4 Supreme Court Cases That Could Curb the Administrative State

The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up several cases this term that pose challenges to the administrative state, following years of concerted legal and political opposition to its legitimacy. Specifically, the justices are set to reevaluate the decades-old doctrine known as Chevron deference. This involves the case Chevron v. NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), which has been cited more than 18,000 times by federal courts and is “unquestionably one of the foundational decisions in administrative law,” according to the Congressional Research Service. The 1984 precedent held that courts generally should defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous language in congressional statutes. For this term, the court is reviewing, in two related cases, whether the Commerce Department adhered to Congress’s instructions when it required commercial fishing companies to pay for federal observers monitoring their activity on vessels. Several businesses in the industry have sued, arguing that Congress didn’t authorize that requirement in the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act....