What is the Chevron Deference?
Say a big company wants to build a factory near a river that supplies water to a nearby neighborhood. This factory makes things people need, but its actions might pollute the river and harm the fish, plants, and even the people who live nearby.
The US government has rules in place to protect the environment and the health of people. These rules require companies to take certain steps to prevent pollution or any other harm. However, sometimes, these rules can be a bit unclear or complicated.
This is where Chevron Deference came in. It allowed federally appointed agencies to fill in the blanks where Congress might make unclear or vague rulings. These experts were appointed because they are the best at deciding how a specific rule must be enforced. In the factory example these experts, who are part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), know a lot about how to protect the environment and people’s health and must be trusted to make the best regulatory decisions.
In short, the Chevron deference can be invoked by experts to help protect people from operations that could be harmful to them. This applies to all sectors of society, like public health, food safety, infrastructure, and the environment.
As you have probably gathered by now, overturning such an important legal tool is detrimental, to say the least. Not only is Chevron no longer legally applicable by agencies at the federal level, but the expertise that many of society’s most important rules rely on will instead be deferred to non-expert judges in lower courts.
Why you should care that the Chevron Deference was overturned
Essentially, overturning the Chevron deference will make it harder to protect people and the planet because it takes the decision-making power away from the experts and puts it in the hands of judges. These judges lack the expert knowledge needed. The result? Less effective, slower, and more inconsistent enforcement of environmental, health, and economic rules, which harms average people in the long run.
Here are No Kill’s 4 takeaways.
1. It throws 40 years of legal “givens” out the window
The ruling effectively dismantles 40 years of legal precedence set by the Chevron deference, one of the most referenced laws in the United States. It has been used in legal milestones, such as the 1970 Clean Air Act and the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Much like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Court’s extreme decision does irreversible damage to generational legal and moral “givens”, such as the right to healthy food, the right to holistic and comprehensive reproductive healthcare, and the right to breathable air. More importantly, especially for our readers, this ruling steals away our ability to receive recommendations from experts and gives it to inexperienced and unelected judges who can be easily swayed by corporate and industrial elites.
2. It’s a Republican ploy that threatens existing legislation
This ruling is entirely political. It claims to undermine the “administrative state” or the “deep state”, a conservative conspiracy theory that speculates that the federal government is actually controlled by a secret network of faceless (liberal) bureaucrats. While ridiculous and harmful, this conspiracy theory has taken the American right by storm.
In recent years, the Republican majority has made it easier to sue agencies and get their rules struck down. And on Tuesday July 2nd, the Supreme Court voted to block an EPA proposal that would limit air pollution from 23 states, just two years after it stripped the EPA of much of its regulatory power over power plants.
In order to counter “wokeism”, another rightwing conspiracy, lower courts have been given more decision-making power by the SCOTUS decision. They can now interpret Congressional decisions and strike down those they deem too “woke”. These increasing attacks on agencies seriously threaten existing progressive policies and make them vulnerable to legal challenges.
This affects all areas of life, such as reproductive health, the environment, public health, food safety, and so on.
We have to ask ourselves if we are okay with inexperienced judges with agendas making decisions about our reproductive health instead of our doctors. Can we trust that increasingly anti-climate change conservative judges will make decisions that benefit all Americans instead of siding with the fossil fuel industry?
3. It puts at risk future sustainability and environmental laws
The SCOTUS decision will stall innovative green policies that haven’t yet passed in Congress, such as the Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change Act aka the FABRIC Act proposed in May 2022. It is currently under review in the U.S. Senate. If passed, the Act will be the first robust federal law regulating fashion brands and retailers. It could increase minimum wage standards and bring garment factories back into the U.S. economy, making textile manufacturing more sustainable.
There is also the Fashion Act, proposed in the New York state legislature by Maxine Bédat, the founder of sustainable fashion think tank New Standard Institute and the author of Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment. The Fashion Act could enforce legally binding sustainability standards on the fashion industry, strengthen chemical waste monitoring to combat chemical mismanagement, support garment workers with competitive pay, and protect their workers’ rights.
A weakened EPA means there is a slim chance eco-conscious regulations will ever make it past state and federal legislatures. Even then, they are likely to be challenged by the industry heads in the court system, which is overrun by white male Christian nationalists who implement climate denialism in state educational law, ban the mention of climate change in schools, and criminalize civil society.
4. It Strips away Systemic Change – Putting the burden on the Individual
No Kill’s mission is to help people make climate and eco-conscious fashion decisions that could reduce their personal contributions to climate change and environmental degradation.
But, we have to remember that the onus should not be on the consumer. Our actions, while important, pale in comparison to the actions taken industry-wide.
If the Chevron deference can no longer be used to defend regulation that supports our goals, there is no guarantee any of our personal actions will help lead to real and systemic change. We need systemic change to make the solutions we propose at No Kill Mag broadly available. We need systemic change because the “normal” that politicians and industrial leaders have decided for us no longer works.
This is especially worrying given the overwhelming majority Republicans and conservatives hold in state legislatures nationwide. This means more attacks on green policies, reproductive healthcare, workers’ rights, and public health, as seen in Project 2025.
This means more power to people who do not care if the planet burns if it means pocketing extra money. This means closing the door on a green future where even individual action will not suffice to right the wrongs of those in power.
Finally, we leave you with this. The regulatory system we have had up until the Chevron ruling is imperfect. Regulatory agencies have worked against the interests of the American people by lobbying in favor of industry-friendly regulation. However, lawmakers who seek to better our lives are out there and are being dis-empowered. And, by extension, it dis-empowers us. That is why voting for the Democratic Party in the upcoming November elections is instrumental in taking back that power. The ball is in your court.
Voting is Imperative
– Emmanuelle Mphuthi
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