Supreme Court rules in favor of North Dakota truck stop in blow to federal regulations

Here's our legal affairs correspondent Avan Joy Burnett with more on today's actions. The final four, not the exciting kind like in March Madness, Sounds a little March Madness. So this is this is July Madness. I guess we have one down, 3 to go, including the immunity case. Just for the record, what did that first case though at first ruling, what did that tell us? Well, for the record, this is my third favorite case for this term, this particular term. I know it's a little bit boring for other people, but this is my number three, my and my top four. And this is a coroner post versus the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve. This is a six to three decision and majority of the justices are saying or pretty much putting the last nail in the coffin for certain administrative agencies. This is a case out of North Dakota and pretty much they're saying that this particular agency was not able to do what it did. This involves a corner store and a rest stop. And they challenged the federal government with regards to credit card fees. But the issue here was it does the time the clock start ticking for officials to sue when they actually have some sort of damage or injury, or does it start clicking when this rule was put in place? And the Federal Reserve argued that the clock starts taking for someone to be able to sue when a rule was put in place. The justices here disagreed with them and they said someone is able to start that clock ticking when they actually have an injury. So this is a big win for this particular business who really challenged the idea that they were able to sue even before their businesses opened up. But in the grand scheme of things, this really is kind of putting the nail in on the COP. And for certain administrative agencies who really had a lot of power when it came to maybe bringing lawsuits or challenges against people who they believe were breaking the rules. This is yet another ruling from the US Supreme Court where they're ruling against the power and the authority of many administrative agencies. We saw two of those last week with those phishing cases and then also an SEC case. So this was a six to three decision. The conservative justices were on one side really ruling against administrative powers and the liberal justices were on another side saying that this is bad for the country moving forward. If the federal government isn't able to exercise some of the powers that they have been able to exercise for such a very long time, about 40 years under what's known as the Chevron doctrine. All of that is really now being chiseled away by this conservative majority here. And just to got to give you guys a quick recap of what the Chevron doctrine is about 40 years ago, there is a ruling here at the US Supreme Court that said whenever a law is on clear, the courts must defer to experts within certain agencies to make that clarification. So what we see now are the justices and really a lot of conservatives saying that there shouldn't be so much power within the administration. It doesn't matter if it's a Democrat who's running the White House or Republican. They believe that the federal government shouldn't have that much power. And this is yet again another case where the US Supreme Court is agreeing that that is the case that there shouldn't be so much power with these administrative agencies. So Abajoy, just a quick follow up. What would be a real life, I guess, situation where federal agency would have less power? What would that look like? What, what is something that they do now that they wouldn't be able to do? Because as you mentioned, the, the, the chiseling away of that power. One of the things that I've heard about is the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, they may not be able to say this particular act, this Clean Air Act, you know, this is what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have certain limitations. They may not have that authority anymore. Some folks are also saying the FDA may have limitations on what goes on our shelves. They may not have that authority. So those are some of the real world examples. Of course, it's hypotheticals right now because we have to see, wait to see exactly what challenges come forward. But another big concern with that is if these federal agencies don't have the ability to challenge what they see as misconduct, there is a possibility that we could see a backlog within our court system where the courts are unable to really keep up with the legal challenges. Because what the High Court is essentially saying now is this should really go over to the court system. A lot of these challenges should be thought through by the court system and not these legal experts. So if we now have a major dump of cases that are going through the courts, there could be an issue where judges are not able to do this. All right. Legal affairs correspondent ABBA Joy Burnett reporting. Appreciate that.