Supreme Court ruling pleases Republicans, businesses

Republican lawmakers and the US Chamber of Commerce praised her Decision of the Supreme Court Friday, overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine, which for four decades led judges to defer to how federal agencies interpreted a law when its language was unclear.

GOP lawmakers said the 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court overturned a precedent they argued unfairly strengthened the power of unelected government officials.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in Kiev, said: “The Constitution gives Congress the sole power to make laws.”

“After 40 years of subjugating Chevron, the Supreme Court made it clear today that our system of government leaves no room for an unelected bureaucracy to choose this authority for itself,” McConnell said. “The days of federal agencies rightfully filling legislative gaps are over.”

And Chamber of Commerce CEO Susan Clarke said in a statement: “Today’s decision is an important course correction that will help create a more predictable and stable regulatory environment.”

Clark added that the high court’s previous Chevron rule “allowed each new presidential administration to advance its policy agendas through regulatory overturning and failed to provide consistent rules for businesses to navigate, plan and invest in the future.”

Jeff Holmstead, an attorney with the Bracewell firm who previously served as administrator of the Air Office at the Environmental Protection Agency, predicted in a statement that the ruling “will certainly change the way the agencies make regulations.”

Holmstead said that in the four decades that the Chevron doctrine has been in place, agencies have sometimes started “with a regulatory agenda in mind and then tried to come up with a reasonable” interpretation of existing law to justify it, “hoping that the courts they will find it “permissible”.

“Going forward, they’re going to have to start with the statutory language and decide what Congress really wanted them to do,” he said.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told Fox News that the new decision in the case known as Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is a “tremendous victory for the American people, constitutional government and the rule of law.”

“It’s a huge blow to the administrative state in Washington, D.C. Nobody elects bureaucrats to make these decisions,” Cotton said of the decision, which overturned a 1984 Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

Democrats, on the other hand, condemned the decision, accusing the Supreme Court’s conservative majority of strengthening its own power.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said: “By striking down Chevron, the Trump MAGA Supreme Court has once again sided with powerful special interests and big corporations against the middle class and American families.”

“Their relentless rush to overturn 40 years of precedent and impose their own radical views is appalling,” Schumer said.

Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler. DN.Y., said, “Today’s decision provides yet more evidence that the far-right supermajority on the Supreme Court will set aside any precedent it wants in its bid to increase its own and MAGA allies’ power across the country.”

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO — the largest labor union federation in the US — warned of the implications of the decision for workers’ rights organizations.

“Extremist politicians and their corporate allies have plotted for decades to undermine regulators, and this heartbreaking decision is a huge gift to those same interests,” Schuler said in a statement. “Today, a right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court has eroded the federal government’s ability to enforce the law and protect workers.”

Calling the decision “deeply troubling,” White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said in a statement that President Joe Biden “asked his legal team to work with the Department of Justice and other agency counsel to carefully review today’s decision”.