On May 1 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that has every indication of correcting a nearly four-decade problem.
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. was a landmark 1984 decision that required courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of federal law, thus granting significant power to unelected lower-level bureaucrats.
The decision established a doctrine that became known as "Chevron deference,” and has led to the administrative state being referenced as a "fourth branch of government" and more recently as the "deep state."
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a case filed by a group of commercial fishing companies, challenges the Chevron decision.
Specifically, they object to a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) rule requiring the fishing industry to pay for the costs of observers who monitor compliance with fishery management plans.
Although federal law requires commercial fishing vessels to carry NMFS monitors, it’s silent on the issue of who pays for the monitors.
The agency said it’s the fishing companies’ responsibility. The lower courts essentially deferred to the agency’s interpretation of the law, per the Chevron decision.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit public interest law firm, filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor, which is an order of Catholic nuns who care for the elderly poor.
The brief asks the court to overturn Chevron.
So what does an order of nuns and an organization dedicated to religious freedom have to do with the commercial fishing industry?
Mark Rienzi, The Becket Fund’s president and CEO, explained:
"We just filed a brief for the Sisters explaining how administrative agencies have actually been the source of most of the big religious liberty conflicts in the country in recent years," he told Newsmax.
"It’s very rarely a statute passed by an elected legislature. It’s very often administrative power that is causing the problem."
In the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, in 2011 the Department of Health and Human Services issued a federal mandate as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), based on vague, unclear language in the act.
It required employers to provide contraceptives in their health insurance plans.
Although the agency included a religious exemption, it was so narrowly drafted that it didn’t include groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Rienzi added that "the brief we filed with the court said, 'hey, when you’re looking at these big administrative law questions, you ought to keep in mind that when you have a really expansive view of the administrative state, religious people tend to suffer.'"
And among those suffering "religious people" is an order of Catholic nuns.
The problem lies in the fact that per the Chevron rule, "agencies are given a lot of deference in interpreting statutory law when they’re doing their rules and regulations."
Within the current court, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito expressed their objections to the Chevron doctrine in their dissenting opinion on a 2013 case.
In addition, Neil Gorsuch publicly denounced the court’s excessive Chevron deference to agencies before he ascended to the Supreme Court.
Rienzi predicted "I assume the court took that case because they are trying to fix the [Chevron] doctrine related to administrative law. I don’t know exactly what they’ll do, but I do expect they’ll do something to try to improve the doctrine there and bring it closer to constitutional standards."
Vox, however, saw only doom and gloom if Chevron were overturned, proclaiming in a headline, "A new Supreme Court case seeks to make the nine justices even more powerful."
Given that Vox is a far-left news outlet, their objection may be the best argument yet to overturn Chevron.
In addition, for at least the last seven years the term "deep state" has been thrown around, referring to a bureaucracy that runs independently of and often in opposition to the White House and Congress.
Even Politico, hardly a conservative publication, confirmed that the deep state is real, comprised of unelected and unnamed individuals working within an alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies.
Decisions such as the Chevron doctrine made possible the deep state, which has often been referred to as a swamp.
But it’s not a swamp. It’s a sewer, and it’s time to call Roto-Rooter.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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