Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.<\/em><\/a>, which gave rise to the doctrine known as Chevron Deference. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency\u2019s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable.<\/p>\nWhat the Chevron Deference doctrine did was when administrative agencies write regulations, they often will have their own administrative courts that interpret the regulations the agency has drawn up. For example, if the EPA makes a regulation that says a factory can only put out so much pollution, and there is a question as to whether a specific factory violated the regulation, the first place the factory has to go is the EPA\u2019s administrative court, where an EPA administrative judge will interpret the EPA\u2019s regulations. If the factory is unsatisfied with the EPA judge\u2019s decision, they can appeal to federal court. What Chevron Deference did was this: If the administrative court\u2019s decision was appealed, the federal court was then supposed to be heavily deferential to the findings of that administrative court.<\/p>\n
Basically, the doctrine put a thumb on the scale in favor of the administrative agency.<\/p>\n
The federal court was supposed to give a lot of deference to what the administrative agency found. From a liberty perspective, this is a separation of powers problem. The administrative agency, as an executive agency, is supposed to enforce the law. It\u2019s not supposed to write the law. It\u2019s not supposed to interpret the law. These alphabet agencies were writing regulations, which is a legislative function. They were enforcing the regulations, an executive function, and then they were interpreting the regulations, which is a judicial function.<\/p>\n
The ATF and the alphabet agencies were doing the jobs of all three branches of government and if challenged, the federal courts were supposed to defer to what their administrative courts found. Even if the federal court thought the agency\u2019s administrative court got it wrong, they didn\u2019t always overrule the decision. They believed that these agencies were the experts, who were best at administering and interpreting the own regulations. For example, the courts acted like since the EPA found that the EPA did nothing wrong, we\u2019ll defer to them since they\u2019re the experts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: What specifically did the U.S. Supreme Court decide? <\/strong><\/p>\nA: \u201cChevron was overturned formally based on the Administrative Procedures Act, which sets out the procedures that federal agencies must follow as well as instructions for the courts to review actions by those agencies. The Supreme Court decided that this deference was unlawful. The Supreme Court said federal courts should start from scratch, rather than showing deference to the alphabet agencies. The High Court removed their thumb from the scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: How will this decision affect the ATF? <\/strong><\/p>\nA: \u201cHopefully, it tones down all of the administrative agencies because it returns power to the judiciary. It should tone down the ATF just like the rest. They can no longer adjudicate their own rules and say, \u2018we\u2019re right because we said we\u2019re right.\u2019<\/p>\n
The writing has been on the wall for some time that Chevron would get knocked down. In a few of the (Administrative Procedure Act) challenges, the ATF has said they are not relying on Chevron to make their point. I suspect they didn\u2019t want to hang their hat on Chevron. During the pistol brace and bump-stock cases, the ATF specifically said they were not relying on Chevron Deference.<\/p>\n
If Chevron Deference were still alive, the ATF could write a rule like pistol braces. If someone was prosecuted for it and believed they shouldn\u2019t have been found guilty in an ATF court, the ATF could rely on Chevron Deference during the appeal.<\/p>\n
It was a big tool that every administrative agency had in their quiver.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: How will the Supreme Court\u2019s decision affect cases already in litigation, such as bump-stocks, pistol braces, frame and receiver and who needs an FFL?<\/strong><\/p>\nA: \u201cI don\u2019t believe it will affect any of the current cases against ATF because the ATF has already disclaimed using Chevron.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: Will this decision have any impact on the hundreds of gun dealers who have had their Federal Firearm Licenses revoked by the ATF for minor clerical reasons? (This question was posed to Adam Kraut, the Second Amendment Foundation\u2019s executive director.) <\/strong><\/p>\nA: \u201cNo. Revocation is entirely within the administrative process. The ATF only has to show a single willful violation. It\u2019s not ambiguous where it would be difficult to ascertain what Congress meant. The courts have defined what willful is \u2013 they did something the law said they can\u2019t do. Whether it was intentional, or they transposed some numbers, it\u2019s still willful. There\u2019s no deference in that regard. They don\u2019t have to defer to the ATF to interpret anything,\u201d Kraut said.<\/p>\n
Q: Do gun owners still need to go through the ATF\u2019s administrative process or can they now go straight to federal court? <\/strong><\/p>\nA: \u201cThey still have administrative courts. They will still adjudicate violations of their own regulations, but if you want to appeal, the federal court has much greater leeway to overturn the administrative agencies with Chevron gone. The courts should be much better equipped to keep the administrative state in check,\u201d Sack said.<\/p>\n
Q: How will the Supreme Court\u2019s decision affect gun owners? <\/strong><\/p>\nA: \u201cBig picture \u2013 for ATF and all of the other administrative agencies \u2013 it will hold their feet to the fire to interpret their own regulations fairly.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story is brought to you courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation\u2019s Investigative Journalism Project. Click <\/em>here<\/em><\/strong><\/a> to make a tax-deductible donation to the project.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\nNext Post Coming Soon…\u25b6\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The court case between an oil company, Chevron, and a federal agency expanding interpretations of the Clean Air Act would impact every other area of federal administrative law, including agencies that might work to limit gun rights in America. Next Post Coming Soon…\u25b6 Much of the coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s recent decision to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsandpride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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