OPINION:
With a 6-3 vote, U.S. Supreme Court justices overturned a 40-year-old decision that had given federal agencies, and the presidents who led them, the power to exert oft-burdensome, costly and unconstitutional controls on supposedly free American citizens, and that simultaneously tied the hands of courts to right these regulatory wrongs.
Power back to the people.
What justices said (albeit without saying) was, never again will presidents be able to crow like Barack Obama did during his first Cabinet meeting in 2014, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone” — implying, of course, Congress was not needed; executive order plus complicit ‘czars’ and appointed chiefs can do the job of legislators just fine.
Thank goodness. No more. Not again. That attitude has been slapped.
Now the agencies and their proxies must bow to Congress, and in so doing, submit to the people. Now the agency chiefs and their minions cannot alter, expand or unreasonably implement certain statutes in manners that unfairly burden or control individuals, and then shrug away angry backlash by saying oh, well, we’re only enforcing existing statutes. Now courts don’t have to ignore common sense and constitutional provisions and defer to an agency’s interpretation of how laws passed by Congress ought to be implemented. Now pens and cell phones can’t be the only implements of a president’s legislative ambitions.
It’s a return to more constitutional times — to a more limited government landscape.
Here’s the rundown: Forty years ago, in a case called Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that lower courts should “defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute,” the blog of the U.S. Supreme Court said.
That Chevron doctrine, as it was dubbed, in essence gave agencies, Cabinet chiefs, and the executive branch the opportunity and power to run roughshod over individual rights, if they so choose, so long as it could be claimed that the roughshod run was being done according to the spirit of a statute. Interpretation is a fickle beast, though.
As the SCOTUS blog went on to write, “[A]gencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws.”
And interpret and implement, the experts certainly have done. Over they years, statute after statute has been implemented in ways that have reflected more the will of the political party in charge and less in line with a government of, by and for the people, i.e., a government guided by constitutional limits and a tone of deference to the people. Enough is enough, the people finally said.
This Chevron doctrine was just brought to SCOTUS again because of one such interpretation and implementation that left herring industry officials with a substantial cost burden they argued was unfair and unjust.
“The plea to overturn the Chevron doctrine came to the court in two cases challenging a rule, issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, that requires the herring industry to bear the costs of observers on fishing boats,” the SCOTUS blog explained. “The fishing companies came to the Supreme Court asking the justices to weigh in on the rule itself but also to overrule Chevron. … Arguing on behalf of [a] second group of fishing companies, [attorney] Paul Clement … decried the doctrine as ‘hopeless ambiguous’ and ‘reliance destroying.’”
Team Biden, of course, fought to keep the doctrine in place. Of course they would. It’s long been the practice of Democrats especially to use all manners outside the transparent and accountable processes — i.e. public votes taken by legislators — to push through agendas they know the citizens would buck. Think gun controls. Think boys in girls bathrooms. Think all things radical environmentalism. This is how the leftists work; by hook or by crook, by executive order carried by Cabinet minions — they’ll get their agendas pushed. They’ll get their unpopular provisions passed. In the end, to leftists, to Democrats, laws don’t really matter because orders can do the job just as well; even better in some instances. Obama perfected the elitist practice.
“‘I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,’ [Obama] said at his first Cabinet meeting of the year,” Politico wrote in 2014. “Outlining the strategy, Obama said he plans to use his pen to sign executive actions and his phone to convene outside groups in support of his agenda if Congress proves unable or unwilling to act on his priorities.”
That’s an extreme example of the Chevron doctrine at play. Simply put, it gave liberals the cover to expand the footprint of Big Government by using Big Bureaucracy.
“The [Supreme Court’s] three liberal justices,” the SCOTUS blog wrote, in the leadup to the Chevron decision, “expressed support for keeping the doctrine in place. Justice Elena Kagan repeatedly suggested that federal agencies, with their scientific and technical expertise, are better suited than courts to resolve ambiguities in a federal statute.”
No surprise there.
But now that avenue of government control has been blocked. Now SCOTUS has corrected this course.
As CBS wrote it, the Supreme Court “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.”
Power has been put back where it belongs — yanked from the hands of the Cabinet appointees, executive office-holders and unelected agency officials and back into the jurisdiction of legislators and lower courts.
And that’s the way Founding Fathers would want it.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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