Supreme court to consider Foster v. Vilsack in first conference of new year

Yesterday we filed our reply in Foster v. Vilsack in the Supreme Court of the United States. The petition in this case asks the Supreme Court to decide whether low level federal bureaucrats can force the federal courts to accept their interpretation of federal law, merely by testifying to their opinion in an administrative hearing. This topic is commonly referred to as judicial deference, one of the Four Ds of Administrative State reform.

In a very odd response to the Fosters’ cert petition, the federal government’s lawyers inaccurately claim that the Fosters did not raise this issue below. Our reply corrects this assertion, noting both that the Fosters repeatedly and explicitly raised the issue below, and that the lower federal courts decided the case on this issue as well.

The cert petition has garnered attention in the legal world, including being featured as a Petition of the Day on SCOTUSblog, and being written about in various news outlets. It also garnered excellent amicus support from the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Cato Institute, and the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

The Supreme Court will meet on January 6, 2017, to decide whether to accept the case.