Loper Bright

Congress created the Council on Environmental Quality to serve as an advisory body that makes recommendations to the President on what environmental policy should be. But CEQ has long claimed power to issue binding regulations—also known as “legislative rules”—implementing the National Environmental Policy Act. The source of CEQ’s claimed power: not a duly enacted statute…

When the Supreme Court overruled Chevron last year in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Chief Justice John Roberts seemed at pains to limit the impact of upending the Chevron methodology to future cases.  He explained that Loper Bright “do[es] not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework.  The holdings of those…

One of the most interesting questions surrounding the implementation of Loper Bright is its impact on the statutory stare decisis of previous decisions that courts made under the Chevron framework. Elliot Setzer has this essay on the topic over at the Yale Notice & Comment blog: When the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises…

As we’ve discussed, Loper Bright has been changing the legal landscape as courts revisit and revise or uphold standards of review. Recently, the Eighth Circuit reviewed “the authority of the President and Secretary of Education, under existing law, to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars of loans made to borrowers to finance the cost of…

On February 19, President Trump issued an executive order titled Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Deregulatory Initiative.  In the EO, Trump directed agencies to review all regulations to identify those that may need to be revised or repealed to comply with the Constitution, existing law, court precedent, and the…

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo the Supreme Court overruled Chevron v. NRDC—which had required federal courts to defer to the government’s “reasonable” interpretation of ambiguous language in statutes—holding that “[c]ourts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedure Act] requires” and that “courts need not…

Clement and Murphy PLLC represented the fishermen before the Supreme Court in Loper Bright. Read more (subscription required).

In Moctezuma-Reyes v. Garland the Sixth Circuit was tasked with interpreting the meaning of the statutory phrase “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” in assessing Mr. Moctezuma-Reyes’s petition for review of an immigration judge’s denial of his application for cancellation of his removal from the United States, which the Board of Immigration affirmed. The Court expressed sympathy for Mr.…

The Foundation for American Innovation is hosting a panel discussion and reception about how the Loper Bright case shifts power back to Congress. The event is in Washington, DC on Wednesday, February 12. ​The Supreme Court’s overturning of Chevron deference last year dramatically changed the relationship between the legislative and executive branches. After four decades of Supreme…

No More Deference: Sixth Circuit Relies on Loper Bright to Strike Down Net Neutrality Rules Congressional Research Service, Feb. 3, 2025 On January 2, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (Sixth Circuit) vacated the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) most recent net neutrality rules. The court held that, under the Communications Act…