Today, the Supreme Court ruled, on a crucial matter of first impression, that presidents are immune from prosecution for engaging in their official duties.
This was a welcomed decision that will put up broad guideposts to keep the three branches of government from encroaching on each other.
The Supreme Court similarly took action last Friday to ensure executive agencies stay within their constitutional lane when it overturned what has become known as the Chevron deference. This will have broad implications for issues of climate, energy, the environment, and just about everything else.
CFACT’s friends and supporters know that federal agencies such as EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Bureau of Land Management routinely far exceed their legislative mandates in pursuit of radical goals that are not supported by law.
We posted both the Supreme Court summary and the entire decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo to CFACT.org.
Loper Bright overturns Chevron v. The Natural Resources Defense Council, ending the doctrine that courts should defer to regulator’s interpretation of the law wherever ambiguities in the law exist.
For decades, this “Chevron deference” has left a gaping hole in our constitutional system of checks and balances wide enough to drive a regulatory freight train through.
Loper Bright empowers courts to judge for themselves what our laws say, do not say, and what legislators actually meant when they wrote them.
The Court narrowed its decision by holding that ending the Chevron deference will apply primarily to future regulatory action rather than providing wholesale relief from past regulatory abuse.
You can also read the Court’s decision granting states at least temporary relief from EPA’s plan to limit emissions such as ozone that drift across state lines.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said, “This is a significant victory for states’ sovereignty and the rule of law. This plan, if implemented, would have imposed undue regulatory burdens on states – and the EPA doesn’t have the power to do that.”
The press quoted me saying, “The Supreme Court’s 1984 Chevron v. NRDC decision set the stage for an accelerated expansion of federal regulatory power the likes of which America never experienced before. Today’s decision to overturn it is a welcomed development, though it will likely be met with hostility from those in government who feel the latitude they’ve been given to interpret vague laws as they see fit is something, like nobility, they are forever entitled to.”
“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” Ronald Reagan famously said in his first inaugural address.
CFACT welcomes judicial decisions that limit government and curb the power of unelected bureaucrats to usurp the powers the Constitution expressly assigns to Congress.