Herring being unloaded from a fishing boat in Rockland, MaineRobert F. Bukaty/AP

In one of the most highly anticipated decisions this term, the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old legal doctrine, so-called “Chevron deference,” under which judges had been expected to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of laws that are ambiguous. The ruling, split 6-3 along ideological lines, will have far-reaching consequences, experts say, and could impact all sorts of federal policies, from health care and taxes to climate change.

The cases at the center of this decision—Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo—on their most basic level, involve a dispute about herring fishing and regulatory fees. In an effort to prevent overfishing, the federal government required fishers to pay at least some of the cost for legally mandated monitors to observe their fishing operations. The fishermen behind the cases—backed by anti-regulatory interests like Charles Koch—argued that they shouldn’t have to foot the bill because the law doesn’t specify who pays.

But this ruling is much, much bigger than a fight over fishing........

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