One reason is that the case, generally known as “Loper Bright,” raises fundamental questions about how our federal government will function in the future. As a political science professor who teaches about bureaucracy, I think that is a special topic in itself.

The second reason is that the simple summary of the case is that it overturned the “Chevron Doctrine,” and I had already heard Victor Flatt give an excellent presentation on this issue a couple of years ago. So I was extremely pleased when he agreed to talk about the implications and extent of the new ruling.

     “The court ruled in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce on Friday.

     “In a major ruling the Supreme Court… cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs.
     “By a vote of 6-3 the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of the dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it ‘fundamentally misguided.’
     “Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan predicted that Friday’s ruling ‘will cause a massive shock to the legal system."

     The overview added that Chevron “became one of the most important rulings on federal administrative law, cited by federal courts more than 18,000 times.” And, while the decision upheld a decision by the Reagan administration’s EPA, and “was generally hailed by conservatives at the time, the ruling eventually became a target for those seeking to curtail the administrative state.” The two cases combined in the decision were part of “a conservative effort sometimes dubbed the ‘war on the administrative state,’ and the plaintiffs in both cases “were represented at no cost by conservative legal groups” partially funded by Charles Koch.

To a scholar of administration, the basic question is how to turn the often rather general directions in legislative language into operating rules applied by federal agencies in their work. Agencies are the organizations that (a) know most about the details of the particular field and (b) know most about the practical issues of administration. The defense of Chevron most basically was that by stating a general principle of agency authority there would be much less litigation and agencies could do their work more easily than if they could be second-guessed about everything. Without it, many government operations could be crippled by litigation. And that, of course, was the reason many conservatives wanted Chevron overturned.

Now that has happened. But what might be suggested by the details of the decision? Is this really the anti-government triumph it might seem? One thing to point out is that the Chief Justice based his opinion not on any constitutional principle but on an interpretation of other legislation, the Administrative Procedure Act. Does that matter? Is this, as Justice Gorsuch argued in a concurring decision, just a ruling that, “going forward, federal courts” and the Supreme Court will do “exactly as it did before the mid-1980s… resolve cases and controversies without any systemic bias in the government’s favor”? Or does it mean, as one advocate put it, that “individual judges around the country should decide the best reading of a statute…a recipe for chaos, as hundreds of federal judges – who lack the expertise of agency personnel – are certain to reach inconsistent results on the meaning of federal laws as applied to complex technical issues?”

I am very much interested to hear from Professor Flatt about an issue that is central to my own understanding of federal government, and to how it will work in the future.

Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,

Professor Flatt is a recognized expert on environmental law, climate law, and energy law, and the intersection of these areas. Since 2019, he has created and taught the first law school courses in the country concerning how law relates to sustainability planning and ESG policies in corporations, offering the courses at UHLC, Vermont Law School, and Case Western University School of Law.

His research focuses on environmental legislation and enforcement, with particular expertise in the Clean Air Act, NEPA, and Climate. He is co-author of a popular environmental law casebook, and has authored more than 50 law review articles, which have appeared in journals such as the Notre Dame Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, The Ohio State Law Journal, Washington Law Review, Houston Law Review, and the Carolina Law Review. Seven of his articles have been recognized as finalists or winner of the best environmental law review article of the year, and one was recognized by Vanderbilt University Law School and the Environmental Law Institute as one of the three best environmental articles of 2010, leading to a seminar and panel on the article in a congressional staff briefing.