SCOTUS Delivers Massive Decisions dealing Damage to Federal Bureaucracy and Deep State
Last week, we saw two monumental decisions come out of the Supreme Court, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council and Fischer v. United States.
The Fischer case involved a January 6th defendant who challenged his obstruction conviction. The court rules in favor of the Jan. 6th defendant.
In Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, the court overruled Chevron, dealing the largest blow to Federal Agencies regulatory power in 80 years.
On Monday, the court released its most anticipated ruling yet, Trump v. United States.
All three cases set incredibly strong precedents, dealing damage to the Federal Bureaucracy and Deep State.
Let’s recap these three decisions:
Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council
The Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council cuts back federal agencies’ power to interpret laws they administer. The Supreme Court ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws.
In a 6-3 vote, justices overruled a landmark 1984 decision which gave rise to the ‘Chevron Doctrine’. Under that doctrine, a court was required to uphold a federal agency’s interpretation of a statute if it was reasonable and if congress had not already set a precedent first.
Chief Justice Roberts rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided”.
The original Chevron decision in 1984 upheld a Reagan-era Environmental Protection Agency’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act that eased regulation of emissions. This ruling eventually became overburdensome on companies, becoming a target for those seeking to bring the administrative state to heel.
An example of a federal agency abusing this doctrine was best seen in a rule issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency required a herring industry to pay $710 per day to carry observers aboard their vessels to collect data about their catches and monitor for overfishing.
Chief Justice Roberts argued that the Chevron Doctrine is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a federal law that sets out procedures that federal agencies must follow as well as instructions for courts to review action by those agencies.
With this ruling in place, the Supreme Court has taken a major step to curtail unlawful agency overreach.
Fischer v. United States
In Fischer v. United states, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Jan. 6th Capitol riot defendant, giving a narrower interpretation of a federal statute that imposes criminal liability on anyone who “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding."
The challenge was brought by Joseph Fischer, who was one of more than 300 people charged with obstruction of an official proceeding by the Department of Justice.
Fischer’s lawyers argued that the federal statute should not apply, and that it has only been used for evidence-tampering cases.
Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the Department of Justice had stretched the “obstruction of an official proceeding” law too far.
Roberts wrote that to prove a defendant is guilty of the obstruction crime, the government “must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so”.
Now that the Supreme Court has concluded in a 6-3 decision that the lower courts interpreted the obstruction law too broadly, the case will now go back to the D.C. federal appeals court.
The federal appeals court has a new legal standard set forth by SCOTUS for the obstruction law and will determine if the case against Fischer and other Jan. 6th defendants can go forward.
A huge blow to Merrick Garland’s DOJ that’s imprisoning non-violent Jan. 6th defendants.
Trump v. United States
In the most anticipated decision of all, President Donald Trump was granted immunity for any official acts as President of the United States.
With this ruling in place, the trial judge in the lower court case against will now have to hold hearings on whether the charges against Trump were based on official acts while in the White House.
This case is in relation to allegations of then-President Trump attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.
The process of these hearings will take time, guaranteeing that Trump will be out of the courtroom and solely focused on the campaign trail. Prosecutors will most likely be unable to bring these charges before the 2024 election, which is a massive win for Trump.
Trump called this ruling a “big win for our constitution and for democracy” and stated on Truth Social that, “THE SUPREME COURT DECISION IS A MUCH MORE POWERFUL ONE THAN SOME HAD EXCPECTED IT TO BE. IT IS BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE, AND CLEARS THE STENCH FROM THE BIDEN TRIALS AND HOAXES, ALL OF THEM, THAT HAVE BEEN USED AS AN UNFAIR ATTACK ON CROOKED JOE BIDEN’S POLITICAL OPPONENT, ME. MANY OF THESE FAKE CASES WILL NOW DISAPPEAR, OR WITHER INTO OBSCURITY. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”