Major Shift in Food and Drug, Trade, and Consumer Protection Law in the Wake of U.S Supreme Court Overruling of Chevron
On June 28, the United States Supreme Court in the consolidated cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce (collectively, “Loper Bright”) held by a 6-3 majority that “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”1 In so holding, the Supreme Court ended 40 years of Chevron deference in which courts deferred to administrative agencies’ reasonable readings of ambiguous laws.2 Under Chevron, an administrative agency charged with implementing a federal statute would “fill the gap” in the reading of ambiguous laws with the rationale that administrative agencies have the best expertise to do so. Now, as Chief Justice Roberts wrote, judges are still allowed to consider a federal agency’s interpretation of a statute – particularly when it “rests on factual premises” within the agency’s expertise – but are no longer required to do so.
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