The Supreme Court just gutted the administrative state, the unelected deep-staters who have usurped the will of the people and left us with a rabid, mutant federal government no sane voter ever wanted. Last Friday, the Supreme Court released a ruling Loper Bright vs. Raimondo that dethroned the so-called Chevron deference, a legal doctrine that for 40 years effectively forced judges to assume that government bureaucrats have whatever authority they want. Since the 1970s, Chevron had become a keystone of the Administrative State cited by 70 subsequent Supreme Court decisions and over 17,000 rulings in lower courts. Now it is gone. The ruling itself involves a fishing boat that was forced to pay for regulator ride-alongs at a cost of $700 per day which would have bankrupted them. So they sued, saying the agency did not have Congressional Authority; they just made up the rule. The court agreed. The larger issue is whether Congress makes law or do unelected bureaucrats make law? This ruling says Congress makes laws, as it says in the Constitution. The New York Times was positively horrified, mourning that the ruling "transfers power from the Executive branch to Congress." In other words, it transfers powers from the unelected bureaucrats to the elected politicians, who actually have to answer to voters. This matters because Federal bureaucrats currently spawn roughly 4,000 rules per year, which all have the force of law, compared to 50 actual substantive laws passed by Congress every year. So the Deep state is effectively passing 98.8% of our laws numbering roughly 11 per day. This is partly because the vast majority of rules are unpopular and would never be able to pass Congress. So try running for election banning gas stoves or raising the gasoline tax, and see how far you get. It's much easier to pass the buck to some bureaucratic Rando who cannot get fired. The Loper ruling will lead to hundreds or possibly thousands of challenges to rules that were made without Congressional authority which is roughly all of the rules. These range from environmental mandates and diversity to OSHA and the SEC, and they include the more totalitarian parts of the deep state. For example, the COVID era tyranny never could have happened without Chevron deference. No 6 ft distancing, no bans on going to church, no vax mandates, leaving your loved ones to die alone, none of those would ever have been passed by Congress. All are now illegal. Same for self-defense and the Second Amendment, where Rogue bureaucrats have banned bump stocks or directed banks to effectively close down gun shops again without Congressional authority. And, of course, the border where Congress has famously passed nothing the entire open borders, human trafficking industrial complex is made of rules the administrative state made up. In short, Loper reins in the rogue bureaucrats, who are currently running our country into the ground. We've already seen fruits. Two weeks ago, the Supremes struck the ban on bump stocks, and last week saw a separate case where the Supremes ruled the SEC cannot use its own in-house tribunal to impose fines which seems obvious given courts are supposed to be impartial but that was Chevron deference for you. As for the economy, reining in the totalitarian administrative state means less crony regulation, less more jobs, more growth hiring, incomes, and less inflation. It will take time for Loper to clear out the overgrowth clogging our economy, but the healing has begun.
