Supreme Court decisions on administrative law hands Congress opportunity for key reforms

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Near the end of its 2024 term, the Supreme Court issued several decisions that create fundamental changes in the way federal regulatory agencies and Cabinet departments operate and the way Congress will supervise them. In a new report for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, General Counsel Dan Greenberg finds that these decisions by the Court have opened the door to reforms that will allow Congress to do its job - making laws - more effectively and efficiently.

Decisions with implications for administrative law in the 2024 term include:

• Loper Bright Enterprises v.Raimondo: this case overturned so-called Chevron deference, which held that courts would defer to an agency's "reasonable" interpretation of an ambiguous statute. Going forward, it will be the role of the courts, not agencies, to determine how a statute should be interpreted.
• Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy: in this case, the Supreme Court held that agencies are prohibited from seeking civil penalties for wrongful conduct through in-house administrative hearings. The Court decided that defendants that are tried for wrongful conduct via agency tribunals have been unconstitutionally denied their Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury.
• Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: in this case, the Supreme Court held that, for regulatory challenges under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the clock for the statute of limitations starts when the plaintiff is injured by agency action, not when the agency's rule is published (as previously). The change in law removes some barriers to litigants.

"With its landmark decisions in several administrative law cases this term, the Supreme Court has given Congress not a victory, but an opportunity," said Greenberg. "The Court functioned as a referee in these cases, explaining how disagreements between government entities, or between public and private actors, must be resolved in the present and future. Congress now has more authority to make consequential decisions than it has in decades. Congress should seize that opportunity."

Policy recommendations for reform in the report include:

• Congress should undertake what CEI calls "Constitutional Restoration" by taking additional measures to reassign all federal legislative powers to Congress and all federal judicial power to Article III courts.
• Congress should pass the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act to address the proliferation of "regulatory dark matter" that regularly bypasses the traditional notice-and-comment rulemaking process.
• Congress should pass the REINS Act, which keeps overactive regulators restrained by requiring Congress to vote in favor of major regulations before they become binding.
• Congress should end its own practice of delegating significant spending decisions to agencies.
• Congress should amend the Administrative Procedure Act to end the worst abuses of agency rulemaking power.

Read "The Supreme Court's New New Deal: Its 2024 term reshaped administrative law and regulatory policy" on CEI.org.

More from CEI:

• Greenberg and McFadden: The Supreme Court Reshuffles the Regulatory Deck

Supreme Court Ends Chevron Doctrine that Favored Regulatory Agencies in Court