Governor Mike Dunleavy is lauding the June 28 U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision that curtails the ability of federal agencies to interpret ambiguously worded laws, a move he says will enable Alaska to better fight federal overreach.

With a 6-3 decision in, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court toppled a 40-practice of granting federal agencies far-reaching authority to impose regulations based on ill-defined laws.

The new ruling could significantly impact Alaska’s interests when parties appear in federal court to challenge or defend a federal agency action. By taking back its traditional role of determining what the law is, the courts will no longer simply defer to administrative bureaucracies.

“Ever since statehood, Alaska has had to continually fight just to try and hold on to what was already given – fish and game management, submerged lands, land entitlements, resource development, the list goes on,” Dunleavy said in a prepared statement. “This constant deference given to federal agencies has made the fight that much harder and resulted in Alaska being treated as a volleyball going back and forth depending on who’s in the White House. Our legal rights as a state should not depend on who’s in office – those rights either exist or they don’t. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today at least gives us a fair chance to fight back and secure the rights we were promised.” 

For 40 years, federal courts have applied what is known as “Chevron deference” when reviewing federal agency actions. This legal doctrine originated from a 1984 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resource Defense Council, Inc. It requires federal courts to defer to a federal agency if the court believes the agency’s interpretation was reasonable and the statute in question is ambiguous. This is true even if the court disagreed with the agency’s interpretation. In practice, this has left states and citizens with no secure interpretation of the law as it has been dependent on the policy choices of each changing federal administration.

For example, a federal district court in Alaska recently upheld a federal agency’s decision to override the State’s hunting seasons and open a rural subsistence hunt, although the court agreed with the state that federal law did not expressly grant the federal agency this authority.

“Federal agencies have used Chevron deference as a shield, limiting the ability of federal courts to look critically at the agencies’ actions all while moving to improperly expand their discretion and authority,” said Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor. “By getting rid of Chevron, the Supreme Court has restored the separation of powers. Under our system of government, it is a court’s job to offer a final interpretation of the law, not the job of federal agencies.”

In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the now overturned Chevron doctrine required “a court to ignore, not follow, the reading the court would have reached had it exercised its independent judgment…” 

Justice Neil Gorsuch in a concurring opinion described the court’s action as placing a “tombstone on Chevron no one can miss. In doing so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation’s founding.”

Alaska, joined with 26 other states, and filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court asking for this very result.

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