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Supreme Court hears heated debate over Chevron deference in Relentless v. Department of Commerce
Summary
At oral argument in Relentless v. Department of Commerce, petitioner counsel argued Chevron deference unlawfully transfers courts’ interpretive power to agencies and conflicts with the APA; the Solicitor General defended Chevron as a longstanding rule that preserves uniformity and congressional design. Justices pressed both sides on where to draw the line between law and policy.
The Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in Relentless v. Department of Commerce, a case that asks whether courts should continue to defer to federal agencies under the doctrine known as Chevron. Petitioner counsel Mister Martinez told the justices that Chevron "has distorted the judicial process and undermine[d] statutory interpretation" and urged the Court to overrule it.
Martinez framed his case on three grounds: constitutional limits under Article III, the Administrative Procedure Act's review standard, and the weakness of the implied-delegation justification. "Article III empowers judges to say what the law is," he told the bench, and "Chevron reallocates interpretive authority from courts to agencies," a reallocation he said threatens judicial independence and individual liberty. He pointed to the underlying dispute about a fisheries program under the MSA, saying the agency's interpretation would "force struggling fishermen to pay up to 20% of their…
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