Neil Gorsuch Cheers Supreme Court Placing 'Tombstone' on 40-Year Precedent

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. On Friday, Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion in Loper, celebrated the the Court putting "a tombstone" on 40-year precedent.

Justice Neil Gorsuch celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court for putting a "tombstone" on the four-decade-old administrative law principle known as Chevron deference.

In Friday's 6-3 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the justices wiped out 40 years of administrative law precedent in a move that will restrain federal agency powers. The court's decision overturned the Chevron deference established in the 1984 case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The case acknowledged that Congress often cannot resolve every detail in legislation and said federal courts should defer to the permissible federal agencies to interpret ambiguous statutory language.

The majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court's other conservative justices, held that "courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous," overturning Chevon deference. The court's three liberal justices dissented.

In Gorsuch's concurring opinion, he wrote: "Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss. In doing so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation's founding."

The way in which administrative agencies implement rules and regulations will be fundamentally changed. Those federal agencies will be limited specifically to the rules and regulations outlined in legislation passed by Congress. Conservatives have long sought to overturn the precedent, which they argued gave the federal government too much authority.

Fordham law professor Aaron Saiger, a former Supreme Court law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, told Newsweek in an email Friday: "It's a deeply unfortunate opinion. The Court adopts an understanding of the judicial power that is both cramped and self-serving.

"It also relies on an understanding of legislatures that is neither reasonable nor realistic. It very seriously undermines the capacity of the United States to carry out the basic functions of government with wisdom, efficiency and flexibility."

Natalie Jacewicz, an adjunct professor of natural resources law at New York University, told Newsweek in an email Friday that the court's decision "Jettisoning deference to agencies means more agency decisions will be struck down in court."

In her view, that could lead to "under-regulation of environmental and health harms" given that agency regulations may "be struck down as too creative or too stringent."

Jacewicz said that "in many ways, the legal system has already moved away from Chevron deference," with agencies and litigants relying less on "Chevron deference in recent years when defending agency regulations." She said that Friday's ruling "just makes the breakup official."

In Loper, a group of commercial fishermen sued the National Marine Fishers Service, arguing that it lacks the authority to mandate fishermen that pay the salaries of federal compliance monitors. The case challenged the Chevron deference, asking the justices to decide if the agency had the power to force compliance or not.

Gorsuch's concurring opinion said that "with time, the error of this approach became widely appreciated," referring to the application of Chevron deference. He concluded the opinion using metaphorical language to emphasize the burial of Chevron deference, writing: "Stare decisis's true lesson today is not that we are bound to respect Chevron's 'startling development,' but bound to inter it."

This session, the court has issued several rulings restraining the scope of agency powers, including Thursday's ruling in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Jarkesy that rejected the SEC's process of adjudicating fraud cases in-house. The court now requires such cases to be brought to the judiciary for a jury trial.

The court is expected to issue its final opinions early next week, including the highly anticipated Donald Trump presidential immunity case.

Update 6/28/24, 4:50 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Natalie Jacewicz.

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