Liberal Supreme Court Justices Worry About Removing Deference to Bureaucrats

The three left-leaning justices on the U.S. Supreme Court expressed heavy skepticism on Jan. 17 of attorneys’ proposal that courts afford executive agencies less deference in deciding whether a regulation abides by laws that Congress passes. Attorneys for commercial fishing companies asked the court to overturn the decades-old precedent known as “Chevron deference,” which generally directs courts to prefer an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous language within statutes. The consequences of overturning this precedent could be significant because it has informed thousands of court rulings and would alter how much judges wade into debates over the meaning of particular statutes. “I’m worried about the courts becoming uber-legislators,” Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson said during the first oral argument, Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce. She recused herself from the second, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, presumably because she heard oral argument in the case when she was on the D.C. Circuit....