A pair of cases — Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce — are expected to test the pro-business nature of the Roberts court, which is known to be the most pro-business court in over a century. The court is scheduled to reconsider the 1984 Chevron ruling, an outcome that appears certain and in tune with what corporate America wants, as well as the conservative justices’ essentials on governmental structuring. Both cases hinge on a National Marine Fisheries Service rule that necessitates herring fishing industries to fund federal monitors to a significant amount of their revenues (see detailed brief here).
The current court’s pro-business leaning is backed by statics according to which it has favored business interests in 63% of the cases it has heard since 2005 (2023 study). This makes it the most likely court to be in favor of businesses in the last century.
However, the court’s approach is not simply pro-business, but rather subtly complicated. There is often business on both sides of a case, with large corporations appearing opposite to small enterprises and different industries having varying interests. These factors can blur the court’s pro-business character. The justices are not purely driven by outcomes that favor corporate America but by commitments to anti-regulation. They have traditionally been skeptical of administrative agencies and prefer to curtail their liberty to regulate businesses and other entities.
The court has handled numerous cases related to the role of administrative agencies especially during presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, as these agencies have acted novel and aggressively. The court usually sides with conservative justices, carrying the weight of what matters to the business. But on the rare occasions when business and corporate American interests collide with their principles, justices tend to stick with their principles.
Further, the court has historically only accepted cases for review that offered opportunities to reshape the law to favor big businesses, according to Brian Frazelle, of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center. The cases Loper Bright and Relentless could have been considered on narrow grounds, affecting just the herring industry and the related federal regulator. But instead, the Supreme Court decided to hear the broader issue of whether to overturn the Chevron doctrine, which applies to nearly all administrative agencies from the EPA to FDA. Courts must defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous laws under this doctrine.
More details on the cases can be found here – Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, U.S., No. 22-451 and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, U.S., No. 22-1219.
The full article can be viewed at the Bloomberg Law website here.