On June 28, the six reactionary members of the Supreme Court put a final nail in the coffin of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, in the companion cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce.

By overruling Chevron, the court dramatically curtailed the power of federal agencies to interpret statutes they administer, ruling that courts should provide their own interpretations of ambiguous statutes. This decision will imperil the rights of workers and consumers and threaten the environment and our health and safety, while providing a boon to corporations.

During Neil Gorsuch’s 2017 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, former Sen. Al Franken confronted him with the Trump administration’s goal of “deconstruction of the administrative state,” or deregulation. Franken said:

[T]o those who subscribe to President Trump’s extreme view, Chevron is the only thing standing between them and what the President’s chief strategist Steve Bannon called the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state,’ which is shorthand for gutting any environmental or consumer protection measure that gets in the way of corporate profit margins.

Franken reminded Gorsuch that when Bannon spoke “before a gathering of conservative activists,” he explained that the president’s “appointees were selected to bring about this deconstruction.” Franken added, “I suspect that your nomination, given your views on Chevron, is a key part of that strategy.”

Indeed, Gorsuch has long been gunning for Chevron. While serving as a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gorsuch wrote in a 2016 concurrence in Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, “Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth.”

The doctrine of “Chevron deference” required that when a congressional law is ambiguous on a certain matter, courts must defer to the federal regulatory agency’s reasonable construction of the statute.

Courts have used Chevron deference to: uphold a National Labor Relations Board decision that certain workers constitute employees entitled to protections of the National Labor Relations Act; affirm an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that required states to reduce emissions from power plants; sustain a Department of Labor interpretation of the Black Lung Benefits Act to allow coal miners with black lung disease to get compensation; and accept the EPA’s revised regulations under the Toxic Substances Control Act to provide enhanced protection from lead paint exposure.

In Loper Bright, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had relied on Chevron to overrule a challenge by commercial fishing companies to a rule promulgated by the National Marine Fisheries........

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