John Jefferson
FIRST ON FOX: A consumer watchdog agency is warning lawmakers in the Senate to end plans to codify a legal doctrine that the Supreme Court struck down earlier this year.
The high court ruled in favor this summer of a group of fishermen who challenged a federal agency, claiming that a decades-old legal doctrine gave the administrative state too much power over their business.
Known as the Chevron doctrine, the legal theory established in the 1980s says that if a federal regulation is challenged, the courts should defer to the agency’s interpretation of whether Congress had granted it authority to issue the rule, as long as the agency’s interpretation is reasonable and Congress had not addressed the question directly.
Democrats in Congress have since attempted to pass legislation that would codify Chevron deference. Alliance for Consumers, a national consumer advocacy organization, is urging those lawmakers to not “[re-empower] bureaucrats to ban or wipe away even more products with near impunity and a thumb on the scale for the government against the little guy.”
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“The end of Chevron deference was a huge win for consumers,” Alliance for Consumers Executive Director O.H. Skinner wrote in a letter Wednesday.
“Chevron deference gave agencies a sense of invincibility in the way they interpreted their authority and the power Congress gave them by statute,” Skinner wrote.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have both introduced legislation that would reform “the federal rulemaking process to protect consumers, workers, health care, and our environment. We must pass our bill to level the playing field and ensure our government puts people first, not giant corporations.”
Wyden argued that “the Chevron doctrine acknowledged that courts should give deference to agency experts to write rules and regulations in order to implement laws passed by Congress,” and that “the overturning of Chevron deference undermines government agencies’ ability to promote worker safety, ensure clean air and water, and protect consumers.”
Wyden did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on Skinner’s letter.
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However, Skinner argues in his letter to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs that “what we have now, with the end of Chevron deference, is a better world, where Congress’s words matter (not the policy preferences of bureaucrats) and agencies are no longer allowed to freely take advantage of statutory ambiguity to extend their powers and reshape the things available to consumers.”
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“With the end of Chevron deference, everyday consumers will now have a chance when facing off against the government in a challenge to federal edicts that do enter the world,” he continued. “Chevron deference put a thumb on the scale in every case against the government, never more so than when individuals or small businesses were going up against an agency over a mundane regulation or requirement.”
Skinner added that “while mega-corporations facing an existential-level regulation could always push on in the Chevron deference era to the Supreme Court, the little guy was trapped in a world where deference had the most power and sway, and the deck was stacked in the government’s favor.”
“That is thankfully no longer true,” he said.
The Senate committee did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on Skinner’s letter.
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