Supreme Court Overturns ‘Chevron Doctrine,’ Curtailing Federal Government Power

The Supreme Court in a vote of 6–3 overturned the so-called Chevron deference, a bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine that critics say led to the explosive growth of the U.S. government in recent decades. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the June 28 case. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The 40-year-old judge-invented doctrine holds that an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is entitled to deference unless Congress has said otherwise. The doctrine provides a legal underpinning for the modern administrative state, which critics deride as an illegitimate fourth branch of government. In the landmark ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council in 1984, the court held that while courts “must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress,” where courts find Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue and “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”...