US Supreme Court attacks federal regulation of corporate interests

In a much-anticipated and deeply reactionary ruling handed down Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent to weaken government regulation of businesses and banks in a wide range of areas, including public health, worker safety, wage and hour standards, environmental protections, abortion and birth control, consumer rights, food and drug standards, and corporate oversight.

In deciding in favour of the plaintiffs in Loper Bright Enterprises v. RaimondoChief Justice John Roberts explicitly wrote that “Chevron is superseded,” referring to the so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine of 1984. Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council Ruling. This ruling declared that courts were required to defer to federal regulators and to recognize the scientific expertise of those agencies when interpreting laws that Congress had left vague.

Roberts wrote, “Government agencies have no special authority to resolve legal ambiguities. That’s what courts do.” This is an open invitation for corporate lobbyists and special interest groups to flood the courts with lawsuits challenging government regulations that run counter to their profit interests, without regard to the cost to the health and welfare of the public. It also seeks to prevent the implementation of new regulations by requiring them to be approved by legislators and courts through review.

Roberts was joined by the rest of the six right-wing justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The three moderates – Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Elena Kagan – dissented. Sotomayor and Brown Jackson joined the dissent written by Kagan.

The court considered Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo together with an almost identical case, Relentless v. Department of CommerceBoth cases involved a 1976 federal law that requires herring boats to have federal observers on board to collect data to prevent overfishing.

Under a 2020 interpretive rule, the companies that owned the boats were required not only to transport the observers but also to pay $700 a day to oversee them. Fishing companies in New Jersey and Rhode Island filed suit, arguing that the 1976 law did not authorize the National Marine Fisheries Service to collect the fee.

The case was funded and pushed through the courts by two advocacy groups, the Cause of Action Institute and the New Civil Liberties Alliance, both of which have ties to the network of foundations and groups funded by billionaire right-wing oil magnate Charles Koch (estimated net worth: $64.9 billion). All lower courts, including the DC Court of Appeals, rely on the Chevron precedent, ruled as expected in favor of the government and against the plaintiffs. This paved the way for the right-wing majority in the Supreme Court to take the case and use it to Chevron.