Supreme Courts Chevron overturn a victory for the little guy, not for big business

After the US Supreme Court curtailed the powers of federal agencies in two cases last week, progressive critics predictably complained that the decisions favored “big business,” “corporate interests” and “the wealthy and powerful.”That gloss overlooked the reality that people with little wealth or power frequently are forced to contend with overweening bureaucrats who invent their own authority and play by their own rules.In the more consequential case, the court repudiated the Chevron doctrine, which required that judges defer to a federal agency’s “permissible” interpretation of an “ambiguous” statute.The majority said that rule, which the court established in 1984, was unworkable (creating “an eternal fog of uncertainty” about what the law allows or requires) and fundamentally misguided (allowing the executive branch to usurp a judicial function).Although People for the American Way perceived a win for “the corporate interests that have been itching to gut the power of federal agencies to protect our health and welfare,” the dispute at the center of the case complicates that picture.Two family-owned fishing operations objected to onerous regulatory fees they said had never been authorized by Congress.In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch noted other examples of vulnerable supplicants who suffer when agencies are free to rewrite the laws under which they operate.He cited cases involving a veteran seeking disability benefits and an immigrant fighting to remain in the country.Because of an arbitrary rule that the Department of Veterans Affairs invented for its own convenience, Thomas Buffington lost three years of disability benefits that the government owed him.Alfonzo De Niz Robles faced deportation and separation from his American wife and children after the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned a judicial precedent on which he and many other immigrants had relied for relief.“Sophisticated entities and their lawyers may b...