What happens now that Chevron Law has been overturned?

Question

How does this effect the government and their ability to create new policies? And does this ruling carry any potential for irreparable damages?

In: Other

Answer 1

Since a lot of there aren’t that ELI5, I’d say:

If congress passes a law that says “Protect forests”, and the Environmental Protection Agency says “The way you protect forests is to not do major logging in old growth forests”, a court doesn’t have to take it as granted that the basically any way the EPA tries to take that vague law and make it specific is a reasonable interpretation of the vague law.

A lot of laws were written vaguely like that because congress has been bitterly divided for a long time and congress also aren’t experts on things like “How do you protect a forest” so they sort of pass the buck and say “We have experts for that.” So currently most of what gets enforced isn’t the letter of the law but an agency of experts interpretation of the law, so now judges are more easily able to decide that something shouldn’t have been enforced.

The fears are that different courts could disagree leaving no single answer to whether something can be enforced or not, the many current enforcements could all get challenged and clog up the court, agencies may not want to enforce their rules out of fear of them getting challenged.

The fix would be for congress to write WAY longer and more specific laws, but that seems unlikely for the aforementioned reasons:

* They’re already so bitterly divided that even the “Protect forests” bill getting passed is a miracle. A debate in congress over whether 500 or 550 or 1000 old growth logging permits get issued would add years to the process if not make it completely impossible.
* Congress are not experts in the thousands of arenas in which their laws reach. Can you confidently tell me what the safe parts per million of rat shit in food is? The tightness a submerged bolt on a ship must to avoid leaks? The speed at which semi-trucks should travel on different types of roads to walk the line between functional economy and unnecessary danger? I sure can’t, and there probably isn’t even one congressperson who can answer all of those questions, and even Googling it will give you a hundred different answers from a hundred different sources with their own interests and biases.