Members of the 18th-century British Parliament, unelected by American colonists, tried to take money from those colonists without their consent. Hence, the American Revolution ensued.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old ruling that had allowed unelected federal regulators, acting the part of the British Parliament, to commit such travesties of justice as requiring fishermen to pay for government-mandated regulators on their boats — a requirement that, according to CBS, could cost the fishermen more than $700 per day.
The true magnitude of Friday’s ruling, however, involved far more than fishing boats. In fact, it struck at the heart of American progressivism by eviscerating the insidious claim that federal “experts” know best.
In so doing, it took one small-but-crucial step towards dismantling the permanent federal state that actually governs in Washington, D.C.
Anticipation of Friday’s decision began building in January, when SCOTUS heard arguments in two cases involving the arbitrary and illegitimate expansion of federal regulatory power over fishermen.
At the core of each case lay a diabolical legal doctrine long known as “Chevron deference.”
In the 1984 case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that when aspects of a federal law feature ambiguities, courts must defer to regulators’ interpretations of the extent of their own authority.
“If … the court determines Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue, the court does not simply impose its own construction on the statute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administrative interpretation,” liberal Justice John Paul Stevens then wrote in the court’s opinion.
In other words, judges with constitutional authority to interpret law must defer to federal regulators who possess no such authority. So said SCOTUS in 1984.
Did the Supreme Court make the right call here?
One could scarcely imagine a more anti-constitutional ruling, nor a more fatal wound to genuine self-government.
When applied to the present cases, the Chevron doctrine allowed the secretary of commerce, acting through the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), to interpret the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) in a way that required fishermen to pay for government-mandated observers aboard their boats.
The MSA gave regulators no such authority, of course. Had it done so, the case would never have appeared before the high court.
But the Chevron doctrine lacerated the Constitution by requiring courts to defer to bureaucrats. Thus, in light of SCOTUS’ current composition, the time had come to review that horrid doctrine.
In the opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts focused heavily on the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, “provides standards for judicial review if a person has been adversely affected or aggrieved by an agency action.”
“The deference that Chevron requires of courts reviewing agency action cannot be squared with the APA,” Roberts wrote.
Furthermore, the 1984 ruling amounted to an act of judicial suicide in deference to bureaucrats who possess no constitutional standing.
“Chevron was a judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties,” Roberts wrote.
Thus, “Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires.”
Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Roberts possesses one of history’s dullest constitutional minds. In this case, he reached the correct conclusion by the wrong reasoning. Namely, under APA or any other statute, Congress has no power to enlarge, diminish, fix or in any way define federal courts’ authority. Anyone who believes in the separation of powers must find the idea revolting.
Justice Clarence Thomas made this crucial point in his concurring opinion.
Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch also rectified major deficiencies in Roberts’ infantile reasoning by citing, for instance, the words of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln on the proper limits of judicial interpretations — “judicial humility,” as Gorsuch put it — all of which reinforced the sovereignty of the American people acting through their Constitution.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito joined nominally conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and erstwhile establishment tool Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a 6-3 majority ruling that broke along classic ideological lines, with liberal justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting on behalf of unelected bureaucrats.
In sum, one could scarcely overstate the importance of the Chevron doctrine to the progressive view of “expert”-dominated government. It explains why leftists made a hero out of the liar Anthony Fauci.
That doctrine, thanks to the Supreme Court, has now been very properly destroyed.
