What’s This Supreme Court ‘Chevron Doctrine’?: QuickTake Q&A

At his Senate confirmation hearing, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was questioned about judicial independence, the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling and the Chevron doctrine. This was not a trivia question to test his knowledge of case law. Chevron is the foundation bolstering federal regulations on the environment, communications and other issues. Gorsuch is a vigorous critic of Chevron, and Democrats fear that if he joins the court, he’d champion its elimination or restriction.

Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council was a lawsuit originally filed by the NRDC against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at that time led by Anne Gorsuch, the Supreme Court nominee’s late mother. It arose from a dispute over language in the Clean Air Act that required "new or modified major statutory sources" of air pollution to comply with strict rules. During the presidency of Democrat Jimmy Carter, the EPA determined that the "source" could be any piece of equipment; the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan later said that "source" meant the entire plant. In its 1984 decision, the Supreme Court said that when Congress passed a law that did not have a clear meaning, courts should defer to the federal agency applying the law unless its interpretation was unreasonable. The court reasoned that experts at agencies had been trusted by Congress to make informed decisions. This has become the doctrine.