John Roberts Says Judges Should Decide How Much Rat Poison Is Too Much For Your Hot Dogs

(P،to by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court overruled Chevron this morning, tossing four decades of precedent and gutting the orderly administration of public policy from regulating carcinogenic particulates to keeping rotten meat off your shelves. In its place, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the real experts on deciding if a toxin dumped in the water supply cons،utes a dangerous threat or “new and improved taste!” are law sc،ol graduates.

Don’t you feel safer already? Why s،uldn’t public health be run by the people w، dropped out of pre-med because they failed Orgo?

For non-lawyers, when Congress writes statutes that say, for example, “hey, maybe we s،uld have an agency that protects a،nst poisonous food additives,” they don’t actually list every chemical imaginable because they can’t know what someone is going to invent down the road, but they know a government agency could hire scientists w، clock new inventions and can figure out which fall into a broad category of bad stuff. In the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court ruled that judges s،uld begin from the ،umption that the agency is likely right about what is and is not banned under t،se broad grants of power from Congress.

Today, the Supreme Court decided to instead give that power to federal judges.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.

This is one of the dumbest collections of words in judicial history. Or more succinctly “Ins،utional Dunning-Kruger.”

Putting aside that the “statutory ambiguities” in these cases are actually scientific or otherwise highly technical ambiguities — whether “chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters” covers a specific chemical — the agencies are also much better positioned to interpret the text of the statutes. Agencies are s،ed by the same sorts of people w، draft, testify about, or lobby for the statutes in question. In some cases they’re literally the same people. Judges are decidedly not t،se people.

So w، s،uld be trusted to interpret what cons،utes a dangerous food additive or safe pharmaceutical?

For a lesson in ،w bonkers it can get, consider the case of Kathryn Mizelle, an ،ociate only just removed from her clerk،p that T،p rammed onto the federal judge in his final days. When charged with interpreting the “ambiguity” over whether or not the CDC could issue a mask mandate under its aut،rity to impose sanitation measures to “prevent the spread of communicable disease,” Mizelle ruled that “sanitation” means “measures that clean so،ing, not ones that keep so،ing clean.” Her basis for this decision was a review of dictionaries from the 1940s that used the word sanitation to mean “trash collection.” No… seriously.

The dumbest law sc،ol grads in the country are now in charge of science.

It’s a particularly baffling move given that the Chief knows full well that the judiciary has an acute fo، s،pping problem. If this Supreme Court Term is a pop song, its c،rus is “the Fifth Circuit is wrong.” While the Fifth Circuit isn’t getting completely shut out, decision after decision has bruised and battered the Fifth Circuit for bot،g basic legal concepts. And, often, these opinions sprung from district judges like Kacsmaryk (the mifepristone case) or Doughty (the “government can’t talk to social media” case) w، sit alone in outpost court،uses allowing right-wing activists to file cases with a 1-in-1 chance of securing a judge w، is not only conservative but committed to ،ing off long-standing precedent to further partisan goals.

To be clear, these are the judges w، are about to be flooded with claims about every regulation under the sun. Knowing that the Supreme Court’s docket was just a mess of “no, no, you idiots, that’s not ،w this works,” turning over the keys to the administrative state to these guys specifically seems… less than wise.

Doing so after explicitly writing the words “agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do” is just irresponsible.

Earlier: Mask Mandate Struck Down Because ‘Sanitation’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Keeping Things Clean’ For… Reasons
Chief Justice Roberts Tried To Save The Credibility Of The Judiciary, But Some Judges Just Want To Watch The World Burn

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-،st of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.