The downfall of Chevron deference could completely change the ways courts review net neutrality, according to Bloomberg Intelligence’s Matt Schettenhelm. “The FCC’s 2024 effort to reinstitute federal broadband regulation is the latest chapter in a long-running regulatory saga, yet we think the demise of deference will change its course in a fundamental way,” he wrote in a recent report. “This time, we don’t expect the FCC to prevail in court as it did in 2016.” Schettenhelm estimated an 80 percent chance of the FCC’s newest net neutrality order being blocked or overturned in the absence of Chevron deference.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has made no secret of her ambitions to use the agency’s authority to take bold action to restore competition to digital markets and protect consumers. But with Chevron being overturned amid a broader movement undermining agency authority without clear direction from Congress, Schettenhelm said, “it’s about the worst possible time for the FTC to be claiming novel rulemaking power to address unfair competition issues in a way that it never has before.”
Khan’s methods have drawn intense criticism from the business community, most recently with the agency’s labor-friendly rulemaking banning noncompete agreements in employment contracts. That action relies on the FTC’s interpretation of its authority to allow it to take action in this area — the kind of thing that brings up questions about agency deference.
And it wasn’t a “bureaucratic agency” either.
Legislators made a law classifying invertebrates as fish. And judges interpreted the law as written. This is the clownery that happens when people with zero expertise control the law.
This is exactly what that fool was advocating for…
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Looks more like a legislative skill issue than a judicial one to me. I don’t know what is expected of the judges aside from interpreting the law.
I think that case was rightly decided on both a policy and law basis. But after the law was enacted, the agency had interpreted the law to have an understanding on how they should enforce it prior to the judicial interpretation.
So the agency did interpret the law as including bees as fish, correctly. Had the not done so the court case wouldn’t have happened because no one would have been advocating for that interpretation.
It was a beuroctatic agency, theCalifornia Fish and Game Commission reinterpreted an existing law meant to protect fish instead of seeking a law that actually protected bees.