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by harmmonica 726 days ago
Others have said this using different words, but I'm going to chime in anyway. I don't think the courts will have more power. SCOTUS is saying that congress needs to actually make clearer (better?) use of its power by being more explicit when legislating (i.e. when writing laws) instead of relying on the executive branch agencies (for those unfamiliar with the US political structure, agencies like the FDA, EPA, etc. are executive branch agencies that, ultimately, report to whomever is the current US president) to interpret and in many cases read into the laws that congress has passed.

The more practical reality of this ruling is, I think, this: there is no world where this is a win for anyone who believes in a bigger US federal government. This is a huge win for those people who believe the power of the federal government should be limited. It's likely the biggest challenge to the size of the federal government in my lifetime and I've been alive for a good bit. The dysfunctional congress that the US currently has makes it a certainty that in the short term countless regulations will be unenforceable and therefore this will be a picnic for anyone who is anti-regulation (note Trump in the debate last night where he talked about scrapping regulation. In comparison to this decision, Trump's regulation-slashing will look like he shot a rifle in comparison to the shotgun SCOTUS just fired).

Last comment: this SCOTUS has made it clear that the federal government will be massively restrained. There are two avenues by which they've made this clear: first, they have ruled very aggressively in favor of state's rights (especially when it comes to social issues like abortion), and, second, with this Chevron ruling, federal agencies will not be able to make decisions unless there is explicit intent in the laws that congress passes.

I'm having an extremely difficult time wrapping my head around just how epic of a change this SCOTUS has brought to the way the US population is governed, at both the state and federal level. Hard to really comprehend the gravity of the coming change, which will take decades and decades to fully understand.