18622_Authority_August_Web

municipalauthorities.org | 23 overview of reCent environMental law Cases By Steven A. Hann, Esq., PMAA Solicitor East, Hamburg, Rubin, Mullin, Maxwell & Lupin PC The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a brief synopsis of recent environmental and administrative law cases that may be of interest to those in local government. Included in this article are three cases from the United States Supreme Court and a fourth case from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Perhaps no other case in recent memory has impacted environmental and administrative law at the federal level more than the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (“Loper Bright”) . This case, decided in 2024, addressed the long-standing “Chevron deference” doctrine utilized by courts to address situations where a federal agency interprets a statute that the agency administers (such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) administration of the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act) where the statute is silent or ambiguous on a specific issue. The genesis of the “Chevron deference” doctrine was a 1984 case involving a challenge to an EPA regulation that permitted multiple sources of air pollution at a facility to be treated as one source of air pollution for permitting purposes. Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984). This regulatory scheme is commonly known as the “bubble concept.” In this case, the Natural Resources Defense Council challenged EPA’s regulatory scheme in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”), which ultimately invalidated EPA’s regulations that incorporated the “bubble concept.” The case was subsequently appealed to the United States Supreme Court which, in a monumental decision that guided judicial review in environmental and administrative law cases for forty (40) years, set forth a two-part test for courts to utilize in cases where an agency’s interpretation of a law is challenged. The aforementioned test begins with the inquiry of whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If Congress did not speak to the precise question at issue, and the applicable statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific question at issue, the Supreme Court held that “the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” Arguably, the standard set forth by the Supreme Court in Chevron afforded considerable deference to federal agencies. In the years following the Supreme Court’s decision in Chevron , the Chevron deference doctrine became a focal point in federal environmental and administrative law litigation. Although a number of decisions following Chevron arguably chiseled away at the Chevron deference doctrine, it was not until 2024 that the Supreme Court, in Loper Bright , definitively overturned Chevron . The Loper Bright case involved the interpretation of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. A number of fishing boat operators challenged the power of the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) to require the boat operators to pay for observers to monitor the fishing practices of their boats. The boat operators challenged the NMFS regulation requiring that their fishing practices be monitored as going beyond agency authority. The Supreme Court arguably agreed to hear this case in order to address Chevron . On appeal from the D.C. Circuit, the Supreme Court overruled Chevron , holding that, “[c]ourts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedure Act] requires.” Moreover, according to the Supreme Court’s opinion, courts may not defer to agency interpretation simply because a law is ambiguous. Continued on page 53.