing that vague law is still possible. Without it, EPA does it's best and often ends up losing to the other side's experts (and very likely the various districts decide differently, leading to inconsistent application of the law across the country, until/unless SCOTUS takes a case).
The simple answer is to require Congress to write detailed laws. But, that's not really possible (given the scope of the government). And exacerbated by the dysfunctional state of affairs we've seen in Congress these last few decades.
I'm not sure what's worse... inconsistent rulings, or a central authority with possibly ulterior motives (which might also change every few years). Perhaps they're in a way, the same thing?
Either way, neither option sounds particularly favorable to me.
The whole point of having a regulatory agency is that you hire full-time experts in the field and rely on them to build a coherent and stable system of rules and enforcement. As one of the regulated parties, this gives you some solid ground to stand on.
If this can all be second-guessed in court, then it becomes more of a crap shoot based on a series of judges’ rapport with the selected experts du jour, who are selected primarily based on the suitability of their opinion, rather than their expertise.
Nothing. That was the case with the ATF bump stock ban a few years ago - eventually it was deemed executive overreach. But, the bar for proving that was higher with Chevron in place (went to appeals, where without Chevron it could go either way in district court based on a single judge's opinion).
If you believe the government is usually wrong or often acting in bad faith, you might applaud the overturning of Chevron.
If you think the executive should be allowed to implement the often vague directives from Congress without fear of being overwhelmed in court, then you might think the overturning of Chevron will kill the government’s ability to function.
Personally, I’m not keen on the end of Chevron. But it probably isn’t going to lead to complete dysfunction either.
You don't have to think most people are murderers to make murder illegal.
If the regulator is wrong or corrupt 1% of the time, it's good that the victims have legal recourse. The existence of that recourse will also make the regulators more likely to do honest work.
You can't blindly rely on people with power to always do the unselfishly correct thing. Such power corrupts, and there needs to be a somewhere to turn when that power is abused.
There already was somewhere to turn. Chevron based rules could always be explicitly modified by new legistlative directives. Additionally, courts still had final say and could strike down agency regulations if they were based on unreasonable interpretations of federal law.
This ruling is a power grab by the court that says congress must write explicit rules and can't delegate authority to agencies to determine how to execute a mandate. The ethics rules and enforcement structure for those rules are much more strict for employees of government regulatory agencies than for the supreme court justices. If you are concerned about power corrupting, this seems like a very bad decision.
