Enforce these decisions that over turns the Chevron Doctrine all the way down to municipalities. No more NGOs.
Nov 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday appeared open to upholding a federal rule requiring commercial fishermen to fund a program to monitor for overfishing of herring off New England’s coast even after the U.S. Supreme Court in that same case issued a landmark ruling curbing agencies’ regulatory power.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, during oral arguments, weighed the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision, opens new tab to scrap a 40-year-old legal doctrine that had required courts to defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws they administer.
Congress has enacted a variety of tax-exempt statuses into the Internal Revenue Code. Among them is 501(c)(4) status, which is reserved for an organization that is “not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” Generally speaking, the Internal Revenue Service defines a social welfare organization as one that works toward benefiting society as a whole, instead of a business or an entity that benefits only a certain group of people, like shareholders.
Charities and civic groups are perhaps the archetypal example of a 501(c)(4) group. But the IRS’s prevailing standard is that such groups can also spend funds on political and electioneering activities so long as that is not their “primary purpose”—in other words, so long as a bare majority of their expenditures go toward something that would qualify for the exemption. As a result, in recent years, 501(c)(4) groups have become the preferred vehicle for wealthy Americans to shape political discourse, elections, and more."
The D.C. Circuit panel originally relied on the Chevron doctrine to defer to the agency’s interpretation of the law, with U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump who was on Monday’s panel, dissenting.
The Supreme Court on appeal overturned the 1984 ruling called Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that had established that principle of deference.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that instead of deferring to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes, courts “must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
The case is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, No. 21-5166.
For Loper Bright: Ryan Mulvey of Cause of Action Institute
For the government: Daniel Halainen of the U.S. Department of Justice
Read more:
Court open to upholding US fishing monitor rule even without ‘Chevron’ doctrine | Reuters