New Hampshire Joins Brief in Case Before U.S. Supreme Court

By Eagle Times Staff
Concord, N.H. – New Hampshire has joined a coalition of 27 states in a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule— or at least clarify — the doctrine known as Chevron deference.

“For decades now, unelected bureaucrats at federal agencies have been using a legal principle known as Chevron deference to operate like a fourth branch of the government,” said state Attorney General John Formella in a prepared stratement. “We now see courts deferring to federal agencies as they bend the law, grow their size, and expand their power over the everyday lives of Americans. As a result, New Hampshire small business owners and taxpayers have been seeing their personal rights directly impacted. While we do not think agencies should be eliminated or their expertise ignored, courts should no longer abdicate their job of interpreting the law. The U.S. Supreme Court should overturn Chevron.”

The case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, revolves around a regulation by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires herring fishing boats to have an additional person on board to serve as a monitor, tracking compliance with federal regulation. Applying Chevron deference, the lower courts held that the Magnuson-Stevens Act allowed the imposition, even though the statute did not expressly authorize it. The fisheries then asked the Supreme Court to take the case — either to “overrule Chevron, or at least clarify that statutory.”

Chevron deference allows courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of a statute.

Because agencies only have the powers that Congress gives them by statute, the doctrine effectively allows agencies to expand their authority whenever statutes are even a little unclear, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

By stacking the deck in the agencies’ favor, the states lose “not only our authority to regulate in ways that matter most, but also our right to have the people we send to Congress make those calls if the federal government tries to take on these issues instead,” according to the brief.