Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 69

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

23 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

that likewise invite and enable a wave of regulatory chal-
lenges—decisions that carry with them the possibility that 
well-established agency rules will be upended in ways that 
were  previously  unimaginable.  Doctrines  that  were  once 
settled are now unsettled, and claims that lacked merit a 
year ago are suddenly up for grabs. 

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U. S. ___ 
(2024), for example, the Court has reneged on a blackletter 
rule of administrative law that had been foundational for 
the  last  four  decades.  Id.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  30).    Under 
that prior interpretive  doctrine, courts deferred to agency
interpretations  of  ambiguous  statutes  that  Congress  au-
thorized the agency to administer.  Now, every legal claim 
conceived  of  in  those  last  four  decades—and  before—can 
possibly be brought before courts newly unleashed from the
constraints of any such deference.  See Tr. of Oral Arg. 74
(Assistant to the Solicitor General explaining that this re-
sult “would magnify the effect of” overruling Chevron).

Put  differently,  a  fixed  statute  of  limitations,  running
from the agency’s action, was one barrier to  the chaotic up-
ending of settled agency rules; the requirement that defer-
ence be given to an agency’s reasonable interpretations con-
cerning its statutory authority to issue rules was another.
The Court has now eliminated both.  Any new objection to
any old rule must be entertained and determined de novo 
by  judges  who  can  now  apply  their  own  unfettered  judg-
ment as to whether the rule should be voided. 

* 

* 

* 
At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The 
tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s hold-
ings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the 
potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Gov-
ernment.  Even  more  to  the  present  point,  that  result 
simply cannot be what Congress intended when it enacted 
legislation that stood up and funded federal agencies and