Ms. Magazine: In the Shadow of Partisanship: The Supreme Court’s Recent Term
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on September 7, 2024.
In an analysis of the Court term for Democracy Docket, Keith Thirion of Alliance for Justice concludes, “If you don’t already have money and power, the current Supreme Court majority doesn’t care about you.”
Consider the consolidated cases Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, in which the Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, a 40-year precedent requiring courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous statutes. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the Court upended a fundamental process in administrative law, essentially finding that judges have as much expertise as the learned scientists, doctors and experts who work for and advise agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration or the Department of Health and Human Services.
In her dissenting opinion, Kagan wrote that the majority’s decision reflected “judicial hubris”—or as Thirion puts it, “the Court stole power away from the experts to hoard it for itself.” Imagine what this means for cases involving polluted water and air caused by negligent manufacturers. Consider the implications for future cases related to agency approval for contraceptives, medication abortion or future drug therapies that assist with infertility. There will be times—many, quite possibly—when judges and justices, without the benefit of expertise, will make mistakes.