Mere hours after the Supreme Court sharply curbed the power of federal agencies, conservatives and corporate lobbyists began plotting how to harness the favorable ruling in a redoubled quest to whittle down climate, finance, health, labor and technology regulations in Washington.
“This means that agencies are going to have a hard time defending their legal positions,” said Daryl Joseffer, the executive vice president and chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center, which filed an amicus brief in the case. “That means it will be easier to challenge some regulations than it used to be. That obviously has a real impact on whether it’s worth bringing some cases.
But she predicted the most lasting consequence of the Supreme Court’s ruling might be that it deters some federal agencies from issuing rules in the first place, perhaps convincing them to “put their pen down and pause.”, conservative policymakers and corporate lobbyists scored their most significant legal victory in an aggressive, decades-long campaign to curtail the reach of the federal government.
Tom Ward, the vice president for legal advocacy for the association, said he expected NAHB to “send this opinion” to a judge hearing the water-related case in Texas to “remind the court now there is no deference to the agency.”The legal wrangling ultimately served to underscore a harsh reality in Washington: Federal agencies increasingly have taken a more active role in crafting policy because of partisan gridlock in Congress.