In post-Chevron mine case, DC Circuit won’t defer to regulators
What is a mine? That shouldn’t be an impossible question. You would think that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) would have a reasonable definition—after all, they’re charged with regulating (you won’t believe this) safety and health at mines. But when MSHA inspectors showed up at KC Transport’s facility in Emmett, West Virginia, it became clear that their definition was muddy at best.
That’s because KC Transport’s repair shop isn’t a mine. It’s not even particularly near any mines. KC Transport is a trucking company and its facility in Emmett is a service yard for their trucks.
So why were mine inspectors trudging about? Well, KC Transport is sometimes hired to haul coal. And the Secretary of Labor, who ultimately oversees MSHA, claimed that even though the trucks being repaired were not hauling coal or driving on a haul road, they and the maintenance yard were legally a “mine” subject to federal regulation under the Mine Act. But under the Secretary’s interpretation, every gas station, chapel, or restaurant that caters to miners and their well-being could be a mine. If that interpretation were a canary, it’s a canary that’s dead before arrival at the mine entrance.
KC Transport, with help from PLF, has been fighting MSHA’s power grab over their facility for years. Throughout the process, the government has relied on and benefited from Chevron deference—which required judges to defer to MSHA’s interpretation of the Mine Act so long as it was merely reasonable, even if other interpretations would be more in line with the text of the law.
Their case ultimately landed at the Supreme Court last February, shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Chevron v. NRDC—the case that created Chevron deference—when it ruled in Loper Bright. After it decided Loper Bright, the Supreme Court sent KC Transport’s case back to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to be decided without deference to MSHA.
This week, after years of litigation, KC Transport will finally get a fair hearing in court without the government getting a thumb on the scale. The DC Circuit is set to hear arguments in the case on January 24. It will be the first case after Loper Bright where the DC Circuit will have to say what the law is without applying the doctrine of deference.
Loper Bright was a momentous step—but only a step—toward reining in the power and caprice of executive agencies. Even with Chevron overturned, there is still much to be hammered out by the courts to determine how much leeway agencies will get in interpreting the laws that empower them.
That’s why we’re litigating cases like KC Transport: It’s one of the cases that will shape what the post-Chevron world will look like.
Another PLF case, Foster v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, was also sent back to lower courts after Loper Bright was decided. Like KC Transport, Foster—in which a South Dakota family is fighting an erroneous wetland designation—is once again winding its way through the legal process, this time freed from deference to the government.
And in dozens of other cases, we’ve notified the courts that they’re no longer bound to defer to the government’s interpretation of the law and that they can fully consider our argument and decide what the law means for themselves.
There is work to be done, and our clients are blazing a trail that will benefit every American.
