Democrats push US Senate bill to reverse Supreme Court ruling curbing agency power

[July 24, 2024]  By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - Democratic U.S. senators on Tuesday introduced a bill designed to undo a ruling last month by the U.S. Supreme Court that curtailed the ability of federal agencies to issue regulations addressing issues including the environment, consumer protection and workers' rights.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said she and 10 fellow Democrats are sponsoring a bill that would codify into law a 40-year-old legal doctrine that the U.S. Supreme Court scrapped that had required courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of the laws they administer when those statutes are ambiguous.

The Stop Corporate Capture Act would restore the doctrine, known as "Chevron deference," and make a series of other changes that Democrats say would modernize and streamline the rulemaking process.

Warren in a statement said the bill would "make sure corporate interest groups can’t substitute their preferences for the judgment of Congress and the expert agencies."

The bill has slim chances of passing in an election year in the Senate, which Democrats only narrowly control. A similar bill backed by Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, is pending in the U.S. House of Representatives.

That chamber is led by Republicans, who welcomed the June 28 decision by the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority overruling the doctrine the court established in a 1984 ruling called Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that instead of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes, courts "must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority."

The Supreme Court's decision was one of a number in its last term that weakened the power of administrative agencies, a longtime goal of Republicans.

A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S. June 29, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo

In the weeks since the decision, at least six lower-court judges appointed by Republican presidents have cited the Supreme Court's holding in a series of rulings blocking rules adopted during Democratic President Joe Biden's administration designed to protect workers' and LGBTQ rights.

"There were a fair number of cases in which judges were sitting on decisions until the fate of Chevron was determined," said Michael Drysdale, a lawyer at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney who specializes in environmental and administrative law. "So now there is a burst of activity."

The first of those decisions hit within just hours of the Supreme Court's decision, when a federal judge in Sherman, Texas, blocked a U.S. Department of Labor rule from being enforced against the state that would extend mandatory overtime pay to new classes of workers.

That decision was followed by rulings by judges in Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, and Texas blocking new Biden administration rules designed to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in healthcare and education and a Federal Trade Commission rule banning non-compete agreements.

Most recently, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday directed a Texas judge to reconsider an earlier ruling that relied on Chevron deference to uphold a Biden era rule from the U.S. Labor Department that allows socially conscious investing by employee retirement plans.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Andrea Ricci)

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