Supreme Court takes up case to review whether federal agencies have too much power

The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a case that takes aim at federal agencies’ power and the amount of deference courts are required to show to an administration’s decisions.

The case stems from a dispute between herring fishers and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which wants to charge vessels as much as $700 a day to monitor what they are catching.

Fishing industry advocates say that while the law passed by Congress allows for the monitors, the agency is making up its own rules by insisting the boats pay the charges.

They lost in a 2-1 decision before a federal appeals court, where the majority said under a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, Chevron v. NRDC, judges are required to give wide deference to agency decisions.

In taking the fishing case, the justices have been asked to overrule the Chevron case and give judges more leeway to reel in expansive powers claimed by the federal bureaucracy.

Ryan Mulvey, counsel with Cause of Action representing the fishers, said the case will give the justices an opportunity to fix “one of the most consequential judicial errors in a generation.”

“Chevron deference has proven corrosive to the American system of checks and balances and directly contributed to an unaccountable executive branch, overbearing bureaucracy, and runaway regulation,” Mr. Mulvey said. “These fishing families and all those seemingly living at the mercy of Washington deserve better.”

Bill Bright, a New Jersey fisherman and the plaintiff in the case, said he is grateful the high court took up his legal fight.

“Our way of life is in the hands of these justices, and we hope they will keep our families and our community in mind as they weigh their decision,” Mr. Bright said.

Under Chevron, if Congress gives a broad task to an agency but doesn’t specify how it should be achieved, courts are supposed to defer to an agency’s interpretation as long as the interpretation is not unreasonable.

To defenders, the case blazed a path to good government, putting the experts at federal agencies in charge of the finer points of policymaking.

To detractors, Chevron is the stuff of Orwellian dystopias, siphoning massive amounts of political power away from Congress and the courts and turning it over to unelected, anonymous bureaucrats.

In the ensuing decades, the case has become legendary, less for what it said than the way it has been used by some lower courts — particularly the appeals court in Washington that handles so many agency cases — to create a presumption in favor of an agency’s decisions.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch in particular has been eyeing a chance to do away with Chevron, arguing the law requires judges to do less deferring and do more judging.

“At this late hour, the whole project deserves a tombstone no one can miss,” Justice Gorsuch wrote in a dissent in November.

Court watchers had been waiting for a case to give Justice Gorsuch a chance.

The Supreme Court didn’t reveal which justices voted to hear the case, which is known as Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The court did say Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not take part in the decision on whether to grant a hearing.

The Fisheries Service has delayed the herring catch monitoring program. The high court is done hearing cases for this term, so it will likely be scheduled for when the new term opens in October.