On June 28, 2024, the United States Supreme Court in Loper
Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v.
Dept. of Commerce overruled Chevron deference —
a 40-year-old precedent that required courts to afford deference to
agencies' reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutory
provisions. Under the new Loper Bright doctrine, courts
"must exercise their independent judgment" and "may
not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because the
statute is ambiguous." While the decision curtails deference
to certain agency interpretations of statutes, the practical
impacts in the areas of environmental, energy, and natural
resources regulation will take time to evolve and may be less than
many anticipate.
