On Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts knocked out the deep state by eliminating the bureaucracy’s ability to buffalo judges into agreeing to its interpretation of the law, rather than allow the judges to interpret the law as the Constitution requires. In 1984, the Supreme Court gave the deep state this power in what is known as the Chevron Deference.
In a decision released on Friday, Roberts declared, “Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
Another bad precedent bit the dust. It follows the decision that freeing citizens from having to accept decision of administrative law judges who work for the agencies. In a third case, the court struck down the ATF’s declaration that owning a bump stock is as illegal as owning a machine gun without a special license.
With newfound courage and three justices appointed by Donald Trump, the court has stopped allowing the bureaucracy bully the people. The tail will not wag the dog.
I no more understand the legal arguments in the case that through out the Chevron Deference than viewers understood what Pedo Joe was saying half the time during that debate. But I do know the result of the debate and this case, and I like it.
CNN reported, “The 6-3 ruling, overturning a precedent from 1984, will shift the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches and hands an important victory to conservatives who have sought for years to rein in the regulatory authority of the administrative state.
“The lawsuits were filed by two groups of herring fishermen challenging a Commerce Department regulation requiring them to pay the salaries of government observers who board their vessels to monitor the catch. But the decision will net a far wider swath of federal regulations affecting many facets of American life.”
I sure hope so because the government is too powerful, too intrusive and too incompetent to do us any good. We need protection from the government, not the protection of the government.
The facts of the case, as stated by the Los Angeles Times, point to something that was not argued in the case as a reason to cheer: the Third Amendment.
LAT reported, “Their case began with a 1976 law that seeks to conserve the stocks of fish. A regulation adopted by the National Marine Fishery Service in 2020 would have required some herring boats to not only carry a federal monitor on board, but also pay the salary of the monitor. Doing so was predicted to cost more than $700 a day, or about 20% of what the fishing boats earned on average.”
Now I read that and thought immediately about the Declaration of Independence. Its preamble is great, but its specific charges against King George III were the real story at the time. Among those charges was “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”
That charge and the practice of forcing people to take in and feed soldiers led to the Third Amendment: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
The amendment seems like an odd duck but tell me how it does not apply here? The fishermen have to include a deadweight soldier in the bureaucratic army on their boats and give him one-fifth of the haul, which means they must catch even more fish to break even. How does that protect the fish population from depletion?
But that is how these government experts think — bass ackwards. Well, in this case herring ackwards because they fish for herring. Why? Cod only knows.
The bureaucrat is there not to protect the fishermen but to keep an eye on everything they do. It is like that song by the appropriately named group, the Police:
Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you
I’ll be watching you — and be paid by you too.
The liberal reaction was as one might expect. Norman Ornstein tweeted, “I wonder how long it will take before Americans wake up to the brutal reality that the US Supreme Court has staged a coup, brazenly seizing power from the other two branches in a way that is utterly contrary to the framers vision of the role of a court and a judiciary. And it is crystal clear that if Donald Trump wins, the Supreme Court will be much closer to the Russian or Hungarian courts than the one in our Constitution.”
Staged a coup! joins Insurrection! and Threat to democracy! in the stockpile of kooky arguments liberals make. The court was not writing law. The court was asserting its authority, duty and obligation to interpret the laws Congress writes instead of deferring to the clerk-typists whose job is to carry out the law.
NBC’s report on the decision was very good and served as a cautionary tale on accepting reform at face value.
NBC said, “At the time it was decided, Chevron was a win for the deregulatory efforts of the Reagan administration, with the court ruling that judges should defer to federal agencies in interpreting the law when the language of a statute is ambiguous. That was initially seen as a benefit to Republican officials in the administration who wanted to make regulations less onerous on businesses.
“In practice, the ruling meant that both Democrat and Republican presidents could take advantage of the flexibility it gave to agencies in implementing new regulations on a wide variety of issues.
“But Chevron has over the years become increasingly criticized on the right because of the claim that it gives too much power to agency bureaucrats to interpret the law.
“Groups on the left, including environmental activists, have defended Chevron, in part because it gives leeway to address issues like climate change.”
To their credit, the lefties worked the new system better than conservatives did. Liberals dominate the federal government.
In his first term, the deep state took Trump on but while he had to endure Mueller and all that crap, his presidency is making a difference in the long term. The Trump Triplets now on the bench along with Thomas, Alito and Roberts, the reluctant dragon, are whittling the powers of the deep state.
The Trump Court reminds me of Hermey the Elf defanging Bumbles, who was abominable, not deplorable.
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The Bezos Post reported, “The court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, with Kagan writing that “the majority has turned itself into the country’s administrative czar, taking power away from Congress and regulatory agencies.”
Well, I should hope so.
The left frames this as government experts defining laws for judges.
Roberts had none of that. He wrote, “Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”
Yes. Why bother having courts if the judges are forced to do what the government tells them what to do?
Hamas-shielding AP wrote, “Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in challenges that could be spawned by the high court’s ruling. The Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer had warned such a move would be an ‘unwarranted shock to the legal system.’
“The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.”
Those are the same experts who told us cloth masks stop viruses, social distancing works, and avoiding the sun and fresh air is good for you.
Bump stocks are not machine guns. Agency employees are not federal judges. And certainly, bureaucrats are not fishermen.
The notion that Congress passes vague laws and allows the bureaucrats to fill in the blanks is undemocratic and unconstitutional as well as impractical. The Chevron Deferment took us through the looking glass, down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland.
The Chevron Deferment is gone.
Goodbye.
Don’t come back now, ya heah?
This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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Chevron would also seem to have been a direct Bowl Blastering right in the face of Rule of Lenity.