Chevron deference was overturned on June 28, 2024, when the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo that federal courts must use their own independent judgment when interpreting statutes rather than deferring to a federal agency’s reading whenever the law is ambiguous.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Agency interpretations can still persuade a judge, but they no longer win by default. That is the practical shift, and it reaches into nearly every corner of federal regulation.
What Chevron Used to Require
The doctrine came from a 1984 case, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, and set up a two-step test.2Justia. Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Step one asked whether Congress had spoken directly to the question. If the statute was clear, that was the end of it. If the statute was silent or ambiguous, the court moved to step two and asked only whether the agency’s interpretation was reasonable. A reasonable agency reading won, even if the judge would have read the statute differently.
For 40 years, that framework was the most cited case in American administrative law. It shaped how the EPA wrote clean air rules, how the IRS wrote tax regulations, how the FDA regulated drugs, and how industries planned for compliance. The premise was that agencies have technical expertise judges lack and that Congress often writes broad language expecting agencies to fill in the details.
What Courts Do Now Instead
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, grounded the ruling in the Administrative Procedure Act itself. Section 706 of the APA directs reviewing courts to “decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action.”3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 U.S. Code 706 – Scope of Review Chevron, the Court concluded, was incompatible with that command because it required judges to accept an agency’s reading whenever it cleared a low bar of reasonableness.
The opinion put the division of labor bluntly: “agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
In place of Chevron, courts return to a standard rooted in the 1944 decision Skidmore v. Swift & Co.4Justia. Skidmore v. Swift and Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944) Under Skidmore, an agency’s interpretation can carry persuasive weight but has no power to control the outcome. Judges weigh the thoroughness of the agency’s analysis, the soundness of its reasoning, and whether the agency has been consistent over time. An agency that has held the same view for decades, backed by careful analysis and genuine expertise, will still do well. An agency that shifted positions with each new administration or stretched a statute past its natural reading will not.
Two boundaries survived the ruling. First, when Congress explicitly delegates gap-filling authority to an agency, courts should respect that delegation and ask whether the agency stayed within it.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Second, agency fact-finding still gets deference. Under Section 706, factual determinations made during formal agency proceedings can be overturned only if unsupported by substantial evidence.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 U.S. Code 706 – Scope of Review What changed is how courts treat the agency’s conclusions about what the statute means, not its findings about what the world looks like.
Are Existing Regulations Still Good?
Mostly, yes. The Court addressed this directly and said that overruling Chevron does not automatically undo prior decisions that applied it. Those holdings remain subject to statutory stare decisis. The opinion noted specifically that “the holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful — including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself — are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology.”5Congress.gov. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and the Future of Agency Deference
In practice, that means if a court previously upheld a rule using Chevron, the ruling stands unless a challenger can offer a “special justification” beyond the argument that the court should not have deferred. The mere fact that Chevron is gone is not itself enough to reopen a settled case.5Congress.gov. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and the Future of Agency Deference Without that guardrail, the decision could have triggered a wave of relitigation across the entire regulatory code.
Early evidence suggests the guardrail is holding. Agency win rates in court have stayed near 60 percent since the decision, and the expected flood of successful challenges to existing regulations has not materialized. Some rules have fallen. The Eighth Circuit invalidated an IRS transfer-pricing regulation, and the Federal Circuit tossed years of International Trade Commission precedent on domestic-industry requirements. New regulations and novel interpretations face the toughest scrutiny, because they cannot shelter behind a prior judicial ruling.
Which Regulations Face the Most Risk
Rules most exposed to challenge share a few traits. They rest on aggressive readings of ambiguous statutory language. They were adopted recently enough to lack the protection of a prior court decision. And they regulate industries with the resources and reason to litigate.
Environmental rules are a primary battleground. EPA regulations on power plant emissions, tailpipe standards, and PFAS under the Safe Drinking Water Act all involve broad statutory language applied to problems Congress may not have specifically anticipated. Clean Air Act “Good Neighbor” provisions and climate-related provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act have already drawn challenges that courts must now evaluate without any thumb on the scale for the agency.
Tax regulations are another major area. The Internal Revenue Code is implemented through a large body of Treasury regulations and IRS guidance. Courts will now decide independently whether those interpretations reflect the best reading of the Code, not just a reasonable one. Healthcare and drug rules from the FDA, labor standards from the Department of Labor, and financial rules from the SEC all face the same dynamic. Any agency that leaned on Chevron as a backstop for a stretched interpretation now needs its statutory argument to stand on its own.
How Agencies and Congress Are Adapting
Inside federal agencies, influence has shifted toward lawyers and away from policy staff. Before Loper Bright, rule drafters could present decision-makers with a menu of plausible interpretations, knowing that any reasonable option would survive review. The question now is narrower: what is the best reading of the statute? Agencies are working to identify specific grants of authority rather than relying on broad, general rulemaking provisions, and to hold consistent interpretive positions over time, because a history of flip-flopping cuts against persuasive weight.
Congress has options too. Legislators can draft statutes with more detail, leaving fewer gaps. They can include explicit delegations of interpretive authority for particular provisions, which the Loper Bright opinion said courts should respect. Bills have been introduced to amend the APA in both directions — one to codify Chevron-style deference, another to require full de novo review of all legal questions in agency cases — though neither has become law.5Congress.gov. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and the Future of Agency Deference
How far the change reaches depends on how aggressively courts use their new authority. If judges continue to find most agency interpretations persuasive on the merits, the practical shift will be modest. If they routinely substitute their own readings for agency expertise, the regulatory picture will change substantially. The first year of post-Loper Bright litigation points somewhere in between.
The Dissent’s Objections
Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Sotomayor, wrote a sharp dissent describing the decision as a shift “from a rule of judicial humility to a rule of judicial hubris.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Justice Jackson was recused from Loper Bright but participated in the companion case, Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce.
Kagan argued that agencies are better positioned than judges to resolve many regulatory questions, because those questions turn on scientific or technical knowledge and on the workings of complex programs. She also warned of disruption: Chevron had been the backdrop against which Congress drafted statutes and industries planned investments for four decades, and removing it retroactively upends settled assumptions. And she rejected the majority’s reading of the APA, arguing that the Court had for decades correctly understood the statute to leave room for deference. In her framing, the majority “gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden — involving the meaning of regulatory law.”