SCOTUS Grants Cert to Petitioners Seeking ‘Sensible Limits on Agency Deference’

The Supreme Court granted the Nov. 10 petition (docket 22-451) of a group of vessel owners challenging the authority of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) to require them to pay the salaries of the federal observers they must carry on board to enforce the agency’s regulations. It's a case that could have broad implications for the deference afforded agencies to properly interpret and enforce the federal statutes they have authority over. The petition in Loper Bright Enterprises et al v. Raimondo et al, asked whether, under a “proper application” of Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the MSA implicitly grants NMFS the power to force domestic vessels to pay the salaries of the monitors they must carry. It also asked whether SCOTUS should “overrule” Chevron to “at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.” Chevron was the landmark 1984 decision in which SCOTUS defined the legal test for determining whether to grant deference to a government agency's interpretation of a statute that it administers. In a country “that values limited government and the separation of powers,” the “extraordinary power” of a federal agency to require vessel owners to pay the salaries of onboard inspectors “should require the clearest of congressional grants,” said the Nov. 10 petition. The case is on appeal from the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit, where a “divided panel” deferred to the agency “by purporting to identify silence in the statutory scheme," perceiving it as an "ambiguity" that called for Chevron "deference,” it said. “That is either a fundamental overreading of Chevron or a powerful argument for its overruling,” it said. Either way, SCOTUS “should grant review to impose sensible limits on agency deference,” it said. It asked SCOTUS to “reverse the clear agency overreach at issue here."