The Supreme Court weakens federal regulators, overturning decades-old Chevron decision

^^^
John Dean says Nixon ‘would have survived’ Watergate under immunity ruling
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4750581-supreme-court-immunity-nixon/

 

Prefer to stay private. I can say I do architectural work in tech.

I don't do my "own" research so much. I do read the original material and come up with my own thinking, but I also read trustworthy sources for their assessments, usually after I think through it a bit so it doesn't bias my own thinking. While experts should be listened to, non-experts provide new ways of thinking that sometimes experts can't get to due to habitual thought patterns. Experts have an advantage for the nitty-gritty details, but are at a disadvantage for "outside the box" thinking.

 

The Only Certainty Is Uncertainty
Get ready for chaos in a post-Chevron world, Jon Fansmith writes.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opin...evron-higher-ed-should-prepare-chaos-opinion#

excerpt:

But now, it is time for all of higher education to pay close attention. Many of the rules of the road that we must follow in American higher education have been laid out by the Department of Education, the Department of Labor and other federal agencies in regulations and subregulatory guidance. Bluntly stated, the ruling last Friday will fundamentally reshape what happens on campuses, dramatically shifting the balance of power away from the federal government’s executive branch and toward the judicial branch.

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court in a case between an environmental advocacy group and the oil company Chevron ruled that when a law passed by Congress is unclear or has ambiguity, courts should defer to the interpretation of the federal agency tasked with implementing the law. The Chevron ruling was what allowed the Department of Education to map onto the mere 37 words at the core of the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 a range of “education program and activity” requirements—affecting everything from ball fields to bathrooms to campus sexual harassment investigations.
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more at the link

for the Trigonum household, that chaos cannot come soon enough. New Title IX regulations go in to effect August 1, and Biden's Dept. of Education really put a damper on the 4th of July holiday weekend this past week.





this is just the guidance document. As in-house counsel sarcastically observes, all of this will surely change again if a new President is elected in November. So some Loper Bright chaos in the short term might be a good thing for some increased stability in the long run.

 

This is just not a good thing

Are we watching and waiting on Nero to be elected and tune his fiddle?

Rocket River

 

well . . an injunction issued this month by a U.S. District Court judge in Kansas turns out to apply to Mrs Trigonum's place of employment--as she found out today. She thinks the Biden administration will likely lose this case. Thus all the work on the Title IX rule implementation she did for the past month was for nothing. lol.

https://kansasreflector.com/2024/07...deral-anti-discrimination-rules-in-education/

Kansas judge issues injunction blocking new federal anti-discrimination rules in education
Case centers on Biden administration rule adding protection of LGBTQ+ students
BY: TIM CARPENTER - JULY 3, 2024 5:13 PM

TOPEKA — A U.S. District Court judge issued a preliminary injunction directly applicable in Kansas and three other states that blocked Biden administration rules deepening anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students and broadening the definition of sexual harassment at college and schools.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach argued the case last month in Wichita on behalf of special-interest groups with members in Alaska, Utah, Wyoming and Kansas interested in derailing the U.S. Department of Education’s plan to implement in August policies amplifying Title IX civil rights protections. The court also asked plaintiffs Female Athletes United, Young America’s Foundation and Moms for Liberty to submit by July 15 a list of schools attended by students affiliated with those organizations who would be covered by the injunction.

Judge John Broomes, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said in the order that plaintiffs were likely to win in court on constitutional claims the education department’s final rule was deficient.

“The court finds that plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claims that the final rule is contrary to law and exceeds statutory authority,” Broomes said. “The final rule is an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power under the spending clause, the final rule violates the First Amendment and the final rule is arbitrary and capricious.”

Broomes’ order followed previous federal court decisions that likewise found merit to constitutional claims in opposition to the Biden administration rulemaking.

Kobach, who has made a habit of filing lawsuits against President Joe Biden, said Wednesday the Democratic administration sought to improperly rewrite federal regulations as it applied to transgender students. The Kansas court decision was an important step toward ending Biden’s maneuver to violate the rights of students, he said.

“It protects girls and women across the country from having their privacy rights and safety violated in bathrooms and locker rooms and from having their freedom of speech violated if they say there are only two sexes,” Kobach said.

The attorney general said implementation of Biden’s rule would require public schools to allow transgender males who identified as female to compete on sports teams designated for girls or women and to use school locker rooms assigned to “biological” girls or women. However, the Biden administration said the rule change didn’t apply to sports participation. Kansas law also forbids a transgender girl or woman from playing on school or college teams with females.

“If President Biden had his way, a 16-year-old female high school student on an overnight field trip could be forced to share a hotel room with a male who identifies as a girl, or the district would risk losing federal funding,” Kobach said a statement issued by the Alliance Defending Freedom. “We’re pleased the court ruled to rein in the administration’s vast overreach. It’s unconscionable, it’s dangerous for girls and women, and it’s against federal law.”

Kobach highlighted text of Broomes’ order that raised the possibility an “industrious older teenage boy may simply claim to identify as a female to gain access to the girls’ showers, dressing rooms or locker rooms so that he can observe his female peers disrobe and shower.”

The federal judge also said it would be wrong for the education department to “require schools to subordinate the fears, concerns and privacy interests of biological women to the desires of transgender biological men to shower, dress and share restroom facilities with their female peers.”

Kobach warned the state’s public school district administrators that each should be aware they “must abide by the court’s injunction and that they are prohibited from changing any of the schools’ policies to reflect Biden’s Title IX transgender rule.”

The Southeastern Legal Foundation represents two of the advocacy groups tied to the lawsuit — Moms for Liberty and Young America’s Foundation. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Female Athletes United, in the Kansas lawsuit. Among the plaintiffs was Katie Rowland, a 13-year-old student in Oklahoma who stopped using restrooms in the school for a period of time because certain males were granted access.

“The court was right to halt the administration’s illegal efforts to rewrite Title IX while this critical lawsuit continues,” said Rachel Rouleau, legal counsel to Alliance Defending Freedom.
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The bolded list of schools due July 15 came out today--some 600 schools total, including ours.

 

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/07/...-court-to-allow-enforcement-of-title-ix-rule/

10 hours ago
Federal government asks court to allow enforcement of Title IX rule
by Amy Howe
on Jul 22, 2024 at 7:29 pm

The Biden administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to temporarily put on hold a portion of two orders issued by federal trial courts in Louisiana and Kentucky that prohibit the Department of Education from enforcing any part of an April 2024 rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding.

The two challenges—originally filed in Louisiana by four states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho, along with the Louisiana Department of Education) and in Kentucky by six states (Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and West Virginia) – focused on three provisions of the April 2024 rule, which target discrimination against transgender people.

The first provision recognizes that Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity. The second provision makes clear that schools violate Title IX when they bar transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. And the third provision defines “hostile-environment harassment” to include harassment based on gender identity.

In June, the Louisiana district court blocked the Department of Education from enforcing any part of the 2024 rule in the four states bringing the challenge. The district court in Kentucky did the same for the six states involved in that challenge. Federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Cincinnati then turned down the federal government’s request to allow it to temporarily enforce all of the rule, with the exception of the latter two provisions targeting discrimination against transgender people – which, the government said, are the source of the injuries that the challengers allege — while its appeals continued.

In a pair of filings, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the justices to intervene. She emphasized that the 2024 rule is an “omnibus” regulation that addresses a wide range of issues, unrelated to discrimination against transgender people, that the states have not challenged. Moreover, she added, when it issued the rule, the Department of Education intended each provision to stand alone. The district courts’ orders blocking the enforcement of the entire rule, she contended, therefore sweep too broadly to block “dozens of provisions that” were not before the courts. Such a “blunderbuss approach to preliminary relief,” she maintained, is “both wrong and consequential.”

Challenges to the 2024 rule are also pending elsewhere, including in Texas, Kansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Missouri.
​

 

Less government intrusion is a great idea

700 a day can kill a fisherman's business.

 

The last paragraph is the truth. Overturning Chevron doesn't take away Congress power. But it does give power to the nations citizens instead of a bunch of bureaucrats. Another good thing.

 

This is a complete side note but many architects (people who work on buildings) really don't like the use of the term "architect" or its variation applied to anything other than physical buildings. The American Institute of Architects has literally gotten it written into several state laws that one can only call themselves an "architect" if they are licensed and working on actual buildings.

 

Because of rulings you don't like.

For the last 50 years the court has been making rulings I don't like and you didn't hear me calling for packing the court.

 

Everyone is an architect

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/08/chevron-deference-should-stay-dead/

Chevron Deference Should Stay Dead
Why a congressional effort to revive this administrative-state-empowering legal doctrine is misguided
By ANASTASIA BODEN
August 11, 2024 6:30 AM

Just weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, a group of lawmakers is trying to reverse it. Senator Elizabeth Warren and others have introduced a bill that would restore Chevron deference, which requires judges to defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes even against those judges’ better judgment. While the legislators claim their bill promotes democratic governance, their actions would have the opposite effect.

Established in the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Chevron deference has been a powerful thumb on the scales in favor of the government. One study found that when courts applied Chevron deference, the agency won the underlying dispute 77.5 percent of the time, compared with just 32.7 percent without Chevron deference.

Weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Chevron deference conflicted with the Administrative Procedures Act, which requires courts to exercise their independent judgment when determining whether an agency has acted outside of congressional authority. Immediately, a chorus of legislators characterized the decision as judicial overreach and vowed to reinstate mandatory deference. Senator Warren, for example, said a new bill codifying Chevron deference was needed because without it, “giant corporations” will be able to use “unelected judges” to “undermine the will of Congress.” She even named it the Stop Corporate Capture Act.

No part of this critique makes sense. First, both agency bureaucrats and judges are “unelected.” In theory, the bureaucrats are at least accountable to the president, who himself is elected. But in practice, no president can scrutinize the thousands of rules and policies that agencies adopt each year. And even if he could, many bureaucrats enjoy removal protections that weaken the president’s ability to recall rogue employees. If Warren is going to call judging undemocratic, she has to concede the same about rulemaking.

Second, there’s no reason to think that bureaucrats have some special expertise that will make them better at interpreting the law than judges — the people who are, it should be said, experts on interpreting law. Agencies’ interpretations of congressional statutes often flip from administration to administration (the National Labor Relations Board is a well-known flip-flopper), making clear that these agencies aren’t just exercising unbiased expertise; they’re engaged in bare partisan politics.

Third, Warren suggests that deference is needed so that corporations don’t capture the judiciary. But there’s no reason to think that’s likely or that the judiciary is more susceptible to capture than agencies are. To the contrary: The judicial-nomination process entails bitter fights over the judges and their judicial philosophy. Judges explain their reasoning in written opinions that are frequently scrutinized by legal scholars and the press. It’s harder for judges to become unduly influenced than it is for the other two branches, which make decisions behind closed doors often with little public reasoning.

Chevron supporters claim to care about democratic governance and vindicating “Congress’s will.” But if that’s the case, legislators should stop relying on deference altogether and simply pass clearer laws.

In fact, Chevron encourages sloppy lawmaking and rule by unaccountable bureaucrats. When bureaucrats enjoy deference, politicians can pass broad, capacious statutes and rely on their friends in an agency to interpret it in ways that never would’ve made it through Congress. As Loper Bright’s attorney observed at oral argument:

{Legislators’} choice on a controversial issue is [to] compromise and forge a long-term solution at the cost of . . . getting a primary challenger or, instead, just call up your buddy, who used to be your co-staffer, in the executive branch now and have him give [you] everything on your wish list based on a broad statutory term.​

He went on to say that Congress’s tendency with regard to big and divisive issues, like student-loan forgiveness and the eviction moratorium, is to pass them off to agencies rather than do the dirty work themselves. Chevron enabled that perversion of democratic governance. The demise of Chevron now forces lawmakers to actually do their jobs and to suffer any political backlash that comes with making tough choices.

There’s yet one more problem with Warren’s bill: Like Chevron, it might meet its fate in the Supreme Court. When Loper Bright was being heard, many argued that Chevron deference is unconstitutional because it usurps congressional and judicial power and grants it to the executive branch. The Supreme Court sidestepped these arguments by saying instead that Chevron must fall because it conflicted with a federal statute. But if Congress explicitly authorizes Chevron, that will put the constitutional debate squarely before the Court.

Given the Court’s strong defense of the separation of powers in recent years, it’s possible those constitutional arguments would win. Contrary to what some legislators want you to believe, that would be a good thing for democracy.

ANASTASIA BODEN is a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public-interest law firm that defends Americans’ liberty against government overreach and abuse.


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