In the coming months, the Supreme Court will issue decisions in two cases that could begin to shift the balance of power away from the so-called administrative state and back to the judicial branch. Two cases currently pending before the Court — Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation and American Hospital Association v. Becerra — present important questions about judicial deference to federal administrative agencies.
As a result of the Court’s decision in Chevron v. NRDC (1984), courts ordinarily “defer” to an administrative agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous federal law, so long as that interpretation is reasonable. Conservatives have criticized this regime of deference, arguing that it violates the separation of powers, erodes the rule of law, and encourages the worst excesses of the regulatory state.
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