#Regulatory agencies

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Supreme Court poised to appoint federal judges to run the US economy.

January 18, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

JAN 17, 2024

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on two cases that provide the Court with the opportunity to overturn the “Chevron deference doctrine.” Based on comments from the Justices, it seems likely that the justices will overturn judicial precedent that has been settled for forty years. If they do, their decision will reshape the balance of power between the three branches of government by appointing federal judges as regulators of the world’s largest economy, supplanting the expertise of federal agencies (a.k.a. the “administrative state”).

Although the Chevron doctrine seems like an arcane area of the law, it strikes at the heart of the US economy. If the Court were to invalidate the doctrine, it would do so in service of the conservative billionaires who have bought and paid for four of the justices on the Court. The losers would be the American people, who rely on the expertise of federal regulators to protect their water, food, working conditions, financial systems, public markets, transportation, product safety, health care services, and more.

The potential overruling of the Chevron doctrine is a proxy for a broader effort by the reactionary majority to pare the power of the executive branch and Congress while empowering the courts. Let’s take a moment to examine the context of that effort.

But I will not bury the lead (or the lede): The reactionary majority on the Court is out of control. In disregarding precedent that conflicts with the conservative legal agenda of its Federalist Society overlords, the Court is acting in a lawless manner. It is squandering hard-earned legitimacy. It is time to expand the Court—the only solution that requires a simple majority in two chambers of Congress and the signature of the president.

The “administrative state” sounds bad. Is it?

No. The administrative state is good. It refers to the collective body of federal employees, regulators, and experts who help maintain an orderly US economy. Conservatives use the term “administrative state” to denigrate federal regulation and expertise. They want corporations to operate free of all federal restraint—free to pollute, free to defraud, free to impose dangerous and unfair working conditions, free to release dangerous products into the marketplace, and free to engage in deceptive practices in public markets.

The US economy is the largest, most robust economy in the world because federal regulators impose standards for safety, honesty, transparency, and accountability. Not only is the US economy the largest in the world (as measured by nominal GDP), but its GDP per capita ($76,398) overshadows that of the second largest economy, China ($12,270). The US dollar is the reserve currency for the world and its markets are a haven for foreign investment and capital formation. See The Top 25 Economies in the World (investopedia.com)

US consumers, banks, investment firms, and foreign investors are attracted to the US economy because it is regulated. US corporations want all the benefits of regulations—until regulations get in the way of making more money. It is at that point that the “administrative state” is seen as “the enemy” by conservatives who value profit maximization above human health, safety, and solvency.

It is difficult to comprehend how big the US economy is. To paraphrase Douglas Adams’s quote about space, “It’s big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.” Suffice to say, the US economy is so big it cannot be regulated by several hundred federal judges with dockets filled with criminal cases and major business disputes.

Nor can Congress pass enough legislation to keep pace with ever changing technological and financial developments. Congress can’t pass a budget on time; the notion that it would be able to keep up with regulations necessary to regulate Bitcoin trading in public markets is risible.

What is the Chevron deference doctrine?

Managing the US economy requires hundreds of thousands of subject matter experts—a.k.a. “regulators”—who bring order, transparency, and honesty to the US economy. Those experts must make millions of judgments each year in creating, implementing and applying federal regulations.

And this is where the “Chevron deference doctrine” comes in. When federal experts and regulators interpret federal regulations in esoteric areas such as maintaining healthy fisheries, their decisions should be entitled to a certain amount of deference. And they have received such deference since 1984, when the US Supreme Court created a rule of judicial deference to decisions by federal regulators in the case of Chevron v. NRDC.

What happened at oral argument?

In a pair of cases, the US Supreme Court heard argument on Tuesday as to whether the Chevron deference doctrine should continue—or whether the Court should overturn the doctrine and effectively throw out 17,000 federal court decisions applying the doctrine. According to Court observers, including Mark Joseph Stern of Slate, the answer is “Yes, the Court is poised to appoint federal judges as regulators of the US economy.” See Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, The Supreme Court is seizing more power from Democratic presidents. (slate.com)

I recommend Stern’s article for a description of the grim atmosphere at the oral argument—kind of “pre-demise” wake for the Chevron deference doctrine. Stern does a superb job of explaining the effects of overruling Chevron:

Here’s the bottom line: Without Chevron deference, it’ll be open season on each and every regulation, with underinformed courts playing pretend scientist, economist, and policymaker all at once. Securities fraud, banking secrecy, mercury pollution, asylum applications, health care funding, plus all manner of civil rights laws: They are ultravulnerable to judicial attack in Chevron’s absence. That’s why the medical establishment has lined up in support of Chevron, explaining that its demise would mark a “tremendous disruption” for patients and providers; just rinse and repeat for every other area of law to see the convulsive disruptions on the horizon.

The Kochs and the Federalist Society have bought and paid for this sad outcome. The chaos that will follow will hurt consumers, travelers, investors, patients and—ultimately—American businesses, who will no longer be able to rely on federal regulators for guidance as to the meaning of federal regulations. Instead, businesses will get an answer to their questions after lengthy, expensive litigation before overworked and ill-prepared judges implement a political agenda.

Expand the Court. Disband the reactionary majority by relegating it to an irrelevant minority. If we win control of both chambers of Congress in 2024 and reelect Joe Biden, expanding the Court should be the first order of business.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is an important article by Linda Greenhouse, writing in The New York Times. Therefore, the link above is a gift 🎁 link, so anyone can read the article, even if they don't subscribe to the Times.

Below are some excerpts from the article:

To understand today’s Supreme Court, to see it whole, demands a longer timeline. To show why, I offer a thought experiment. Suppose a modern Rip Van Winkle went to sleep in September 2005 and didn’t wake up until last week. Such a person would awaken in a profoundly different constitutional world, a world transformed, term by term and case by case, at the Supreme Court’s hand. To appreciate that transformation’s full dimension, consider the robust conservative wish list that greeted the new chief justice 18 years ago: Overturn Roe v. Wade. Reinterpret the Second Amendment to make private gun ownership a constitutional right. Eliminate race-based affirmative action in university admissions. Elevate the place of religion across the legal landscape. Curb the regulatory power of federal agencies. [...} That was how the world looked on Sept. 29, 2005, when Chief Justice Roberts took the oath of office, less than a month after the death of his mentor, Chief Justice Rehnquist. And this year? By the time the sun set on June 30, the term’s final day, every goal on the conservative wish list had been achieved. All of it. To miss that remarkable fact is to miss the story of the Roberts court. It’s worth reviewing how the court accomplished each of the goals. It deployed a variety of tools and strategies. Precedents that stood in the way were either repudiated outright, as the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision did last year to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, or were simply rendered irrelevant — abandoned, in the odd euphemism the court has taken to using. In its affirmative action decision declaring race-conscious university admissions to be unconstitutional, Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion did not overturn the 2003 Grutter decision explicitly. But Justice Thomas was certainly correct in his concurring opinion when he wrote that it was “clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled.” Likewise, the court has not formally overruled its Chevron decision. Its administrative-law decisions have just stopped citing that 1984 precedent as authority. The justices have simply replaced Chevron’s rule of judicial deference with its polar opposite, a new rule that goes by the name of the major questions doctrine. Under this doctrine, the court will uphold an agency’s regulatory action on a major question only if Congress’s grant of authority to the agency on the particular issue was explicit. Deference, in other words, is now the exception, no longer the rule. But how to tell a major question from an ordinary one? No surprise there: The court itself will decide. [...] My focus here on what these past 18 years have achieved has been on the court itself. But of course, the Supreme Court doesn’t stand alone. Powerful social and political movements swirl around it, carefully cultivating cases and serving them up to justices who themselves were propelled to their positions of great power by those movements. The Supreme Court now is this country’s ultimate political prize. That may not be apparent on a day-to-day or even a term-by-term basis. But from the perspective of 18 years, that conclusion is as unavoidable as it is frightening.

[kp777]

By Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams

June 29, 2024

"I plan to introduce legislation to protect the government's policymaking ability that existed under Chevron that has worked for the last 40 years," Sen. Ed Markey said.

Following the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine—which instructed courts to defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretations of laws passed by Congress as they regulate everything from food safety to labor rights to climate pollution—progressive lawmakers vowed to take action to protect the power of these agencies to shield the public from toxic chemicals and unscrupulous employers.

Legislators expressed concerns about the impacts of the court's 6-3 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, which ended a 40-year precedent established by Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council in 1984.

"Now, with this ill-advised decision, judges must no longer defer to the decisions about Americans' health, safety, and welfare made by agencies with technical and scientific expertise in their fields," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement. "MAGA extremist Republicans and their big business cronies are rejoicing as they look forward to creating a regulatory black hole that destroys fundamental protections for every American in this country."

"This unhinged Supreme Court needs to stop legislating from the bench, and we must pass sweeping reform to hold them accountable."

"I plan to introduce legislation to protect the government's policymaking ability that existed under Chevron that has worked for the last 40 years," Markey said.

Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called the ruling "dangerous" and urged Congress to "immediately pass" the Stop Corporate Capture Act, which she introduced in March 2023.

In a statement Friday, Jayapal said the act was "the only bill that codifies Chevron deference, strengthens the federal-agency rulemaking process, and ensures that rulemaking is guided by the public interest—not what's good for wealthy corporations."

The act would codify Chevron by providing "statutory authority for the judicial principle that requires courts to defer to an agency's reasonable or permissible interpretation of a federal law when the law is silent or ambiguous."

In addition, it would:

Require anyone submitting a study as part of a comment period on a regulation to disclose who funded it;

Only allow federal agencies to take part in the negotiated rulemaking process;

Create an Office of the Public Advocate to increase public participation in the process of crafting regulations;

Make public companies that knowingly lie in the comment period on a proposed regulation liable for a fine of at least $250,000 for a first offense and at least $1 million for a second; and

Empower agencies to reissue rules that were rescinded under the Congressional Review Act.

The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a group of more than 160 organizations mobilizing for stronger public protections, also called on Congress to pass the Stop Corporate Capture Act.

"The bill is a comprehensive blueprint for modernizing, improving, and strengthening the regulatory system to better protect the public," the coalition wrote in response to Friday's ruling. "It would ensure greater public input into regulatory decisions, promote scientific integrity, and restore our government's ability to deliver results for workers, consumers, public health, and our environment."

Jayapal also called on Congress to "enact sweeping oversight measures to rein in corruption and billionaire influence at the Supreme Court, whose far-right extremist majority routinely flouts basic ethics, throws out precedent, and legislates from the bench to benefit the wealthiest and most powerful."

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) similarly recommended congressional action to address court corruption. In a statement, she called the decision "a power grab for the corrupt Supreme Court who continues to do the bidding of greedy corporations."

"The MAGA Court just overruled 40 years of precedent that empowered federal agencies to hold powerful corporations accountable, protect our workplaces and public health, and ensure that we have clean water and air," Tlaib continued. "This unhinged Supreme Court needs to stop legislating from the bench, and we must pass sweeping reform to hold them accountable."

In the meantime, the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards said that the ruling did not strip regulatory bodies of their authority to pass new rules to protect the public and the environment.

"This decision is a gift to big corporations, making it easier for them to challenge rules to ensure clean air and water, safe workplace and products, and fair commercial and financial practices," said Public Citizen president and coalition co-chair Robert Weissman. "But the decision is no excuse for regulators to stop doing their jobs. They must continue to follow the law and uphold their missions to protect consumers, workers, and our environment."

[jbfly46]

I like to jam up government regulatory bodies with complaints during holiday breaks so when they get back in the office they’re reminded that their jobs are never over and they should probably just resign.

[ddregpharma]

Regulatory Agencies Around the World: An Introduction

Learn about the regulatory agencies worldwide responsible for ensuring drug safety and efficacy, including the FDA, EMA, and PMDA. They help to maintain public confidence in the healthcare system by holding drug manufacturers accountable for the safety and quality of their products.

[reportwire]

US regulators to vote on largest dam demolition in history

US regulators to vote on largest dam demolition in history

PORTLAND, Ore. — The largest dam demolition and river restoration plan in the world could be close to reality Thursday as U.S. regulators vote on a plan to remove four aging hydro-electric structures, reopening hundreds of miles of California river habitat to imperiled salmon. The vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the lower Klamath River dams is the last major regulatory hurdle…

[but-the-library-of-alexandria]

in 2024 I wanna stop hearing about betterhelp

[kvtie-pie]

found out someone i've followed for a long time who never previously posted anything political (at least not that i've seen) is in fact a trump supporter. vile.

[scottguy]

What next, will Congress have to personally arrest criminals because the constitution 'doesn't grant police departments the power' to enforce laws directly?

[saifuckr]

oh ur an engineer. Disappointing ...........

^ this is where i work btw

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News: The Opus Dei Court's view on regulation

(Robert Scott Horton)

[mediaheights]

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[kp777]

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

July 1, 2024

The liberal justice said Congress can remedy the "profoundly destabilizing" decision by passing legislation to strengthen the federal regulatory regime.

As the U.S. Supreme Court dealt yet another blow to the federal government's regulatory authority, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday stressed that "the ball is in Congress' court" to enact legislation to "forestall the coming chaos" wrought by the right-wing supermajority's decision.

The justices ruled 6-3 in Corner Post Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that the Administrative Procedures Act's (APA) statute of limitations period does not begin until a plaintiff is adversely affected by a regulation. The ruling reverses a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Corner Post—a North Dakota truck stop that challenged a U.S. Federal Reserve rule capping debit card swipe fees—because the six-year statute of limitations on such challenges had passed.

Monday's ruling makes it much easier to sue government agencies. As Sydney Bryant and Devon Ombres at the Center for American Progress explained, the decision "is intended to allow a swarm of legal challenges to rules that have protected the American people from bad actors and corporate malfeasance for decades."

"Corner Post is not the story of David versus Goliath but rather the Trojan Horse, where moneyed interests attempt to sneak in their anti-regulation politics under the guise of altruism."

In a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Jackson wrote that "today, the majority throws... caution to the wind and engages in the same kind of misguided reasoning about statutory limitations periods that we have previously admonished."

"The court's baseless conclusion means that there is effectively no longer any limitations period for lawsuits that challenge agency regulations on their face," she continued. "Allowing every new commercial entity to bring fresh facial challenges to long-existing regulations is profoundly destabilizing for both government and businesses. It also allows well-heeled litigants to game the system by creating new entities or finding new plaintiffs whenever they blow past the statutory deadline."

"At the end of a momentous term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the court's holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the federal government," Jackson added, referring to last week's 6-3 overturning of the so-called Chevron doctrine, the legal principle under which courts deferred to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous laws passed by Congress.

While numerous business advocates welcomed Monday's ruling, a broad range of consumer, labor, and other groups echoed the alarm in Jackson's dissent.

"Americans expect that safeguards will protect us and our families from unsafe food, products, polluted air and water, and dangerous and unfair working conditions. This decision provides special interests, opposed to the safeguards that people rely upon, with more opportunities to challenge and seek to overturn these important protections," said Rachel Weintraub, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.

Weintraub added that the ruling "undermines federal agencies' ability to use administrative courts to impose civil penalties for violating regulatory protections" and "starkly impedes agencies' ability to protect the public."

Bryant and Ombres wrote that "Corner Post is not the story of David versus Goliath but rather the Trojan Horse, where moneyed interests attempt to sneak in their anti-regulation politics under the guise of altruism."

Jackson's dissent states that "Congress still has a chance to address this absurdity and forestall the coming chaos" by "clarifying that the statutes it enacts are designed to facilitate the functioning of agencies, not to hobble them."

"In particular, Congress can amend §2401(a)," Jackson offered, referring to the default six-year statute of limitations, "or enact a specific review provision for APA claims, to state explicitly what any such rule must mean if it is to operate as a limitations period in this context: Regulated entities have six years from the date of the agency action to bring a lawsuit seeking to have it changed or invalidated; after that, facial challenges must end."

"By doing this," she added, "Congress can make clear that lawsuits bringing facial claims against agencies are not personal attack vehicles for new entities created just for that purpose."

[kineticpenguin]

I don't know why people think it's a smart idea to troll the ATF.

[jbfly46]

Regulatory agencies and county governments use public tax dollars to operate but have effectively no enforcement power. The only enforcement mechanism they can use is bringing a civil suit against a violator to at most fine them, which isn’t enforcing anything, it’s only a redistribution of wealth back and forth between regulatory agencies and corporations. Many of the suits brought by regulatory agencies lose because they are unconstitutional as most of what these regulatory agencies are supposed to do would require constitutional violations. They are effectively for profit unconstitutional corporations with no authority committing tax fraud and violations of the Federal Tort Claims Act on a daily basis. Russian and Chinese governments have been aware of this and have been taking advantage of it for quite some time, and it’s literally become a national security concern, which nothing can be done about, because national security agencies are apart of the same unconstitutional paradigm. This effectively makes these organizations constitutional traitors and liable for treason charges, which they can be convicted of if it is brought to their attention that what they are doing is unconstitutional and they decide to keep doing it anyway.