House Republicans have had enough of the Chevron Deference—a 30-year-old doctrine that gives U.S. executive branch agencies considerable latitude to take “reasonable” regulatory actions that have an ambiguous foundation in U.S. law. In a July 12, 2016 vote, the House passed the Separation of Powers Restoration Act of 2016 (H.R. 4768). The bill would amend the Administrative Procedure Act to require courts to conduct a de novo—or from scratch—review of all relevant questions of law, rather than “leaving such interpretation up to the whims of federal bureaucrats,” according to the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX). The bill, which passed by a vote of 240 to 171, almost entirely along party lines, would effectively prohibit use of the Chevron Deference by the courts.
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The Chevron Deference originates in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in Chevron U.S.A. v. NRDC. While that was an environmental case, the deference has come up in cases involving many different federal agencies. The most notable recent action was the Supreme Court’s refusal to fall back on the Chevron Deference when considering EPA’s decision to not consider costs when developing its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (Michigan v. EPA, decided June 29, 2015). In that case, EPA’s reliance on the deference was not successful.