"I plan to introduce legislation to protect the government's policymaking ability that existed under Chevron that has worked for the last 40 years," Sen. Ed Markey said.
I am hopeful this could pass. Congress knows they are not technical subject matter experts. They don’t like looking like fools when they talk about the Internet being a bunch of tubes. They want to be able to pass legislation and delegate the details to experts, at least to some degree. They don’t want the overhead of that nuance and detail it takes agencies to define. I am surprised the judiciary wants that responsibility…
With agencies Congress has a scapegoat to drag in the muck and make them look good on TV. Without agencies, Congress is responsible for their own laws and being very explicit about some technical details. They look bad if shit breaks now.
This ruling doesn’t stop the ability to delegate. It stops the deference to the executive branch to interpret however they feel. If their interpretation is good, it can stand. Congress doesn’t have to say how much heavy metal is acceptable in drinking water, it just has to explicitly say setting a limit is the responsibility of the agency.
But doesn’t a lot of this come down to “ambiguity” in statutes which can be attributed to lack of technical expertise. In the example of you make is there a difference between:
Congress saying the agency is responsible for ensuring drinking water is safe vs the agency is limiting heavy metals in drinking water? If a statute says the agency is responsible for regulating drinking water safety including, but not limited to, heavy metal levels can they also regulate microplastics?
If ambiguity is at play doesn’t that require congress to provide more technical definition to some degree?
It’s crazy it goes to the courts. In an early published ruling Gorush’s ruling was talking about the compound of laughing gas because he confuse it for an air pollutant…
It depends on how they wrote the law, the destructive device rule is fairly good imo as it both covers the things congress wants and anything that is using a different name for the same result and gives the attorney general the ability to exclude things for sporting only.
With Chevron, it would stand, without it the court gets to ignore all reason and reject an agency’s interpretation even if it’s sane and carefully constructed by experts. The court gets to challenge every individual decision and reason made by the agency which the law doesn’t make explicit
As the ruling said. The chevron defense hadn’t been used since 2016, agencies have their opinions overturned or narrowed more recently. Courts were already disagreeing with agencies, and the standard to take their interpretation was just wasting time.
As stated in the dissent, ignoring your own precedence for years to create an impression that a useful legal principle isn’t useful and to create an excuse to overturn it doesn’t make for an actual reasonable argument to overturn it.
On the flip side, if the agencies’ interpretation is pants-on-head crazy it also stands under Chevron but shouldn’t under a fair examination by a court.
I am hopeful this could pass. Congress knows they are not technical subject matter experts. They don’t like looking like fools when they talk about the Internet being a bunch of tubes. They want to be able to pass legislation and delegate the details to experts, at least to some degree. They don’t want the overhead of that nuance and detail it takes agencies to define. I am surprised the judiciary wants that responsibility…
With agencies Congress has a scapegoat to drag in the muck and make them look good on TV. Without agencies, Congress is responsible for their own laws and being very explicit about some technical details. They look bad if shit breaks now.
This ruling doesn’t stop the ability to delegate. It stops the deference to the executive branch to interpret however they feel. If their interpretation is good, it can stand. Congress doesn’t have to say how much heavy metal is acceptable in drinking water, it just has to explicitly say setting a limit is the responsibility of the agency.
But doesn’t a lot of this come down to “ambiguity” in statutes which can be attributed to lack of technical expertise. In the example of you make is there a difference between:
Congress saying the agency is responsible for ensuring drinking water is safe vs the agency is limiting heavy metals in drinking water? If a statute says the agency is responsible for regulating drinking water safety including, but not limited to, heavy metal levels can they also regulate microplastics?
If ambiguity is at play doesn’t that require congress to provide more technical definition to some degree?
It’s crazy it goes to the courts. In an early published ruling Gorush’s ruling was talking about the compound of laughing gas because he confuse it for an air pollutant…
It depends on how they wrote the law, the destructive device rule is fairly good imo as it both covers the things congress wants and anything that is using a different name for the same result and gives the attorney general the ability to exclude things for sporting only.
With Chevron, it would stand, without it the court gets to ignore all reason and reject an agency’s interpretation even if it’s sane and carefully constructed by experts. The court gets to challenge every individual decision and reason made by the agency which the law doesn’t make explicit
As the ruling said. The chevron defense hadn’t been used since 2016, agencies have their opinions overturned or narrowed more recently. Courts were already disagreeing with agencies, and the standard to take their interpretation was just wasting time.
As stated in the dissent, ignoring your own precedence for years to create an impression that a useful legal principle isn’t useful and to create an excuse to overturn it doesn’t make for an actual reasonable argument to overturn it.
On the flip side, if the agencies’ interpretation is pants-on-head crazy it also stands under Chevron but shouldn’t under a fair examination by a court.
“holding that such judicial deference is appropriate where the agency’s answer was not unreasonable”
So by definition no