In two cases that the Supreme Court decided today, herring fishermen in Rhode Island and New Jersey challenged regulatory fees they said were never authorized by Congress. They asked the Court to reconsider, or at least clarify, a doctrine based on its 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which required that judges defer to a federal agency's "permissible" or "reasonable" interpretation of an "ambiguous" statute.
Critics have long complained that Chevron deference allowed bureaucrats to usurp a judicial function and systematically disadvantaged "the little guy" in disputes with an overweening administrative state. The Supreme Court endorsed that critique by a 6–3 vote today, repudiating the idea that agencies, rather than judges, should resolve ambiguities in the statutes under which they operate.
