Chevron deference

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is still looking for stakeholders to comment on what regulations should be modified. The HHS deregulation request for information (RFI), issued on May 14, has a public comment period that closes on July 14 at midnight.

At the American Health Law Association Annual Meeting on Wednesday, Elizabeth Kelley, the acting deputy general counsel at the HHS Office of General Counsel indicated that the overarching theme of the Trump Administration is to take a market-based approach to a number of issues, deregulation among them. Kelley said that with the RFI, HHS is seeking information about regulations that are either an extreme burden or may not be consistent with the enabling statute.

Additionally, Kelley indicated that HHS was interested in potentially addressing regulations that would have been approved by a court under the deference standard of the defunct Chevron doctrine. That doctrine required a court to defer to an agency’s interpretation of its enabling statute when crafting a regulation if that interpretation was reasonable and the statute was sufficiently ambiguous as to require interpretation.Continue Reading HHS Still Seeking Public Input on Deregulation Efforts

The fallout from last week’s Loper Bright/Relentless opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court that prospectively eliminated Chevron deference is still not fully clear, but Reed Smith has put together a Chevron Deference Resource Center where we will gather perspectives and events to help guide industry stakeholders through the new post-Chevron world.

The…

The Supreme Court’s decision last week in the companion cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce overturned the Court’s prior precedent in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., and, in the process, upended 40 years of administrative law practice by requiring a court that…

As Reed Smith has previously covered, an issue before the Supreme Court that could be decided this week could bring a seismic shift in the balance of power between agencies and courts, upend regulatory certainty, and open new opportunities for regulated industries, including health care. 

The Supreme Court’s pending decision in a pair of…

On January 17, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in two cases—Relentless v. Dep’t of Commerce, and Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo—that could have far-reaching effects on administrative law jurisprudence and the authority of federal agencies in years to come.

At the core of both cases is the Supreme Court’s Chevron doctrine, which refers to how courts are to review an agency’s interpretation of a statute that it administers.  Under the test of Chevron v. Natural Resources Def. Council, if an agency’s construction of an ambiguous statute is deemed to be reasonable, a court defers to the agency’s construction—even if the court believes the agency’s construction was not the best reading of the statute. 

Over the last four decades, Chevron deference has faced criticism from those who argue that it is the role of courts, not federal agencies, to say what the law means.  Arguing on Wednesday in support of overturning Chevron, counsel for Loper Bright argued that the Court should instead simply ask one question: “What is the best reading of the statute?”Continue Reading Supreme Court Tackles Chevron And Could Change How Agencies Regulate The Health Care Industry