And we finally get a bite (albeit from a Senator, but hey, I'll take it).
What I will first say is that Chevron has no bearing on whether or not an agency can pass regulations at all ... if Congress delegates with a clear intelligible principle, thats fine. What Chevron does is limit the ability of people to challenge in court specific regulations that have deviated from the Congressional grant AKA due process. Why a judge should defer to a non-lawyer bureaucrat on a question of law during a court case is beyond me ...
Here is a link to a good article that analyzes how inconsistently and politically Chevron is applied by Appellate Judges. Some highlights:
Most doctrine seeks to provide substantive principles to resolve legal issues. But deference doctrines do something different from and in addition to substantive legal doctrine. They command judges to defer to other actors’ decisions of fact or law (such as states, agencies, juries, or other judges) based on others’ sovereign interests or institutional advantages.
Chevron itself was the product of the Reagan Administration—a doctrine that shifted power from a liberal D.C. Circuit to a more conservative presidential administration.
For instance, in Michigan v. EPA (2015), [the Court] expressed constitutional concerns about Chevron deference, both under Article III of the Constitution because the doctrine displaces the court’s duty to say what the law is and under Article I by facilitating excessively broad congressional delegations of lawmaking authority to federal agencies.
In other word, Judges are trained to interpret questions of law and while they may not be perfect this interpretation largely tracks general, neutral principles. Bureaucrats are NOT doing that. Bureaucrats are exercising a POLITICAL judgment. They are subject to the desires of the Chief Executive. That should be apparently obvious when Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump literally have the same agencies overturning their own past interpretations that were passed when the other party was in charge. Judges should be the one to interpret questions of LAW. Chevron deference is a chickensh**t abomination. Why even bother allowing for court cases if the the court MUST agree with the bureaucrats, even where the bureaucrats have a poorly reasoned, politically-motivated interpretation? We should empower our judges to be fair and neutral arbiters of law, not secretaries whose job is just to rubber stamp yes to their "bosses'" decisions. It actually politicizes the court more to maintain Chevron, as political decisions are declared to be "neutral" when they are nothing of the sort.
Eliminating Chevron deference just makes sense. It limits the politicization of the courts and makes judicial review actually mean something other than a rubber stamping kangaroo court. And eliminating Chevron deference wont hobble the regulatory state ... they will still be able to make regulations ... Chevron doesnt affect Congress's ability to delegate regulation power to bureaucrats. Everyone should support it and I hope we can get some feedback from the people whose job is to read this bill and give feedback.
