Loper Bright Archives

Podcast: Skidmore After Loper Bright

Catholic University Law School Professor and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute Chad Squitieri discusses Skidmore v. Swift & Co., including its status after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, with University of Minnesota Law Professor Kristin Hickman.

AFPF Marks Two Years of Loper Bright with Sen. Schmitt & Expert Panelists

Last month, Americans for Prosperity Foundation (“AFPF”) hosted a special summit marking the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s momentous decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The event was well attended, and registrants spent a half-day listening to experts explore how Loper Bright is driving the Trump Administration’s regulatory agenda and giving Congress the opportunity to reassert its Article I authority and rethink its relationship with the administrative state. While most public debate about Loper Bright understandably has focused on developments…

The Hospital Menonita Dissent Demonstrates Why Loper Bright Must be Constitutionalized

By John J. Vecchione Ryan Mulvey has ably discussed the implications of the history and holding of Hospital Menonita de Guayanma v. NLRB in these pages. To sum up, the NLRB had a successor-bar rule requiring that an employer deal with a union for a year after taking over the company based on an irrebuttable…

Environmental Defense Fund v. EPA: Does Loper Bright Impact the Chenery Doctrine?

In Environmental Defense Fund v. EPA, the D.C. Circuit recently flagged an interesting impact Loper Bright might have on administrative law. Judge Henderson’s opinion suggests the possibility that, after Loper Bright, the Chenery doctrine—which holds that “reviewing courts ‘must judge the propriety of [agency] action solely by the grounds invoked by the agency’”—may not apply to “pure statutory interpretation questions.” This question matters because in challenges to agency decisions like federal regulations and adjudications, to the extent the Chenery doctrine applies it…

Lenity After Loper Bright: Deference and Liberty in Criminal Law

Earlier this spring, in Rutherford v. United States, the Supreme Court held the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1) was inconsistent with the underlying statutory text, and that nonretroactive changes in sentencing law could not qualify as “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to justify early release. That decision, and its explanation of the principles that limit the Commission’s delegated authority, accentuates how Loper Bright v. Raimondo now binds every agency—including the Commission. In her opinion for the majority, Justice Barrett…

Hospital Menonita and the Future of NLRB Deference

In the wake of Loper Bright and the end of Chevron deference, commentators have wondered whether the Supreme Court’s definitive interpretation of Section 706 could spell the end of other deference doctrines, including those that have developed outside the context of the APA. One conspicuous body of caselaw under suspicion involves deference to the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) and its interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). The D.C. Circuit’s decision last week in Hospital Menonita de…

Loper Bright’s Penalty-Default Rule

Professor John Meisel’s recent post at the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice & Comment blog offers a fascinating framework for understanding how the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo creates an incentive for Congress to avoid “statutory vagueness” and “draft more precise statutes.” Meisel characterizes the Court’s decision as establishing a “penalty…

De Novo Review Is Working: A Response to CPR’s Loper Bright Report

Last month, the Center for Progressive Reform (“CPR”) published a report analyzing the reception of Loper Bright in the lower courts. CPR’s headline empirical finding is that agency “win” rates have dropped from roughly 70% under Chevron to just 57% in the fourteen months following the Loper Bright decision. Given this shift, you might expect…

AFPF Launches Reg Reform Tracker, Tracing Impact of Loper Bright and Trump EOs

In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference, ending forty years of courts deferring to agency statutory interpretations. Now, the duty of saying what the law is has returned to where it belongs: the courts. Two years later, federal agencies are quickly rewriting the regulatory landscape, reconsidering many old regulatory interpretations that…

Americans for Prosperity Foundation Applauds Return of Endangered Species Act Regulation to Statutory Text “Based On” Loper Bright

The Departments of Interior and Commerce announced the finalization of a rule rescinding regulations issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service that had dramatically expanded the scope of the Endangered Species Act to potentially criminalize conduct and private land use decisions Congress did not statutorily authorize the Services to reach. The announcement explains that “[t]his reform is based on the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo[.]” The Services concluded that their regulations were not the best reading of…