Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#621

Post by cthalupa » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:07 PM UTC

stvswn wrote: post #451

yongjik wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, we've seen what happened when the Bad Guys (TM) won the election. They pack the Supreme Court with their friendly Bad Guys (TM) so that the Court can make decisions in their favor. (If you object, feel free to switch Good/Bad guys, and it will be still true.) So "Please consider that supreme courts may also limit the power of the Bad Guys" is clearly false, because when the Team X has power, they will make sure…

Simply because you're not a fan of the outcomes doesn't mean that the appointments of justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were illegitimate. Chevron deference started under the Stevens court and the deference it entailed related to the Reagan administration. That this has become a conservative hobby horse since then has nothing to do with policy preferences that only cut one way in a partisan way, and has everyth…

One of Gorsuch or Barrett must be illegitimate if you want to be consistent.

Scalia should have been replaced by Obama, or Ginsburg shouldn't have been replaced by Trump. All of the arguments that the Republicans made about Scalia's replacement were equally applicable to Ginsburg's.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#622

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC

kogus wrote: post #567

crazygringo wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is. No, it's not. That's like saying it's the CEO's job to write every design document in a company. It not only doesn't make sense -- it's not even possible from a perspective of information throughput. It sounds like you're saying that Congress should approve drugs rather than the FDA. Absolutely not. Congress should wr…

I do not expect Congress to atomically approve or disapprove every regulatory action. That is a straw man. I expect them to write clear laws that state what agencies can do, what they cannot do, and how they should do it. The case before the court is a good example of how the opaque and unaccountable nature of a federal agency allows them to serve their own self-interest at the expense of the citizens they are suppos…

> That is a straw man. That is a straw man. I expect them to write clear laws that state what agencies can do, what they cannot do, and how they should do it.

But laws can't do that in infinite detail. It's literally impossible. So it's not a straw man at all -- that was my point.

At some point, regulatory agencies, like anything in the executive branch, have to decide for themselves how to get their job done. Because they have to do that a million times every day.

If Congress didn't specify who will pay for the observers, it makes much more sense to leave it up to the agency than to the courts, except in cases of obvious abuse, corruption, etc. -- which this does not appear to be.

I agree it sucks that the fishing vessels have to pay for the observers, but it seems obvious to me that the body to fix that is Congress. If the fishing industry can't get the agency to change it, then they should be contacting their Congressional representatives to change it. And Congress either will or won't, but that's literally who is in charge of this.

It seems like a strange issue for the courts to get involved with, because there's no conflict with other laws or with the constitution.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#623

Post by dec0dedab0de » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #487

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like they just gave the legislative branch some of it's responsibility back. Delegating their job to the executive branch of government has created agencies that make and enforce rules themselves, and ultimately operate at the whim of whoever the president happens to be at the time. If congress wants to delegate details to experts they could explicitly state that in the law, and create their own organ…

> The laws should state something like "food purity should be within %x of yada yada, where x is updated yearly by the appropriate agency" Then it's up to the courts to decide if the law was broken or not. This is kind of true, but also belies the depth of the Chevron change. In this example, plaintiffs can now, for example, challenge how the "X%" calculation is done. What's an appropriate methodology? In the past, c…

but if congress explicitly states that agency xyz will update specific numbers wouldn't that be pretty solid? As far as I can tell, this is just about leaving it up to the courts when things are ambiguous, which is kind of the point of courts.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#624

Post by __loam » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:09 PM UTC

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #386

rswail wrote: post #99

I'm impressed that they can so easily dispose of 40 years of law making by Congress that assumed that agencies would interpret the statutes and make rules for regulating their area of authority. Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide. So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. Awesome logic work, but terrible legal thin…

> So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. This isn't accurate. Agencies will just need to work with Congress to help them write laws which make sense according to how the agency would like something to regulated.

So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#625

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:10 PM UTC

waveBidder wrote: post #548

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. This isn't accurate. Agencies will just need to work with Congress to help them write laws which make sense according to how the agency would like something to regulated.

except agencies need to be able to work on timelines faster than once a decade

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Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#626

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:12 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #615

curiousllama wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This basically flips the judicial review logic from "did the regulator act within the scope of the law?" to "are there other ways the regulator could have acted that would also be within the scope of the law? If so, the judge decides which set of actions the regulator must take" I.e., anything Congress does not explicitly state in a law is now determined by federal judges. At the extreme, this is aggrandizing a very…

The entire purpose of the judiciary is to interpret the law. This is what they are supposed to do. Chevron curtailed this essential power in favor of taking an agency at its word, which is quite a dangerous stance.

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Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#627

Post by pavon » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:13 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #93

Before proclaiming that this outcome is horrible - Please consider that the Good Guys (your opinion) might not win the election in November. And that you might not want the courts auto-deferring to all the plausible-ish interpretations of ambiguous laws which gov't agency officials appointed by the Bad Guys (your opinion) might suddenly add the Official Agency Interpretations next year.

While that is a very important thing to consider when evaluating any law or judicial ruling in general, I don't think it shifts my view much in this case.

Foremost, this decision makes it easier to overturn regulations while making it harder to create them. This strictly moves the balance of power to the right regardless of who controls the presidency or congress at any moment.

Secondly, it moves power out of the executive and to the judicial, which currently leans right, and will likely continue to for decades.

Lastly, there were always limits as too how far of an interpretation they could push because it still has to be reasonable, and still has to follow many other rule-making processes we have. The left got lucky in that the Trump administration was particularly incompetent at following either of those, which we can't always depend on, but even without that it provided some bumpers.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#628

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #365

rswail wrote: post #99

I'm impressed that they can so easily dispose of 40 years of law making by Congress that assumed that agencies would interpret the statutes and make rules for regulating their area of authority. Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide. So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. Awesome logic work, but terrible legal thin…

> Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide. > So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. This honestly sounds perfect. If this is the actual end result of this ruling, we’ll all be in a much much better place.

I hope you enjoy drinking your poison water and breathing your poison air as much as the companies that skirt environmental regulations enjoy their cost savings.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#629

Post by intended » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #12

badrequest wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations will run roughshod over regulators and everyday citizens' lives will be measurably worse as a consequence.

Not at all. They can still be sued, and lawmakers can still make laws. (edited, originally mistakenly wrote "regulators" can still make laws, which is exactly the wrong thing)

Depends on what rights the corporations enjoy and the states where the corporation is sued.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#630

Post by bcrosby95 » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

young_breezy wrote: post #590

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. This isn't accurate. Agencies will just need to work with Congress to help them write laws which make sense according to how the agency would like something to regulated.

It’s lobbyist who will fill this gap

Lobbyists will fill the gap, and 70+ year old judges will rule on the intricacies of nuclear regulation by harkening back to 15th century English law.