Supreme Court Set to Take Case to End ‘Constitutional Revolution’

Who makes policy… Congress or government agencies? That is the question in two cases where the Supreme Court will soon be making a ruling.

In 1984, Justice John Pual Stevens published his opinion in the Chevron U.S.A. v. National Resources Defense Council case.

That decision was later called “nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution” by legal scholar Gary Lawson.

The court may be set to reverse that decision, and you better believe liberals are on edge waiting for it to happen.

Time to End It

The Supreme Court will soon have a chance to end what many have come to believe was a ruling that blatantly violated the Constitution.

Article I directs, “All legislative Power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”

Stevens did not see it that way, ruling that “agenc[ies] may . . . properly rely upon the incumbent administration’s views of wise policy” in “reasonably” defining statutory ambiguities.

This ruling became known as the Chevron deference, a ruling that is regularly cited as allowing the government to grow its reach.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, from the District of Columbia Circuit, and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, from the First Circuit, are both now before the court.

The companies named are fishing companies, which are fighting the idea that the government can require them to absorb the cost of having observers on their boats for the purpose of enforcing the regulations of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

These are not the big fishing vessels you see on Discovery hunting for crab, but much smaller boats and operations that would be forced to pay $710 per day for this “observer.”

That is often more than the profit that these boats see in a day, forcing them to operate in the red.

Generally speaking, this court goes the way of Chief Justice John Roberts, and Roberts, in the past, has sided with congressional legislation over agency policy.

For instance, in West Virginia v. EPA, Roberts wrote, “We presume that ‘Congress intends to make major policy decisions itself, not leave those decisions to agencies.’”

We know how Justices Alito and Thomas will rule, so Thomas is the key, as most of Trump’s justices have followed his lead in decisions such as this.

If Johnson votes as I think he will, that “constitutional revolution” will be over.