Supreme Court may finally end rule of bureaucrats with ‘tragic’ Chevron case
By John Fund
May 2, 2023 8:29pm

The Supreme Court made a tragic mistake almost 40 years ago.

In the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it ruled federal judges must defer to a regulatory agency’s interpretations of federal laws, so long as Congress has not addressed the issue in question and the agency’s view can be construed as “reasonable.”

Since then, the power of the unelected administrative state has ballooned so that it now dictates much of our economy and daily lives.

The court announced Monday it will revisit that precedent, raising hopes that this enormous federal power might be reined in.

The Constitution set up a system of separated powers in which Congress would pass the laws, the president would administer them and the courts would interpret them.

Since the New Deal, Congress has shirked its accountability by increasingly giving unelected agencies the power to make decisions of vast economic and political significance. //

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 6 to 3 court majority ruled that from now on Congress must explicitly grant regulatory agencies the power they wield.

That infuriated the activist left.

Since the spectacular collapse of President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme to rein in carbon emissions, which failed to even get a Senate floor vote in 2010, environmentalists have become experts at twisting and distorting old laws to accomplish by the back door what they could never do using legitimate constitutional approaches.

From regulations aimed at climate change to the overriding of local zoning laws in New York, activists have used that approach to lobby federal agencies to implement an agenda Congress would never approve on its own. //

One former federal regulator, appalled at left-wing efforts to ban gas stoves, told me: “They go through federal agencies like burglars who try every door in a neighborhood in the belief one of them will be unlocked.”

The court may not overturn the case in full, but the fact that at least four justices have agreed to reexamine the decision indicates Chevron deference is likely to be curbed.