Impact of Supreme Court decision in Chevron case explained by an Arkansas legal expert

Little Rock, Arkansas – Almost every element of peoples’ lives, including what they eat, drive, breathe, and live in, might be impacted by a decision made on Friday.

Chevron v. Natural Resources was a historic case that the US Supreme Court overturned in a 6-3 decision, opening the door for changes or challenges to the government rules that many people take for granted on a daily basis.

The ruling might alter the hunting laws and the laws governing farms and agriculture for Arkansans.

This may also have an effect on Medicaid and Medicare rules for the retirement community in Arkansas.

The potential implications of the verdict was described by John DiPippa, Dean Emeritus and renowned professor of law at the William Bowen School of Law.

“Pretty much everything you touch all day long will have some connection to a federal regulation,” DiPippa said.

For the past forty years, the prevailing opinion has been that regulatory bodies, rather than courts, have experts who may be better qualified to make specific decisions about regulations.

All of that is being challenged, though, as the court now has the last word in how a statute is applied.

“In some way, it opens up all these regulations to challenge and undermines the ability and the efficiency, of the court, or the government to regulate, all these areas of health, safety, agriculture, etc,” DiPippa said.

He said that even the existing laws are affected by the verdict.

“The Clean Air and the Clean Water Act were decided in the early 70s,” DiPippa said. “That was way before, for example, the science of carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide creating global warming, so now the question is can the Environmental Protection Agency regulate the emission of carbon dioxide because that’s fouling in the air or that’s a threat to health and safety.”

The court’s decision complicates the EPA’s ability to make decisions like this since it forces Congress to amend the legislation rather than the agency to interpret its regulations.

DiPippa stated that this is excellent news since it might force Congress to write legislation with greater precision.

“The bad news is, the more precise you are, the easier it is to say, ‘You didn’t say this. You said X, Y, Z, but you didn’t say something else, so that’s not covered,’” DiPippa said.

DiPippa thinks there may be hundreds, if not thousands, of legal challenges in the future over the impact of this.

“Now it’s can you convince a judge that your interpretation of the law is better than the agency one,” DiPippa said.

The Chevron decision was reversed because the Supreme Court claims that giving federal agencies the authority to interpret laws gives the executive branch excessive power.
If every judge gets the last word, this could potentially result in differing views throughout courts.