As the year 2024 winds down, advocates for employee, consumer, environmental, healthcare, and civil rights are concerned that a 2024 US Supreme Court split 6/3 opinion could negatively affect employee workplace protections, environmental safety and many aspects of public safety in years to come. The US Supreme Court in Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244 (2024) overturned forty years of the its own legal precedent, which is known as the “Chevron doctrine”. The Chevron doctrine arose from a Supreme Court 1984 case, Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984) which dealt with an environmental regulation.
By overturing the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, the Supreme Court in June of this year, sharply curtailed the power of federal agencies to regulate vast areas and safety regulations affecting daily American life. It abandoned four decades of legal precedent that the government relied on to defend thousands of protections on everything from workplace safety, to environmental safety to securities. The Chevron doctrine directed judges to defer to the reasonable interpretations of federal agency officials in cases that involve how to administer ambiguous federal laws.
The Loper Bright case has received little coverage in the news, unlike the Dobbs decision which the court also overturned 40 years of its own legal precedent. Abandoning the Chevron Doctrine is a dramatic change in how many laws and regulations could be interpreted for workplace, public and environmental safety.
If you think your employer is violating your rights, you should call this office today for a free consultation. Don’t sit on your rights! See Employment/Civil Rights Law.
In the 1984 case, Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC the court had to decide the proper interpretation of an environmental regulation, and the Court gave deference to administrative agencies to interpret ambiguous wording in the regulations promulgated by those agencies. At issue in Chevron, was an environmental regulation, the EPA, and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. Although it dealt with the proper interpretation of environmental regulation, the Chevron Courts’ holding was significant in that in a court’s deciding ambiguous terms in administrative regulations, deference should be given to all administrative agencies when they have reasonable interpretations. This helped support worker protections in the specific agencies entrusted with those protections, such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Congress, comprised of elected officials grants power to federal agencies to prevent and eradicate safety hazards, and civil rights violations, and manage issues affecting not only enforcement but also employment rights, air and water quality, and virtually all aspects of American life to promote public, workplace and environmental safety. In Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, Justice Kagan in her Dissent wrote in part: “Today, the Court flips the script: ......The Court has substituted its own judgment on workplace health for that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” Loper Bright Enters. More of Justice Kagan’s Dissent is included below.
Federal agencies have decades of experience in specific field whose mission it is to protect, and they have professional experts employed by the agencies, educated and trained in their specific field, have the knowledge to understand the highly complex and technical issues that arise in their specific agency’s field, be it pharmaceutical safety, airplane safety, environmental hazards, and worker safety. On the other hand, The Courts, which decide law, do not have their own experts in the science in these fields, which can be as diverse as knowledge of chemical structures, safety of food additives, pesticide controls, the safety of components in various pharmaceuticals, the dangers to employees on employment sites per OSHA regulations, etc. See New Jersey Whistleblower Laws Attorney.
These agencies protect the public against dangers from big business, industry and improper regulation and monitoring. These agencies carry out the intent of Congress, comprised of elected officials, which grants power to federal agencies to prevent safety hazards, eradicate safety violations and civil rights violations, understand and manage issues in all areas of American work, manufacturing and implementation of civil rights laws. See NJ Employment Discrimination Attorney, African American Manager Passed over in Promotions.
By abandoning deference to the Chevron doctrine, it undermines critical procedures that keep Americans safe in all environments and aspects of their life - those policies and articulated physical requirements essential for a safe working environment, food safety, pharmaceutical safety, health, transportation safety (including exact acceptable specifications for airplane and motor vehicle manufacturing), water quality and air quality, environmental protections as well as advancing consumer protection in purchasing US made or imported products, securities regulations, and civil rights. See NJ Whistleblower Attorney, SEC Whistleblowers to Gain New Rights, SEC Whistleblower Reform Act of 2023.
In Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, a split 6/3 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., delivered the opinion of the Court three Justices, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson filed dissenting opinions.
Six months after the Supreme overturned the Chevron doctrine, mainstream media has not fully understood or given appropriate coverage to the extraordinary effects this case could have on definite material aspects for Americans, including but not limited to workplace safety, transportation, airline and automobile safety, food and pharmaceutical safety, environmental water and air quality, and numerous infrastructures across the US.
Justice Kagan in her Dissent, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote in part:
“For 40 years, Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1984), has served as a cornerstone of administrative law, allocating responsibility for statutory construction between courts and agencies. Under Chevron, a court uses all its normal interpretive tools to determine whether Congress has spoken to an issue. If the court finds Congress has done so, that is the end of the matter; the agency’s views make no difference. But if the court finds, at the end of its interpretive work, that Congress has left an ambiguity or gap, then a choice must be made. Who should give content to a statute when Congress’s instructions have run out? Should it be a court? Or should it be the agency Congress has charged with administering the statute? The answer Chevron gives is that it should usually be the agency, within the bounds of reasonableness. That rule has formed the backdrop against which Congress, courts, and agencies—as well as regulated parties and the public—all have operated for decades. It has been applied in thousands of judicial decisions. It has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds—to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest.
And the rule is right. This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court. Some interpretive issues arising in the regulatory context involve scientific or technical subject matter. Agencies have expertise in those areas; courts do not. Some demand a detailed understanding of complex and interdependent regulatory programs. Agencies know those programs inside-out; again, courts do not. And some present policy choices, including trade-offs between competing goods. Agencies report to a President, who in turn answers to the public for his policy calls; courts have no such accountability and no proper basis for making policy. And of course, Congress has conferred on that expert, experienced, and politically accountable agency the authority to administer—to make rules about and otherwise implement—the statute giving rise to the ambiguity or gap. Put all that together and deference to the agency is the almost obvious choice, based on an implicit congressional delegation of interpretive authority. We defer, the Court has explained, “because of a presumption that Congress” would have “desired the agency (rather than the courts)” to exercise “whatever degree of discretion” the statute allows. Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740-741, 116 S. Ct. 1730, 135 L. Ed. 2d 25 (1996).
Today, the Court flips the script: ......The Court has substituted its own judgment on workplace health for that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
Loper Bright Enters., Dissent
If You Quit Your Job, You May Lose Right to Prevail in a Lawsuit
In many instances of discrimination, if you quit your job, you may lose right to prevail in a discrimination lawsuit unless you first take certain legally required measures to preserve your job while you are still employed. If you are thinking of handing in a resignation letter, or think you will be fired (or have already been terminated), you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation to discuss your options.
Don’t Sit on Your Rights
I have represented public and private employees who were illegally discriminated against by their employers, and was successful in recovering financial compensation for their emotional pain and suffering and moneys for lost wages, both for past lost wages and projected future lost wages. If you think you are being discriminated against, you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation. I accept discrimination and whistleblower cases from all over New Jersey and have locations in Southern, Central and Northern NJ to meet with clients.
Hope A. Lang, Attorney at Law represents workers throughout the entire state, including Hackensack, Jersey City, Newark, Irvington, Orange, East Orange, Trenton, Paterson, Montclair, Elizabeth, North Brunswick, Cherry Hill, Vineland, Union, Plainfield, Hamilton Township, Lakewood, Edison, Parsippany-Troy Hills, Franklin, Lakewood, and every NJ County, including Bergen, Hudson, Middlesex, Essex, Monmouth, Somerset, Ocean, Union, Camden, Passaic, Morris, Gloucester, Atlantic, Burlington, Camden Counties.