Today the Supreme Court ruled in City of Arlington v. FCC that courts should defer to agency interpretations of statutes they administer, regardless of whether the provision at issue could be characterized as “jurisdictional.” The opinion, authored by deference-maven Justice Scalia, rejected the argument that agency interpretations of ...
The internet is all a tizzy over a footnote in yesterday’s City of Arlington v. FCC decision. In the footnote, Justice Scalia pointlessly criticized a party’s name. Although footnotes are sometimes used for such playground antics, others have fundamentally reshaped our law. The most famous of the latter – Footnote 4 from United States ...
Last Friday, the Supreme Court extended the deadline for the American Farm Bureau Federation to file a petition for certiorari in its case challenging the EPA’s interpretation of the Total Maximum Daily Load or “TMDL” provision of the Clean Water Act. While the details of the case–much like the Clean Water Act itself–get very ...
Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron v. NRDC, federal administrative agencies tasked with implementing statutes have been given broad discretion to determine the scope of ambiguous statutory terms. As a result, agencies have sought to maximize their powers whenever Congress uses an even arguably ambiguous word or p ...
Over on the Federalist Society’s FEDSOC BLOG, I have a post discussing a recent decision from a federal court that federal bureaucrats overstepped their authority when they adopted fracking regulations. In 2005, Congress exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (the primary federal statute intended to protect drinki ...
For administrative law nerds, U.S. Tenth Circuit Court Judge Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion this week calling for the High Court to reconsider its Chevron doctrine is about as thrilling as it gets! Although it is hard to top, Tony Francois and I also savored the timing, given that we foreshadowed this type of opinion just … ...
Judges often defer to the government’s interpretations of its own power. PLF fights this trend because it upsets the balance of separated powers and threatens liberty. But recently, in a case called Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association v. Perez, judicial deference slumped to a new low. … ...
PLF argues “no,” in an amicus brief supporting four states, industry groups, and an Indian tribe in their challenge to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) unlawful fracking regulation. It purports to regulate all fracking on federal lands based on the potential impacts of fracking to underground drinking water sources, despite t ...
Yesterday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an environmentalist challenge to a 2008 EPA rule exempting water transfers from Clean Water Act permitting requirements.* In Catskill Mountains Chapter of Trout Unlimited v. EPA, the court held that EPA’s so-called Water Transfer Rule—which exempts the transfer of water from one n ...