Chevron deference was overturned in June 2024, when the Supreme Court decided Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and ended the forty-year rule that told federal courts to accept a federal agency’s reasonable reading of an ambiguous statute.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Judges now decide for themselves what a federal statute means. An agency’s interpretation is still available as guidance, but it no longer wins simply because it is reasonable. For anyone regulated by a federal agency, that changes what the law is, how it gets tested, and which rules are now vulnerable to challenge.
What Chevron Required
Under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), courts followed a two-step routine when someone challenged an agency’s reading of a statute. First, the court asked whether Congress had directly answered the question. If the text 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 reading was reasonable. A reasonable reading stood even when the judge would have chosen a different one.2Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School). Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
That framework gave agencies broad room to interpret their own governing laws. Aggressive readings of the Clean Air Act, the securities laws, and countless other statutes survived judicial review because they fell within a range of permissible meanings. Critics argued the rule let the executive branch define the limits of its own power. That criticism eventually reached the Court.
What Loper Bright Changed
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), overruled Chevron in a 6-2 decision. A companion case, Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, raised the same question. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion and grounded it in the Administrative Procedure Act, which instructs reviewing courts to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action.”3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 706 – Scope of Review
The majority’s core point was textual. Section 706 tells judges to answer legal questions themselves. It does not tell them to defer on those questions. The same section does prescribe deference for factual findings and policy decisions, so Congress plainly knew how to build deference into the statute when it wanted to. It chose not to for legal interpretation.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
The practical consequence: a judge must now find the best reading of a statute, not just a reasonable one. An agency can no longer prevail by demonstrating that its interpretation sits within a range of acceptable meanings. The court decides what the law actually says.
What Did Not Change
Loper Bright is narrower than the headlines suggest. It ended mandatory deference on questions of law. It did not touch the deferential standards courts apply to an agency’s factual findings or policy choices. Formal factual findings are still set aside only when “unsupported by substantial evidence,” and policy decisions still fall under the arbitrary-and-capricious standard.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 706 – Scope of Review Scientific conclusions, technical judgments, and other fact-heavy determinations still receive substantial judicial respect. The shift is specifically about what a statute means.
Prior holdings that upheld specific agency actions under Chevron also remain good law. The majority said those decisions are protected by statutory stare decisis and that reliance on Chevron alone is not a special justification for overruling them.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo The overruling was prospective in effect, not a wholesale reopening of every prior case.
The New Standard: Skidmore Persuasiveness
The replacement is not new. It is the older approach from Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), which lets an agency’s interpretation inform a court’s analysis without controlling it. The weight a court gives an agency’s view depends on how persuasive it actually is.4Justia Law. Skidmore v. Swift and Co., 323 U.S. 134
The Loper Bright majority endorsed Skidmore explicitly, describing agency interpretations as “a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance.” The Court added that interpretations issued around the time a statute was enacted, and applied consistently over the years, can be especially useful in figuring out what the statute means.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
Persuasiveness turns on several factors: how thoroughly the agency considered the question, whether its reasoning holds up under scrutiny, and whether the agency has held the same position consistently.4Justia Law. Skidmore v. Swift and Co., 323 U.S. 134 An interpretation adopted last year to defend a specific lawsuit carries less weight than one the agency has applied for two decades. An interpretation rooted in the agency’s genuine technical expertise carries more weight than a purely textual argument a judge is equally equipped to make.
The difference from Chevron is fundamental. Ambiguity used to hand the case to the agency if its reading was reasonable. Ambiguity now leaves the agency’s view as one input, weighed alongside everything else, while the court decides the meaning independently.
The Major Questions Doctrine Still Sits on Top
Even before Chevron fell, the Court had built a separate limit on agency authority. Under the major questions doctrine, most clearly stated in West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022), an agency claiming power over an issue of vast economic or political significance must point to clear congressional authorization.5Supreme Court of the United States. West Virginia v. EPA Courts will not read sweeping delegations into vague or modest statutory language.
The doctrine now operates alongside Loper Bright rather than as an exception to Chevron. Even after a court has independently interpreted a statute, the major questions doctrine can independently block an agency’s reading when the stakes are high and Congress has not clearly spoken.1Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo The largest agency rules now face two hurdles: the court’s own best reading of the statute, and, on top of that, a demand for clear authorization when the rule reshapes an industry or resolves a contested political question.
Existing Regulations Are Not All Safe
Prior decisions upholding agency actions survive, but the door to new challenges is wider than the stare decisis language suggests. In Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, decided the same term, the Court held that the APA’s six-year statute of limitations does not start when a regulation is published. It starts when a particular plaintiff is injured by that regulation.6Legal Information Institute. Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors, FRS
A business that opens today can challenge a regulation that has been on the books for decades, as long as its injury is within the last six years. Combine that with Loper Bright‘s requirement of independent judicial interpretation, and any regulation built on an aggressive reading of an ambiguous statute becomes a plausible target for a newly injured party, even if it once survived review under the old deferential standard.
What This Means for Agencies and Regulated Parties
Agencies now have to defend their statutory readings on the merits rather than on reasonableness. Rulemaking records are getting longer and more carefully argued: preambles explain why the agency’s interpretation is the best reading of the text, not just a permissible one; scientific and economic support is more prominent; and reversals of prior positions get more explicit justification, including attention to the reliance interests of parties who built their operations around the old rule.
Agency lawyers are also reading their statutes more conservatively. An interpretation that would have survived Chevron‘s permissive standard may not survive independent review, so the incentive is to stay closer to the text and, where broader authority is needed, ask Congress rather than stretch existing language. For regulated businesses and individuals, the flip side is that agency positions previously treated as settled are now open to challenge, and the strength of an agency’s own record and reasoning determines how much weight a court gives its view.
The Parallel Shift in the States
The federal move is part of a broader trend. Since 2013, at least 14 states have eliminated or restricted judicial deference to their own state agencies, through a mix of legislation and court decisions. In 2025 alone, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri enacted laws barring state courts from deferring to agency legal interpretations. The scope varies, but the direction is the same: courts interpret statutes on their own.
For anyone regulated at both the federal and state level, the combined effect is significant. Agency positions that would have gone unchallenged a few years ago are now vulnerable in both systems, and clear statutory drafting matters more than it did when courts routinely filled gaps in the agency’s favor.