The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it is sending a whopping nine cases back to the lower courts after its ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the first sign of the chaos from overturning the Chevron deference.
The court ruled Friday to upend Chevron, a 40-year-old doctrine that requires judges to defer to a federal agency when determining the meaning of any ambiguous laws that agency should try to enforce. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that, instead, “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedures Act] requires.”
The decision in Loper Bright now allows the federal judiciary to play pretend as scientists and policymakers, while stripping the administrative agencies that are staffed by experts who get their directives from democratically elected officials with the power to determine policy. As a result, several cases with questions about ambiguous language are now headed back to the lower courts.
For example, of the cases that have been remanded back to the appeals courts, there are four cases that have to do with the interpretation of ambiguous language in the Immigration and Nationality Act—a law enforced by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Biden-appointed Homeland Security Secretary Alejando Mayorkas.
Now the question will no longer be referred to immigration experts at the department, or to policymakers representing the current administration, but left to the discretion of appeals judges in the Fourth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits.
Other questions sent back to the lower courts have to do with energy, agriculture, labor practices, and the Internal Revenue Service to name a few.
In the wake of Loper Bright, right-wing judges—who have been pushed for years to oppose Chevron and embrace deregulation—have the functional ability to veto any new federal regulation they decide is too “ambiguous.” As these cases continue to pile up, which they no doubt will, the law will no longer be determined by Congress, or even the executive branch, but by injunction.
