On June 28, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) eliminated Chevron deference. In holding that Chevron was inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), SCOTUS said courts “must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry…But courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.” Rather, courts should “use every tool at their disposal to determine the best reading of the statute and resolve the ambiguity.”

Interpreting Ambiguous Statutes
SCOTUS adopted Chevron deference in 1984, holding that when a statute “is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue” any agency interpretation from among the reasonable interpretations will control.

Chevron Was Slowly Dying
Recently, Chevron has been the subject of some debate even though it was slowly dying; the June 28 opinion acknowledged that SCOTUS had “spent the better part of four decades imposing one limitation on Chevron after another…” and SCOTUS “has not deferred to an agency interpretation under Chevron since 2016.”

In November of 2022, while dissenting from a SCOTUS decision not to hear an appeal, Justice Kavanaugh noted regarding Chevron, “the government rarely invokes it, and courts even more rarely rely upon it.”

Concurring and Dissenting Opinions
Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion stating that Chevron also violated the constitutional requirement of separation of powers; Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence said proper application of the doctrine of stare decisis required a decision that “places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss.”

Three dissenting justices asserted that “abandoning Chevron subverts every known principle of stare decisis.”

To see the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions 22-451 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (06/28/2024) (supremecourt.gov)