Laws & Rights
SCOTUS Defangs Deep State (& Not a Minute Too Soon)
The fog of war surrounding the battle for the White House is obscuring one of the most critical Supreme Court decisions of the last 50 years.
There’s a good reason why you may not have heard about the pivotal Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondoย andย Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerceย decision: It was announced the day after the first Biden/Trump debate. Of course, Biden’s decrepit (and possibly crepitating) performance is and should be dominating headlines internationally. It was the political equivalent of Vesuvius erupting. But underneath the smoke and flames smolders a much quieter cataclysm … one that will reshape the way Americans do business and live their lives. And it’s absolutely terrific news for those of us who have been shocked and enraged by the actions of unelected bureaucrats at the ATF.
Over the years, the ATF’s pencil-necked pencil-pushers in their safe little sinecures have been simply changing the rules about guns, gun ownership, selling guns, and storing guns whenever they felt like it. (That is, of course, when they weren’t deliberately breaking the law in some sort of bass-ackwards gambit to frame American gun manufacturers for illegally exporting guns to Mexican cartels.)
That’s all about to change. What does it mean for American gun owners? The NSSF has the scoop!
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THE SUPREME COURT STRIKES A MAJOR BLOW TO THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE
The U.S. Supreme Courtโs 2023 Term has been a triumph for reining in executive overreach. It is no secret that the Biden administration has used its executive agenciesโand for our industry Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in particularโto circumvent the will of Congress to enact its radical antigun agenda. But recent Supreme Court decisions curtailing the power of the โadministrative stateโ are important steps in righting the ship and restoring the constitutional separation of powers to those envisioned by the Founders.
First, the Supreme Court held inย Garland v. Cargillย that the ATF exceeded its statutory authority by classifying semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks as โmachinegunsโ under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). In doing so, the Court made clear that ATF could not ignore the statutory text of the law. Rather, the agency must follow Congressโs clear statutory mandate and cannot read in its own policy preferences.
More recently, the Court put a stop to the practice of deferring to an administrative agencyโs interpretation of the law, also known as theย Chevronย doctrine. That doctrine stemmed from a 1984 case calledย Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, in which the Supreme Court created a two-part test for determining if an executive agency has acted within its statutory authority in interpreting the law it administers. Under that test, courts first considered whether the statute gave a clear answer to the question in the case. If the court found that the statute was silent or ambiguous as to the issue at hand, then it would defer to the agencyโs interpretation of the statute if it was โreasonable,โ even if the court did not think it the best reading of the statute. In practicality, courts would routinely defer to the agencyโs interpretations, which gave administrative agencies a wide latitude to regulate untold aspects of American enterprise and everyday life by interpreting the law to fit their policy preferences even when it was contrary to the will of Congress.
While the Supreme Court declined to applyย Chevronย deference for nearly a decade, it officially overruled the precedent inย Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondoย andย Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce. Those cases challenged a National Marine Fisheries Service rule that required commercial fishing boats to pay for government monitors that keep watch over crews for overfishing violations. The challengers argued that the relevant statute did not authorize the agency to mandate that fishing boats pay for the government monitors. Two federal appellate courts applied theย Chevronย doctrine and upheld the rule, deferring to the agencyโs interpretation.
Chevronย Overruled
In a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court held thatย Chevronย deference to an agencyโs interpretation of the law is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires that courts โ not agencies โ exercise their own independent judgment in determining what the law means and deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority. The Court rejected the notion that agency interpretations are entitled to deference based on technical expertise. Rather, it is the courts that have special competence in interpreting ambiguous statutes and, if Congress and the Executive Branch disagree with how courts have interpreted the law, they can act by amending the statute. Finally, the Court rebuffed the argument that leaving the interpretation of ambiguous statutes to courts โ rather than agencies โ amounts to โpolicymaking suited for political actors.โ That view misunderstands the judicial role, as the APA has always required thatย courtsย determine what powers Congress has delegated to agencies and to police those boundaries to ensure that agencies do not go beyond their statutory authority.
Rebalancing the Scales
Theย Loper Brightย decision will send shock waves in administrative law, asย Chevronย deference tipped the scales in the favor of agency interpretations for decades. Courts faced with textual ambiguities or silence can no longer reflexively rule in favor of an agency by declaring that its interpretation of a statute is reasonable. By overrulingย Chevron, the Supreme Court rebalances the scales by restoring the proper roles of the judicial, executive, and legislative branches. Congress makes the law; the executive enforces the law; and the courts interpret the law.
Limitations on the encroachment on each branchโs power are critical to the separation of powers in our constitutional system. Theย Loper Brightย decision makes a large leap in the right direction for curtailing administrative overreach. Like many agencies as of late, the ATF has brazenly exceeded its authority through several actions, including its aforementioned reclassification of bump stocks as machineguns, itsย Final Ruleย banning stabilizing braces for AR-15 pistols, itsย Final Ruleย redefining when something is a โframe or receiverโ and itsย Final Ruleย redefining what it means to be โengaged in the businessโ of dealing in firearms.
While overrulingย Chevronย does not provide a silver bullet for stopping the agencyโs abuses, it takes away an important tool in its arsenal, as the ATF is no longer entitled to deference on its whipsawing, ever-changing statutory interpretations crafted to bypass Congress. Rather, bothย Cargillย andย Loper Brightย send a clear message: the age of administrative excess is over, and agencies should leave legislating to Congress and interpreting the law to the courts.
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