By Will Merrix 
Photo credit: ABC News Photo Illustration/ AP Photo / Reuters
The following story is the second part of our series covering every Supreme Court case heard during their 2023-2024 term. This edition covers half of the cases decided by a 6-3 plurality, the most common of the Court’s non-unanimous rulings, looking particularly at cases where the plurality saw the same six justices in the majority and the same three justices in dissent. The cases below are in alphabetical order and are marked with their respective area(s) of the law. The heading of each case also includes how each justice voted. To represent their votes, the justices have been abbreviated as follows: Clarence Thomas (CT), Samuel Alito (SA), Neil Gorsuch (NG), Brett Kavanaugh (BK), John Roberts (JR), Amy Coney Barrett (AB), Elena Kagan (EK), Sonia Sotomayor (SS), and Ketanji Brown Jackson (KJ).
Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (6-3 in favor of Alexander) (Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment/Civil Rights/Gerrymandering) (CT, SA, NG, BK, JR, AB vs. EK, SS, KJ)
After redistricting in 2020, South Carolina’s new district map moved a sizable portion of Black voters into a new district. The NAACP of South Carolina promptly sued, contending the new district was based on racial gerrymandering, which is unconstitutional. They won unanimously in front of a three-judge panel district court. The South Carolina legislature appealed the district court ruling to the United States Supreme Court, arguing the new district was a constitutional political gerrymander and the movement of Black voters was incidental.
To show an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, the NAACP needed to prove “[South Carolina] ‘subordinated’ race-neutral districting criteria such as compactness, contiguity, and core preservation to ‘racial considerations.’”
The Supreme Court found the district court ruling was “clearly erroneous” and reversed it. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Alito claimed the district court failed to presume “the legislature acted in good faith” and the four expert witnesses for the NAACP “ignored traditional districting criteria such as the legislature’s partisan interests and failed to disentangle race from politics.” The Court concluded even though the NAACP’s expert witnesses came up with “tens of thousands of maps with differently configured districts,” the district court’s reliance on the expert’s testimony was flawed because none of the maps were “alternative maps” able to achieve the partisan goals of the legislature while achieving a “greater racial balance” than the legislature’s map. In essence the majority concluded the legislature’s partisan goal of producing a map with the most republican leaning districts possible could not be achieved if the maps were drawn with any greater racial balance than they were already drawn with. So, all of the maps produced by the NAACP’s expert witnesses had greater racial parity but failed to achieve the purely partisan goals of the legislature.
Justice Thomas authored a concurrence in which he agreed with the majority’s reversal of the lower court decision due to its “legal errors” but disagreed with the final aspect of their ruling that evaluated South Carolina’s district map. He asserted “racial gerrymandering and vote dilution claims and present nonjusticiable political questions” are not constitutionally fit to be reviewed by courts in the first place.
Justice Kagan authored a dissent arguing the majority upended clear error review by not giving the district court’s view of events “significant deference” and instead giving it to the state legislature. The dissent also says the majority effectively reversed a case known as Cooper v. Harris by implementing an “alternative-map requirement” upon the NAACP, which the court rejected in Cooper.
If this case interests you, you can find oral arguments here and the full Supreme Court opinion here as well as the NAACP’s brief here, South Carolina’s brief here, and the United States brief in support of neither party here.
Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (6-3 in favor of Corner Post, Inc.) (Administrative Law) (CT, SA, BK, JR, AB, NG vs. EK, SS, KJ)
Under the statute of limitations defined in 28 U. S. C. §2401(a), civil lawsuits against the United States are not allowed to be brought more than six years after “the right of action first accrues.” Before Corner Post, federal courts interpreted the law to mean that the six year statute of limitation to bring a case against the government for administrative rules began to accrue when the rule was first made final and promulgated.
In 2011, the Federal Reserve Board (The Fed) published Regulation II at the direction of Congress. Regulation II controlled the amount of debit card “interchange fees” banks could charge. Interchange fees are service charges that a bank places on a business when a card is used for a transaction.
In 2021, two trade associations– the North Dakota Retail Association and the North Dakota Petroleum Marketers Association– sued The Fed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) alleging that Regulation II “allowed higher interchange fees than the statute permits.” The trade associations raised a facial challenge to Regulation II meaning they were arguing the regulation was illegal in any circumstance. Upon being sued, The Fed moved to have the suit dismissed under 28 U. S. C. §2401(a)’s time limit. The two trade associations subsequently asked for a leave to amend their complaint and it was granted.
The trade association’s amended complaint contained “the exact same legal claims—verbatim” but included a new company called Corner Post which was incorporated and began doing business after the 2011 rule. When The Fed again sought to dismiss the amended suit under 28 U. S. C. §2401(a) again, the trade associations argued Corner Post was not subject to 28 U. S. C. §2401(a)’s time limit because the company was not in existence when the rule was issued in 2011 and thus their injury related to the rule occurred within a six year time limit to bring a civil action. The district court dismissed the suit under 28 U. S. C. §2401(a) and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine “when a claim brought under the APA “accrues” for purposes of [28 U. S. C. §2401(a)].”
Justice Barrett writing the majority opinion concluded the following: “The answer is straightforward. A claim accrues when the plaintiff has the right to assert it in court—and in the case of the APA, that is when the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.” The majority based their reasoning on §702 of the APA which “authorizes persons injured by agency action to obtain judicial review by suing” and §704 which “provides that judicial review is available in most cases only for ‘final agency action.’” The majority explained that together these provisions say “a plaintiff may bring an APA claim only after she is injured by final agency action.”
As a result, the majority delineated the language of 28 U. S. C. §2401(a), specifically the word “accrues,” means the clock to bar a suit begins “when the plaintiff has a ‘complete and present cause of action,’ which is when she has the right to ‘file suit and obtain relief.’” Under the APA, plaintiffs do not have their “complete and present cause of action” until they are injured so “the statute of limitations [in 28 U. S. C. §2401(a)] does not begin to run until [the plaintiff] is injured.” The majority defends its interpretation of “accrue” as the “standard” using precedent and legal dictionaries. They also say the language in 28 U. S. C. §2401(a), namely “the right of action” as opposed to “a right of action” makes 28 U. S. C. §2401(a) a plaintiff-focused statute of limitations, not a statute of repose. Relying on its interpretation of the wording in §2401(a) as being the language of a statute of limitations, the majority cite precedent which notes “in contradistinction to statutes of repose [statutes of limitations] are ‘based on the date when the claim accrued.’”
Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence to flesh out a “crucial additional point” noting “Corner Post can obtain relief in this case only because the APA authorizes vacatur of agency rules.” Kavanaugh writes his opinion to highlight §706(2) of the APA which allows courts to “set aside agency action” which the “federal courts have long understood to authorize vacatur of unlawful agency rules, including in suits by unregulated plaintiffs who are adversely affected by an agency’s regulation of others.” He goes on to address how crucial the current interpretation of §706(2) is to parties not directly regulated by an agency rule. Justice Kavanaugh then turns to specifically address the United States position in a separate brief previously before the court. In its previous brief according to Justice Kavanaugh the United States “advanced a far-reaching argument that the APA does not allow vacatur.” He calls the idea raised by the United States “novel and wrong” and says it would create “‘strange and even absurd consequences.’”
Justice Jackson’s dissent criticizes the majority for sidestepping precedent and warned the court of the “hazards inherent in attempting to define for all purposes when a ‘cause of action’ first ‘accrues.’” According to the dissent, precedent says the meaning of the word “accrues” is “context specific,” statutes of limitations in the administrative law context “uniformly run from the moment of agency action,” and the injury of a plaintiff is “utterly irrelevant” under an APA facial challenge. Justice Jackson also raises concern about the consequences of the majority’s decision arguing the court has made a “profoundly destabilizing” decision. Justice Jackson continues her point arguing, there is “no longer any limitations period for lawsuits that challenge agency regulations on their face.” Which the dissent believes allows “well-heeled litigants to game the system [and] bring fresh facial challenges to long-existing regulations.”
The dissent analyzes the language of 28 U. S. C. §2401(a) by highlighting the word “first.” Justice Jackson says the word choice “directs us to start the clock at the earliest possible opportunity.” Turning to the word “accrues,” the dissent dismisses the majority by saying they failed to look at the context of the claim. 28 U. S. C. §2401(a) is a “catchall” statute meaning the statute “applies to every suit against the United States not covered by another statute of limitations.” The dissent reasons due to its wide-ranging nature the statute must be read in the proper context of its application. “The precedents the majority cites never say otherwise; i.e., they do not tell us that accrual must always be plaintiff specific.” Instead, under the proper context of the APA challenge raised, the dissent reasons “accrual” has nothing to do with the plaintiff’s injury because “the APA itself focuses on the agency’s action, not on the plaintiff.” Justice Jackson’s main point is “all APA claims are about what the agency itself did, so the logical point to start the clock is the moment the agency acted.”
If this case interests you, you can find oral arguments here and the full Supreme Court opinion here as well as Corner Post’s brief here and the United States (Federal Reserve Board) brief here.
Culley v. Marshall (6-3 in favor of Marshall) (Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment) (CT, SA, BK, JR, AB, NG vs. EK, SS, KJ)
Civil forfeiture is a process through which the federal, state, and local governments can seize property they believe to be connected to a crime. Under court precedent, there is a distinction made between “real” property and “personal” property. States may not immediately seize “real” property, things like “land, including the land itself and any structures, fixtures, and rights associated with it,” until after “providing notice and a hearing.” However, states may immediately seize “personal” property, such as cars, phones, or in any instance “when the property otherwise could be removed, destroyed, or concealed before a forfeiture hearing.”
In 2019, Halima Culley let her son use her car. Her son was subsequently pulled over and arrested in Alabama for possessing marijuana while in her car. Under Alabama’s civil forfeiture laws, police seized Culley’s car immediately and filed a civil asset forfeiture case in state court against the car. The initiation of the forfeiture case included setting a date for the forfeiture hearing but not scheduling a “preliminary deprivation hearing.” The state continued to hold Culley’s car between the initial seizure and the forfeiture hearing. Twenty months later, Culley was granted summary judgment under Alabama’s “innocent owner” defense and retook possession of her car.
Culley, along with others who had not received preliminary deprivation hearings, sued alleging state officials had violated their due process rights by failing to hold the preliminary deprivation hearing before the penultimate forfeiture hearing. Culley believed the preliminary deprivation hearing was “constitutionally necessary to determine whether States may retain seized personal property pending the ultimate forfeiture hearing.” During the preliminary deprivation hearing, the focus would be whether the state had a “probable, valid” forfeiture. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine what test lower courts should apply when deciding if a preliminary deprivation hearing is required under the Due Process Clause.
The six justice majority opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh held the Due Process Clause “requires a timely forfeiture hearing but does not require a separate preliminary hearing.” Using two cases called United States v. $8,850 and United States v. Von Neumann, the majority ruled “after a State seizes and seeks civil forfeiture of personal property, due process requires a timely forfeiture hearing but does not require a separate preliminary hearing.” Quoting Von Neuman, the court says “a timely forfeiture hearing ‘satisfies any due process right’” and as such “The Due Process Clause does not require a separate preliminary hearing” only a timely forfeiture hearing as laid out in $8,850. In $8,850, the court established the four-part test for determining if the right to a speedy forfeiture hearing had been violated. Quoting Barker v. Wingo, the majority said the test to assess if someone was denied a speedy forfeiture hearing in violation of the Due Process Clause requires courts to look at “the length of the delay, the reason for the delay, whether the property owner asserted his rights, and whether the delay was prejudicial.” The majority reinforces its readings of $8,850 and Von Neuman by noting a history of “many federal and state statutes authoriz[ing] the Government to seize personal property and hold it pending a forfeiture hearing, without a separate preliminary hearing.”
Justice Gorsuch joined by Justice Thomas authored a concurring opinion in which he comments on “many larger questions unresolved about whether, and to what extent, contemporary civil forfeiture practices can be squared with the Constitution’s promise of due process.” Justice Gorsuch cites concerns about abuse by police municipalities who “have become increasingly dependent on the money they raise from civil forfeitures.”
Justice Sotomayor wrote for the three-justice dissent arguing the majority swept more broadly than it should have in deciding the question presented in large part due to the “context-specific analysis that this Court’s due process doctrine requires.” The dissent instead only wanted to decide “which due process test governs whether a retention hearing is required” and would have “left it to the lower courts to apply that test to different civil forfeiture schemes.” The dissenters think the Mathews test is the solution. Under the Mathews test, named after Mathews v. Eldridge, judges balance “the private and governmental interests at stake.” The dissent thinks Mathews should be applied by judges based on context to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a preliminary deprivation hearing is required.
The dissent goes on to push back on the majority’s readings of $8,850 and Von Neuman arguing the context under which the cases arose is different. Justice Sotomayor says neither claimant in those cases “argued that a retention hearing was necessary” only “that the Government took too long to resolve their [forfeiture] proceedings.” She claims the majority “misread both cases to improperly resolve a constitutional challenge that the Court in those cases had no cause or reason to address.”
If this case interests you, you can find oral arguments here and the full Supreme Court opinion here, as well as Cully’s brief here, Marshall’s (Alabama’s) brief here, and the United States brief in support of Marshall here.
Department of State v. Munoz (6-3 in favor of Department of State) (Constitutional Law) (CT, SA, BK, JR, AB, NG vs. EK, SS, KJ)
Sandra Muñoz, an American citizen, married Luis Asencio-Cordero, a citizen of El Salvador in 2010. Hoping to live together in the United States, the couple applied to obtain an immigrant visa for Asencio-Cordero. The collection of statutes under which you apply for an immigrant visa required Asencio-Cordero to go to the U.S. consulate in El Salvador for an interview. After the application process at the U.S. consulate in El Salvador, a consular officer denied Asencio-Cordero’s visa application and cited 8 U. S. C. §1182(a)(3)(A)(ii). 8 U. S. C. §1182(a)(3)(A)(ii) “renders inadmissible a noncitizen whom the officer ‘knows, or has reasonable ground to believe, seeks to enter the United States to engage solely, principally, or incidentally in’ certain specified offenses or ‘any other unlawful activity.’” Asencio-Cordero appealed the consular officer’s denial several times to no avail. Under the doctrine of consular non-reviewability, which states visa decisions are not subject to judicial review by courts unless “the denial of a visa allegedly burdens the constitutional rights of a U. S. citizen,” Asencio-Cordero as a noncitizen was entitled to no judicial review of his denials.
As an American citizen, Muñoz sued the State Department for violating her constitutionally protected liberty interest in her noncitizen husband’s visa application under the fundamental right to marry. Muñoz believed the State Department, in citing 8 U. S. C. §1182(a)(3)(A)(ii), had not given “a sufficient reason” to deny Asencio-Cordero his visa. The district court, after ordering discovery which revealed the specific reason Asencio-Cordero was denied, granted summary judgment to the State Department. Upon appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding Muñoz had a constitutionally protected liberty interest. The Ninth Circuit argued that under Supreme Court immigration visa precedent known as Kleindienst v. Mandel, the Due Process Clause required the State Department to give Muñoz a “‘facially legitimate and bona fide reason’” for denying her husband’s visa. The type of Due Process at issue in Muñoz’s case is procedural due process. Procedural due process rights establish certain procedures the government must take before depriving someone of a right or interest, such as explaining a noncitizen spouse’s visa denial. The Ninth Circuit said the statutory citation given by the State Department initially did not satisfy Mandel. The Circuit also concluded the later post-discovery admission, which did satisfy Mandel, was not provided “within a reasonable time.”
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine if the denial of a noncitizen visa interfered with a U.S. citizen’s constitutionally protected interest, and if it did, whether or not the government’s justification for burdening the interest was sufficient in this case.
Writing on behalf of the six justice majority, Justice Barrett followed the test in Glucksberg to evaluate Muñoz’s liberty interest. In Washington v. Glucksberg, the court established a two-prong test to review unenumerated fundamental rights which receive heightened protection under Due Process. First, there needs to be a “careful description of the asserted fundamental liberty interest.” Second, to receive heightened protection, the liberty interest must be “deeply rooted in [the] Nation’s history and tradition.” Justice Barrett and the majority concluded Muñoz was not asserting the fundamental right to marriage but instead the specific “right to reside with her noncitizen spouse in the United States” which is “built on the premise that the right to bring her noncitizen spouse to the United States is an unenumerated constitutional right.” The majority sided with the State Department’s argument “that being able to live with your spouse in the United States is not the same thing as being able to get your spouse admitted to the United States.” The Majority says this right “does not clear the second step of Glucksberg” because of “[the] nation’s history and tradition recognizing the Government’s sovereign authority to set the terms governing the admission and exclusion of noncitizens.” To bolster its point, the majority also cites the historical dearth of exceptions to the government’s authority in its capacity to set the terms governing immigration. Muñoz is not entitled to procedural due process rights in the visa proceedings of her husband because she has no fundamental right giving her an interest in her noncitizen husband being admitted to the country in the first place.
In his concurrence, Justice Gorsuch expressed his desire for the court to have reversed the Ninth Circuit ruling without answering the question of Muñoz’s fundamental interest in light of the State Department providing their specific reasoning and reopening challenges for the couple. However, he noted, “I do not cast aspersions on the motives of my colleagues” and concurred with their judgment.
Writing for the three-justice dissent, Justice Sotomayor argued the court should have made a much more narrow holding saying Muñoz had a fundamental interest in her husband’s visa application because “there is no question that excluding a citizen’s spouse burdens [their] right to marriage.” The State Department satisfied the requirement to give a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason” to deny Asencio-Cordero as required by Mandel because they provided the specific reason with a “factual basis,” so “that could and should have been the end of it” according the dissent. Justice Sotomayor goes on to criticize the majority for not thinking “about the right to marry in its comprehensive sense” as stressed in various court precedents such as Zablocki v. Redhali, Turner v. Safley, and Loving v. Virginia. Justice Sotomayor quotes precedent saying the right to marriage is the right to “establish a home and bring up children,” “something more than a mere contract,” and one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” For the dissent, “the majority, [in] ignoring these precedents, makes the same fatal error it made in Dobbs: requiring too ‘careful [a] description of the asserted fundamental liberty interest.’”
If this case interests you, you can find oral arguments here and the full Supreme Court opinion here. As well as the United States brief (Department of State) here and Muñoz’s brief here.
Garland v. Cargill (6-3 in favor of Cargill) (Administrative Law/Guns) (CT, SA, BK, AB, NG, JR vs EK, SS, KJ)
26 U. S. C. §5845(b) a section of what is commonly known as the National Firearms Act of 1934 defines machine guns as the following:
“Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.”
Cargill relates to how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) interprets non-mechanical bump stocks, ones which do not have “springs, forced reset triggers, [or] switches” in the context of 26 U. S. C. §5845(b).
An important distinction in Cargill is that semi-automatic are weapons with which a “shooter can fire only one time by [pressing] the trigger” and machine guns are weapons with which a “shooter can fire multiple times, or even continuously, by [pressing] the trigger only once.” As the court describes bump stocks, they exist to aid a practice known as “bump firing.” Bump firing is the practice of a shooter who when using a semi-automatic weapon “uses the firearm’s recoil to help rapidly manipulate the trigger.” The specific manipulation of the trigger is aided by the ability to press the trigger multiple times in quick succession. Bump stocks:
“replace a semiautomatic rifle’s stock (the back part of the rifle that rests against the shooter’s shoulder) with a plastic casing that allows every other part of the rifle to slide back and forth. This casing helps manage the back-and-forth motion required for bump firing. A bump stock also has a ledge to keep the shooter’s trigger finger stationary.”
Bump stocks do not change the mechanics of bump firing a semi-automatic weapon, meaning “the trigger still must be released and re-engaged to fire each additional shot” unlike a machine gun. Bump stocks make the practice of bump-firing easier. Knowing these facts we can turn to the issue in Cargill.
After a gunman using semi-automatic weapons equipped with bump stocks opened fire on a concert crowd in Las Vegas, Nevada killing 58 people and leaving over 500 more wounded, the ATF promulgated a rule reclassifying bump stocks as machine guns under 26 U. S. C. §5845(b). The ATF rule ordered bump stock owners to destroy or surrender their bump stocks to avoid facing criminal prosecution.
After surrendering his bump stocks to the ATF, Michael Cargill challenged the ATF rule under the Administrative Procedures Act. Cargill argued the agency lacked statutory authority to promulgate the rule because bump stocks “are not ‘machinegun[s]’ as defined in §5845(b).” A district court sided with the ATF. A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit of Appeals first affirmed on appeal, but upon rehearing the case en banc, they overturned the district court, ruling in favor of Cargill.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide “whether a bump stock converts [a] rifle into a ‘machinegun.’”
Six members of the court answered the question presented through Justice Thomas. “A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’” The majority reasoned a bump stock materially changes nothing about the number of bullets ejected from a semi-automatic weapon per “single function of the trigger.” The weapon still only fires one bullet for every “single function of the trigger,” bump stocks merely accelerate the frequency of these single functions. Nor does a bump stock achieve the desired outcome “automatically” since the user must have a manual input of “maintain[ing] just the right amount of forward pressure on the rifle’s front grip with his non-trigger hand” so the sliding motion can continue to cause the shooters finger to hit and reset the trigger. Since bump stocks neither eject more than one bullet in a “single function of the trigger” nor achieve anything “automatically,” the court holds a “semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun.’”
Justice Alito authored a concurrence joining the majority in full because “there is simply no other way to read the statutory language.” He wrote more pointedly to illuminate “there is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machineguns…Congress can amend the law.”
Justice Sotomayor’s three-justice dissent opens in part saying, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ I, like Congress, call that a machinegun.” The dissent argues when evaluating a “single function of the trigger” Congress intended the statute to focus “on how a shooter uses a trigger to initiate fire.” From there the dissent says shooters use “a single function of the trigger” to initiate the sequence of rapid firing with the help of the bump stock thus “both [automatic and semi-automatic] rifles [with a bump stock] require only one initial action (that is, one ‘single function of the trigger.’)” The dissent backs up its reading and criticizes the majority for using the ordinary dictionary meanings of the statute’s text, the statutory context, and congressional purpose. The dissent sees its interpretation as the “ordinary meaning of the statutory text,” inversely saying the majority’s “interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text.”
If this case interests you, you can find oral arguments here and the full Supreme Court opinion here as well as the United States (Garland) brief here and Cargill’s brief here.
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (6-3 in favor of Loper Bright Enterprises) (Administrative Law) (CT, SA, BK, NG, JR, AB vs. EK, SS, KJ)
For an in-depth background on this case, please check out the previous PRFSU story that covers the underlying administrative law at issue. It offers an in-depth look at the parties’ arguments and the Justices’ pre-existing opinions. It also offers a prediction of the outcome based on the arguments and Justices’ inclinations and speculates what it may mean for the future of administrative law.
Chief Justice Roberts writing for a six-justice majority held “the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled.” The majority opinion condemns Chevron saying it was decided by “a bare quorum of six Justices” and its “ justifying presumption” of agency deference and congressional delegation “a fiction.” The court recognized executive agency interpretations may inform a court’s decision but even if a statute is ambiguous, courts owe those interpretations no deference because “agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.” Deference to supposed agency expertise may inform “the judgment of the judiciary” but should not “supersede,” through deference, a court’s directive in the APA “to exercise their independent judgment.” The assumption under Chevron that Congress, through silence, delegated to executive agencies the authority to reasonably interpret statutes was wrong. The court now “expects Congress to delegate such authority, if at all, ‘expressly.’” The first step of Chevron has also proved unworkable. The majority says “the defining feature of its framework is the identification of statutory ambiguity but the concept of ambiguity has always evaded meaningful definition.”
The majority notes courts carving out exceptions to Chevron have caused the formation of “a byzantine set of preconditions and exceptions.” Finally, the court grants Chevron no stare decisis. Stare decisis is the judicial principle of adhering to previous court decisions to maintain stability in the law. Arguing Chevron is against the two biggest considerations of stare decisis, namely it is “fundamentally misguided” and “unworkable”, the majority decree the relevant analyses “all weigh in favor of letting Chevron go.” The majority does say previous agency statutory interpretations which were upheld under Chevron “are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite the Court’s change in interpretive methodology.” According to the court, those interpretations deemed lawful under Chevron must be individually challenged.
In his lone concurrence, Justice Gorsuch commends the court for placing “a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss.” He writes separately to “address why the proper application of the doctrine of stare decisis supports that course.” Justice Gorsuch lists three reasons. First, Chevron goes against the APA. Second, Chevron is antithetical to the “separation of powers, due process, and centuries-old interpretive rules” which reinforce separation of powers and due process. Third, keeping Chevron would require the court to treat some of the language in Chevron as if it were the language of a statute.
Justice Thomas wrote a lone concurrence to “underscore a more fundamental problem: Chevron deference also violates [the] Constitution’s separation of powers.” His concurrence gives a summary view of the same sentiments he’s made in previous petitions for certiorari called Baldwin v. United States and past cases like Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency or Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association. Thomas sums himself up by recognizing “the Founders envisioned that ‘the courts [would] check the Executive by applying the correct interpretation of the law’ and the court’s ruling rectifies the “disruption of our separation of powers” Chevron caused.
Justice Kagan’s three-justice dissent mourns the idea that “a rule of judicial humility [has given] way to a rule of judicial hubris” going as far as to say “if opinions had titles, a good candidate for today’s would be Hubris Squared,” in reference to its disregard of stare decisis. The dissent distills down the majority’s reasoning saying their ideas can be succinctly described as the following: “Courts must have more say over regulation—over the provision of health care, the protection of the environment, the safety of consumer products, the efficacy of transportation systems, and so on.”
The dissent sees Congress as valuing an agency’s expertise in applying policy questions which turn on the interpretation of vague, ambiguous, or silent statutes. In rebuking the majority’s conclusions, the dissent attacks the section of the APA the majority rely on as demanding independent judiciary judgment, saying the text of the APA “cannot possibly be thought to have prohibited deference.” The dissent accordingly asserts the majority’s “decision has no basis in the only law the majority deems relevant.“ Finally, the dissent points to Chevron’s decades of use before the current court struck it down. The dissent points to the core reliance interests courts have had and argues overturning Chevron will destabilize administrative law in the judiciary even more than the majority thinks Chevron does. In addition, because Chevron can be corrected with Congressional action, the dissent says it “is entitled to a particularly strong form of stare decisis” because the court is not the only one who can “correct” it if need be. Ultimately, the dissent believes “the majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”
If this case interests you, you can find oral arguments here, and the full Supreme Court opinion here as well as Loper Bright Enterprises’s brief here and The United States (Raimondo’s) brief here.
Conclusion
Of the 32 non-unanimous rulings in the court’s past term, the most common lineup saw the 3 justices appointed by Democrats in the minority and the 6 justices appointed by Republicans in the majority. This specific lineup of justices made up about 34% of the Court’s split decisions. The next most common non-unanimous lineup of justices accounted for only about 9% of the non-unanimous decisions. There were also 2 5-4 decisions which saw the three Democratic appointees in the minority as well. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson found themselves in dissent on around 40% of last term’s split rulings.