Today the Ohio Supreme Court held, in TWISM Ents., L.L.C. v. State Bd. of Registration for Professional Engineers & Surveyors , that Ohio courts need not defer to state agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. In other words, the Court held that there is no Chevron deference in Ohio.
Justice Patrick DeWine wrote the opinion for the Court, joined by three of his colleagues: Justices Fischer, Donnelly, and soon(-to-be-Chief) Kennedy. Chief Justice O'Connor and Justices Brunner and Stewart concurred in the judgement only, but none wrote separately to defend deference to agency interpretations. The 4-3 split is also interesting because the justices did not divide along partisan lines.
Justice DeWine begins his opinion this way:
