The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a landmark 40-year-old decision that gave federal agencies broad regulatory power, upending their authority to issue regulations unless Congress has spoken clearly. The precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, is one of the most cited in American law. There have been 70 Supreme Court decisions relying on Chevron, along with 17,000 in the lower courts.

The court split 6-3 along ideological lines in the dispute, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson were in dissent.

The court's ruling in a pair of related cases is a significant victory for the conservative legal movement. The court decided two almost identical cases involving a 1976 federal law that requires herring boats to carry federal observers to collect data used to prevent overfishing. Under a 2020 regulation interpreting the law, owners of the boats were required not only to transport the observers but also to pay $700 a day for their oversight. Fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island sued, saying the 1976 law did not authorize the relevant agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, to impose the fee.

"Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedure Act] requires," Roberts wrote for the court. The chief justice called the earlier decision a "judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties."

The framework required courts to defer to an agency's interpretation of laws passed by Congress if it is reasonable. Calls for it to be overturned came from not only conservative legal scholars, but some of the justices themselves who have said courts are abdicating their responsibility to interpret the law.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/supreme-court-chevron-ruling.html