Introduction to the Chevron Doctrine

In June of 2024 the Supreme Court overturned a forty year old precedent called the ‘Chevron doctrine’, under which a court, if it determines that statutory language used by Congress is ambiguous, mus

t defer to the relevant federal agency’s interpretation of that statute, so long as a federal court determines the agency interpretation is not arbitrary, capricious or in direct conflict with the statute’s intentions. The idea behind such deference, as expressed by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) was that “expert agencies, accountable to an elected president, are better suited than federal judges to make the policy choices that Congress left open.”  Though it may sound strange, this 1984 precedent named after one of the most notorious gas companies in the world has been used in thousands of cases to uphold environmental protections and protect the Environmental Protection Agency’s influence in environmental regulation. For example, when the EPA’s strict interpretation of the Clean Air Act’s “Good Neighbor Provision” was challenged in 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the EPA due to the fact that “the agency is entitled under Chevron to interpret the Clean Air Act as it likes, as long as it is trying to accomplish the law’s lofty goals of clean air.” 

Why Do We Need To Protect Against Climate Change?

As a member of a generation that has grown up with environmental degradation as an inescapable reality, I have always been acutely aware of the danger climate change poses to the future of both the United States and our planet at large. According to NASA, sea levels have already risen about 8 inches due to the expansion caused by seawater warming and the melting of sea ice and are projected to rise another 1 to 6.6 feet by 2100. Moreover, within the U.S. it is estimated that “human-caused climate change has already doubled the area of forest burned in recent decades…[and by] 2050, the amount of land consumed by wildfires in Western United States is projected to further increase by two to six times.” In addition to these direct effects on the environment, according to the EPA climate change can, has, and will continue to have dire effects on the health and safety of humans, particularly through its ability to degrade hospitable land and disrupt agricultural processes thus leading to food shortages. 

How the Chevron Doctrine Has Been Used To Defend Environmental Regulation

Of the utmost importance in the United States’ fight against climate change is legislative action- setting standards, regulating emissions, and promoting sustainable practices across various sectors. Significantly, according to Supreme Court Justice Kagan, often the language used in such legislation is left intentionally broad or arbitrary in order to allow for adaptability overtime as new climate developments, scientific information, and technologies emerge. It is when such arbitrary language was used that federal agencies, such as the EPA, have historically played a critical role, thanks to the Chevron doctrine. 

Since 1984, the Chevron doctrine has been crucial in protecting the ability of specially focused federal agencies, including but not limited to the EPA, to lend their expertise to making reasonable decisions concerning regulations and standards where Congressional law is (often intentionally) ambiguous. In terms of climate regulation alone, the Chevron doctrine has been used in an estimated thousands of cases to uphold clean air, water, and energy standards. For instance, the Chevron doctrine was used by the Supreme Court to uphold the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, despite the Act not explicitly mentioning greenhouse gasses, in the 2006 case of Massachusetts v. EPA. Greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide and methane, have been proven to be significant contributors to rising temperatures and poor air quality. If it weren’t for the Chevron doctrine, the court would have had no requirement to defer to the EPA, and would have had the freedom to rule that since they were not mentioned explicitly, greenhouse gasses should not be considered pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and thus would go unregulated. This illustrates just how vital the doctrine is in the EPA’s ability to truly protect against pollution. 

However, the Chevron doctrine was by no means a blank check that federal agencies could use to exercise unchallenged authority on all statutory ambiguities. Chevron grants interpretive primacy to an agency only when “it is acting, as Congress specified, in the heartland of its delegated authority,” such as when the EPA was given deference on statutory questions related to air pollution.

How The Overturn of The Chevron Doctrine Will Impair Effective Climate Policy

On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine. The overturn was accomplished through the conservative majority Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, separated across partisan lines, in the pair of cases Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, both of which challenged the forty year old precedent. The overturning of the Chevron doctrine will have far reaching consequences in diverse areas of United States policy, but the most catastrophic effect may be the resulting limitation on the United States’ ability to come together to combat climate change and prevent environmental degradation. This will happen in three key ways.

Firstly, the Environmental Protection Agency is comprised of professionals with technical expertise and specialized knowledge that enables them to make informed judgements on what specific climate regulations can achieve specific goals. As Justice Kagan says in her dissenting opinion, “agencies often know things about a statute’s subject matter that courts could not hope to…[and] the point is especially stark when the statute is of a ‘scientific or technical nature.’” To illustrate the absurdity of deferring to the judiciary to resolve ambiguities that would have fallen under the jurisdiction of a specialized federal agency under the Chevron doctrine, Justice Kagan provides an example of the type of ambiguity that now would be decided by the court: the question of what is considered a protein in The Public Health Service Act. Under the act, the FDA must regulate “biological product[s]” including “protein[s].” As Justice Kagan observed herself, judges are not expected nor required to know how to answer such ambiguities. These types of complex, scientific questions are abundant when one considers climate policy. Moreover, without technical knowledge, judges cannot be expected to understand the significance of seemingly negligible changes in climate. For example, to many people (judges included) a rise in temperature of just one degree celsius may seem trivial, however the reality (as the EPA is well aware) is that such a small increase would have massive effects on weather patterns, food security, and the health of global ecosystems. The overturn of Chevron allows courts to ignore the specific technical expertise the EPA brings when it considers ambiguities in Congressional statutes related to climate. This is irresponsible because it puts technical decisions into the hands of those who are ill-prepared and have no resources to help them prepare to answer such questions—creating the risk of developing regulatory policies that are less informed, more subject to corporate interests, and, in turn, less effective.

Secondly, the overturn of Chevron allows for a larger voice of private corporations in environmental regulation. It should be noted that according to The New York Times, the plaintiffs in both cases that resulted in the overturn of Chevron were represented by attorneys from a conservative law firm with connections to the Koch brothers—whose oil and other industrial interests are particularly threatened by strict environmental regulation like that typically supported by the EPA. Clearly, it was in the interest of big oil and fossil fuels to overturn Chevron. After its overturn, though representatives from federal agencies will still be able to present their findings to courts, judges will now have no requirement to listen. The voice of the EPA will now carry no more authority than that of other stakeholders such as industrial lobbyists, politicians and corporate representatives, who come with private interests unrelated to the preservation of the climate. 

Finally, the overturn of the Chevron doctrine will focus the attentions and energies of courts, lawmakers, lawyers, lobbyists and environmentalists on the past rather than the future of environmental regulation. According to Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion, the Supreme Court has used the Chevron doctrine 70 times, while lower courts have applied the framework in thousands of cases—each of which is now open to challenge. According to the Carbon Brief, industries with vested financial interests in challenging previously accepted EPA interpretations of arbitrary statutes supported by the Chevron doctrine (e.g., fossil fuel companies, chemical manufacturers, large agricultural companies, etc.) are notoriously wealthy, and thus have great capacities to empower lobbyists and instigate legal challenges to environmental regulations established using the now-overturned Chevron doctrine. As Jennifer Jones, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted, “by paralyzing federal agencies and inviting lawsuits against the rules these agencies implement, this decision will profoundly undermine bedrock laws.” Such prolonged legal battles over both emerging and decades-old regulations will consume valuable time and resources of the EPA that could otherwise be directed towards innovative policy making, forcing them into a defensive stance at a time when aggressive offensive measures are needed to combat the climate crisis.

For all these reasons, the ability of the EPA to engage in effective environmental regulation is under threat due to the overturn of the Chevron doctrine- with profound effects on the health and safety of Americans. As Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, summarizes profoundly, the overturn of the Chevron doctrine “undermines vital protections for the American people at the behest of powerful polluters.”

Suggestions for Further Reading:

1. What Chevron’s end could mean for EPA climate regulations – Politico  
2. The Supreme Court Ends Chevron Deference—What Now? – National Resource Defense Council 
3. What the Supreme Court Chevron Decision Means for Environmental Rules – Washington Post
4. Climate Change and Human Health – Environmental Protection Agency 
5. Justice Kagan Dissent in Loper – The Supreme Court of The United States 
6. How the Supreme Court’s Chevron Decision Benefits Big Oil and Gas – The Equation 
7. US Supreme Court Overturns Chevron Doctrine: What it Means for Climate Change Policy – Carbon Brief 
8. Chevron Overturned: Impacts on Environmental, Energy, and Natural Resources Regulation – Arnold & Porter
9. What Overruling Chevron Could Mean for Environmental Law – Georgetown Environmental Law Review
10. Stanford’s Deborah Sivas on SCOTUS’ Loper Decision overturning Chevron and the Impact on Environmental Law – Stanford Law School  
11.  Environmental Lawyers Say End of Chevron Deference Could Hurt Wisconsin Water Quality – Wisconsin Examiner 
12. The Supreme Court Overturns the Chevron Doctrine, Gutting Federal Environmental Protections – The Sierra Club 

Safeguarding Food Safety Post-Supreme Court’s Decision on Chevron Deference – Food Safety News