Supreme Court Decision Restores Balance of Power in Federal Government
Travis Cushman
Deputy General Counsel, Litigation and Public Policy
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
photo credit: Getty
A recent Supreme Court decision gave U.S. agriculture a big win. Chad Smith has the details.
Smith: The Supreme Court struck down Chevron deference, which is good news for American farmers and ranchers. Travis Cushman, deputy general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says the most important takeaway from the case is a restored balance of power at the federal level.
Cushman: The key is that agencies will no longer be able to say how much power they have. What previously happened is courts would defer to agencies for an agency's interpretation of its power, and, after this decision, courts will now be the ones to decide that. Not the agencies themselves.
Smith: He says this decision sets a new legal precedent for a broad swath of government agency regulations.
Cushman: So many regulations that we believe--whether it’s USDA, EPA, Labor--push the bounds of what Congress intended, and this will force those agencies to really evaluate how much authority they have to regulate and allow us to challenge them when they've gone too far.
Smith: Cushman says AFBF has been involved in this case for many years.
Cushman: In this case, we led an industry Coalition on this. We filed a brief that looked a whole lot like the Court’s final decision. The court more or less did everything we said they should do for the same reasons we said they should.
Smith: For more information on the decision, go to fb.org/news. Chad Smith, Washington.
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