The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating the abortion pill mifepristone with a ruling that will continue to allow the pills to be mailed to patients without an in-person doctor’s visit.
They just weakened the NLRB in another opinion and when they destroy the Chevron deference principle this year, the NLRB (and a lot of other regulatory agencies like the FDA, EPA, etc) is going to be neutered.
SCOTUS is potentially on the ballot in November. Hope you all vote with reproductive access and labor rights in mind.
The National Labor Relations Board is the federal agency that is responsible for regulating labor and workers’ rights. 15-20 times a year, they use a court injunction to force a company to rehire employees that were fired due to attempted unionization (usually hidden under a BS other reason). The court made it much harder for those injunctions to be granted, meaning unionization efforts are going to be chilled.
The Chevron deference principle refers to a principle stemming from a prior case that effectively defers to federal agencies over courts when there are questions on implicit powers of those agencies. Weakening or destroying this effectively means any power for a federal agency must be explicitly granted in the text of a law, which republicans will never, ever do or allow. This is going to severely undercut the powers of every federal agency we have in varying degrees. Another conservative wet dream.
I’m really, really worried about it. The FDA is going to lose powers it uses to ensure our food and medicine isn’t killing us. The EPA is going to effectively be an advisory agency after this. The FTC looked like it might be back in business this admin, and it’s going to be neutered. I’m not even explicitly opposed to this if our legislative branch wasn’t inept and/or captured, but… we all know it is and it’s not getting better soon.
Hopefully they kill the FDA and all drink raw milk to death, idk.
Not a law-talker type here, but essentially, when the legislature creates an agency like the FDA, it delegates powers to them to make rulings on certain matters but does not specifically legislate every decision that agency has to make. It says that the FDA can make rulings about drug safety, but it doesn’t say explicitly what drugs the FDA can make decisions about.
In this particular case, the FDA has said that a drug, mifepristone, is safe and doctors can prescribe it to patients. The law suit claimed that the FDA overstepped it’s authority because the legislature never explicitly gave the FDA the power to do that. This is a flawed argument because SCOTUS already decided, in the linked case above, that it was inappropriate for the court to substitute its own interpretation of a rule on an issue like this where the legislature gave an agency an implicit power to make such a decision as long as the agency’s decision is reasonable.
That is the Chevron Deference. It means that the courts should defer to agency rulings when those rulings are reasonable even if the power to make the ruling is only implicitly granted to the agency.
I may not be dead on the mark here, but I think I’m fairly close. If not, I’m sure some real law-talker type will be along to correct me.
Not a lawyer either, to be clear. I think your general description holds, but the example wouldn’t. Individual drugs would still fall under the explicit granted ability to regulate “drugs” as a whole. I think the injunction power referenced in today’s NLRB ruling might be a good example actually, even if they didn’t explicitly reject it via this mechanism today.
They just weakened the NLRB in another opinion and when they destroy the Chevron deference principle this year, the NLRB (and a lot of other regulatory agencies like the FDA, EPA, etc) is going to be neutered.
SCOTUS is potentially on the ballot in November. Hope you all vote with reproductive access and labor rights in mind.
Anyone care to ELI5 nlrb and chevron deference?
The National Labor Relations Board is the federal agency that is responsible for regulating labor and workers’ rights. 15-20 times a year, they use a court injunction to force a company to rehire employees that were fired due to attempted unionization (usually hidden under a BS other reason). The court made it much harder for those injunctions to be granted, meaning unionization efforts are going to be chilled.
The Chevron deference principle refers to a principle stemming from a prior case that effectively defers to federal agencies over courts when there are questions on implicit powers of those agencies. Weakening or destroying this effectively means any power for a federal agency must be explicitly granted in the text of a law, which republicans will never, ever do or allow. This is going to severely undercut the powers of every federal agency we have in varying degrees. Another conservative wet dream.
Thanks! And it sounds like we’re going to be screwed once these are changed.
I’m really, really worried about it. The FDA is going to lose powers it uses to ensure our food and medicine isn’t killing us. The EPA is going to effectively be an advisory agency after this. The FTC looked like it might be back in business this admin, and it’s going to be neutered. I’m not even explicitly opposed to this if our legislative branch wasn’t inept and/or captured, but… we all know it is and it’s not getting better soon.
Hopefully they kill the FDA and all drink raw milk to death, idk.
My republican friends can eat bat at the meat market on the corner, I’m gonna stick with the FDA certified grocery store…
You think you’ll have the option?
Yes
Chevron deference <------- Non-ELI5
Not a law-talker type here, but essentially, when the legislature creates an agency like the FDA, it delegates powers to them to make rulings on certain matters but does not specifically legislate every decision that agency has to make. It says that the FDA can make rulings about drug safety, but it doesn’t say explicitly what drugs the FDA can make decisions about.
In this particular case, the FDA has said that a drug, mifepristone, is safe and doctors can prescribe it to patients. The law suit claimed that the FDA overstepped it’s authority because the legislature never explicitly gave the FDA the power to do that. This is a flawed argument because SCOTUS already decided, in the linked case above, that it was inappropriate for the court to substitute its own interpretation of a rule on an issue like this where the legislature gave an agency an implicit power to make such a decision as long as the agency’s decision is reasonable.
That is the Chevron Deference. It means that the courts should defer to agency rulings when those rulings are reasonable even if the power to make the ruling is only implicitly granted to the agency.
I may not be dead on the mark here, but I think I’m fairly close. If not, I’m sure some real law-talker type will be along to correct me.
Not a lawyer either, to be clear. I think your general description holds, but the example wouldn’t. Individual drugs would still fall under the explicit granted ability to regulate “drugs” as a whole. I think the injunction power referenced in today’s NLRB ruling might be a good example actually, even if they didn’t explicitly reject it via this mechanism today.