The Case That Launched a Thousand 28(j)s: U.S. Supreme Court Overturns Chevron Deference, Allows Challenges to Long-Promulgated Regulations
In Loper Bright, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron and held that courts should now interpret statutory provisions without deferring to administrative agencies
When the Clean Air Act refers to “major stationary sources” of air pollution, does that term mean each of the pollution-emitting units at a single plant, or does it mean the entire plant as a whole? Forty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. that both of these interpretations were permissible and that the Environmental Protection Agency could therefore choose either of them. The ambiguity, it explained, constituted a “legislative delegation to an agency” that triggered “the principle of deference to administrative interpretations.” That is, the Court held that courts must defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions.
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