Case over fishing law could hamstring the SEC and DOL

investmentnews.com:

A case before the Supreme Court over an obscure fishing regulation could be devastating to the SEC’s ability to make new regulations and enforce the ones already on its books.

Last week, the high court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging a federal regulation that requires fishing-boat operators to pay the costs of observers who ensure that they are complying with the law. The implications of the pending decisions could be severe for federal agencies, as the cases essentially challenge a 40-year-old court ruling that has set the basis for how civil servants interpret the law.

That is known as the Chevron deference, which essentially means that courts defer to federal agencies in their interpretations of broad or unclear language in the laws passed by Congress. That leeway has allowed regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Labor to implement rules that keep up with times. But over the past several years, opponents of the Chevron deference have criticized it as permitting an “administrative state” in which unelected officials have too much control.

Several of the Supreme Court’s majority conservative justices alluded to their positions on Chevron during oral arguments, hinting that the long-standing doctrine will be limited, if not overturned.

“I don’t know if it’s a foregone conclusion,” said Kurt Wolfe, of counsel at law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. That’s because the court declined to overturn Chevron in two other cases that called it into question, he noted.

“The impact on the SEC will depend very much on the outcome of the case. There have been a number of [cases] over the last few years where the media and the bar expected the court to potentially overturn or at