Supreme Court to officially take control of the executive branch

Looks like the Republicans on the Supreme Court are going to officially kill the Chevron doctrine:

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up a case that could make it easier to curtail the power of administrative agencies, a long-running goal of the conservative legal movement that could have far-reaching implications for how American society imposes rules on businesses.

In a terse order, the court said it would hear a case that seeks to limit or overturn a unanimous 1984 precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. According to the decision, if part of the law Congress wrote empowering a regulatory agency is ambiguous but the agency’s interpretation is reasonable, judges should defer to it.

The rise of ad hoc nonsense like the “major questions” doctrine has made Chevron pretty much a dead letter as far as the Supreme Court is concerned anyway. But overruling or substantially cutting back on it would make a difference for lower courts that still apply Supreme Court doctrine in good faith:

Definitely true that overruling Chevron won't make much (if any) impact on Supreme Court decisions, but I do think it'll have major consequences for the lower courts, which still routinely (and fairly) apply Chevron deference in tough admin law cases. https://t.co/OZy9DeXyXX— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 1, 2023

This is one of the many reasons that the party that has one the popular vote once since 1988 getting a Supreme Court supermajority is so huge. The fact that the doctrines you could create could be used by the other side too had a certain restraining effect on the Court. But now, the Court’s Republicans know that barring a miracle these doctrines will only be used against Democratic presidents. The joint decisions of Anthony Kennedy to reture strategically and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to refuse to do so will have a massive ongoing impact on American politics we’ve only begun to see.