A herring fishermen group's lawsuit will give the Supreme Court the chance to hamstring federal climate regulations
- The US Supreme Court will take up a case brought by a group of New Jersey fishermen.
- The case could lead to the overturning of the legal precedent known as the "Chevron deference."
The US Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case brought by a group of New Jersey herring fishermen that could lead to the overturning of a decades-old precedent and have major impacts on federal climate and environmental regulations.
The case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, stems from a 2020 lawsuit brought by the fishermen against the federal government that challenges a regulation forcing them to pay for at-sea government-mandated monitors on their boats.
With the nation's highest court agreeing on Monday to hear the case, it gives it a chance to shoot down a commonly cited legal precedent known as the "Chevron deference," which conservative groups have long attacked.
The doctrine, established in the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, calls for courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous federal laws. It has been repeatedly used by the federal government in a wide range of cases.
Lawyer Paul Clement, who served as the Solicitor General under former President George W. Bush and is representing the fishermen along with attorneys from the Cause of Action Institute, said in a statement praising the Supreme Court's decision to take the case that the Chevron doctrine "has enabled the widespread expansion of unchecked executive authority."
Cause of Action Institute counsel Ryan Mulvey added that the Supreme Court "has an opportunity to correct one of the most consequential judicial errors in a generation."
"Chevron deference has proven corrosive to the American system of checks and balances and directly contributed to an unaccountable executive branch, overbearing bureaucracy, and runaway regulation," said Mulvey.
University of Chicago law professor Jonathan Masur told The Washington Post that the case before the Supreme Court "is a very big deal because it could be a vehicle for the Court to dramatically reduce agencies' authority to regulate under existing statutes."
The outcomes of the case "would be particularly likely to affect the [Environmental Protection Agency], which has relied heavily upon Chevron in recent years," Masur said.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court is slated to hear the case in its next term. Liberal-leaning Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will recuse herself from the case.
"Our way of life is in the hands of these justices, and we hope they will keep our families and our community in mind as they weigh their decision," said Bill Bright, a New Jersey fisherman and plaintiff in the case.