SCOTUS cuts agency powers with Chevron ruling

The SCOTUS Blog reported Friday that the Supreme Court cut back the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws.

By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided.”