After the U.S. Supreme Court last week curtailed the power of federal agencies in two cases, progressive critics predictably complained that the decisions favored “big business,” “corporate interests” and the “rich and powerful.” . This argument ignores the reality that people who lack wealth or power are often forced to contend with egotistical bureaucrats who invent their own authority and play by their own rules.
In the more important case, the court rejected Chevron The doctrine requires judges to follow federal agencies’ “permissible” interpretations of “ambiguous” statutes. The majority said the rule, created by the court in 1984, is unworkable, creates a “perpetual fog of uncertainty” about what the law allows or requires, and fundamentally misleads the executive branch into usurping justice. functions.
While Support for America’s Way believes that “corporate interests have been eager to reduce the power of federal agencies to protect our health and welfare,” the dispute at the heart of the case complicates the situation. Two family-owned fishing companies object to onerous regulatory fees, saying they were never approved by Congress.
In a unanimous opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed to other examples where vulnerable petitioners suffer when agencies are free to rewrite the laws under which they operate. He cited the cases of a veteran seeking disability benefits and an immigrant struggling to stay in the country.
Thomas Buffington lost three years of disability benefits the government owed him because of arbitrary rules the Department of Veterans Affairs created for its own convenience. After the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned a judicial precedent that he and many other immigrants relied on, Alfonso Deniz Robles faces deportation and is at odds with his U.S. Wife and children separated.
“Sophisticated entities and their attorneys may be able to keep up with rule changes that affect their rights and responsibilities,” Gorsuch noted. They can lobby for “reasonable” agency interpretations and “even capture the agencies that issue those interpretations.”
In contrast, Gorsuch added, “these are things ordinary people can’t do.” They are “the ones who get the worst regulatory whiplash” when laws change based on the whims of bureaucrats.
In another case, the court ruled that the Seventh Amendment requires a jury trial for those accused of securities fraud. The majority said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violated that right by imposing civil penalties through an internal process in which the agency itself served as investigators, prosecutors and judges, with minimal independent review afterward.
The plaintiff in the case is a hedge fund manager who is accused of lying to clients and inflating fees. progressive export common dream Denouncing “the triumph of the rich and powerful”. But the SEC’s rigged proceedings, in which the agency almost always prevails, also affect people of modest means who face more dubious charges.
Take accountant Michelle Cochran, a single mother of two who was fined $22,500 by the SEC and banned from practicing law for five years after she represented herself in an internal proceeding. . When the agency investigated her former employer, it concluded that she “failed to complete the audit checklist,” leaving certain sections blank, although there was “no evidence” that the incomplete paperwork caused “disclosure to clients or investors.” Economic losses”.
Gorsuch noted that the SEC was trying to “punish citizens without a jury, without an independent judge, and under a different process than our courts.” He said the practice violated constitutional restrictions “to ensure that even the most unpopular among us have an independent judge and a jury of peers according to procedures designed to ensure a fair trial in a fair forum” Solve his case.
Defenders of the administrative state seem to believe that federal agencies unerringly target greedy villains who defraud the unwary, undermine public safety, or threaten the environment. But Gorsuch observed that “while violations of old rights may begin with cases against persona non grata, they rarely end there.”
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