The House voted Thursday to overturn a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that Republicans say gave the executive branch too much power to impose regulations that cost Americans trillions of dollars each year.
Lawmakers approved the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, or SOPRA, in a mostly party-line 220-211 vote.
Republicans have argued for the last several years that the Supreme Court precedent set in the Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. case effectively told courts that they should defer to federal agencies when they interpret laws passed by Congress as they write regulations. Republicans say that since that ruling, courts have failed to do their due diligence in assessing whether those regulations can be fairly justified under the law.
The lawmaker who sponsored SOPRA, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., argued on the House floor Thursday that the Supreme Court ruling has given the executive branch vast authority to regulate as it pleases, and often in ways that contradict the intent of Congress.
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"Since 1984, when the Supreme Court ruled that courts must defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute rather than what Congress intended, the executive branch has begun usurping the legislative branch to issue regulations with the force of law," Fitzgerald said. "It is certainly not what our founders intended."
He added that the cost of these regulations have piled up on Americans over the last several decades.
"The total annual cost of regulation is almost $2 trillion, or about 8% of the U.S. GDP," he said. "If it were a country, for comparison, U.S. regulation would be the world’s eighth largest economy."
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Another Republican, Rep. Thomas McClintock of California, said the Supreme Court ruling goes against the intent of the Constitution, which sets out that Congress writes the laws while the executive branch carries them out.
"One brother makes law but cannot enforce it, the other brother enforces law but cannot make it," he said.
Democrats said overturning the Supreme Court decision would force the courts to take on considerable work as they try to interpret federal law. Rep. Jerry Nadler, of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the bill would "completely upend the administrative process by eliminating judicial deference to agencies and require federal courts to review all agency rulemakings and interpretations of statute on a de novo basis."
Nadler also said Congress defers to agencies to do the work of deciding specific regulatory policies because it does not have the expertise to do that job.
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"While Congress sets broad policies, we delegate authorities to executive agencies because we do not have the expertise to craft the technical regulations ourselves, and we rely on these agencies to carry out the policies we enact," he said.
The bill is unlikely to move in the Democrat-controlled Senate and the White House has said President Biden would veto it.
But the issue could be decided by the Supreme Court itself. In the fall, the Supreme Court is expected to hear a dispute between fishermen in New Jersey and the federal government over whether federal rules on fishermen are vastly exceeding what was allowed by Congress.
In that case, lower courts have leaned on the 1984 Chevron precedent to say they are giving deference to federal regulators. But the case is now at the Supreme Court, which could decide to overturn the precedent.
