Ron DeSantis hails SCOTUS switch on Chevron deference

Florida’s Governor isn’t holding back when it comes to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a four-decade-old principle that he says “really empowered the administrative state.”

The conservative court sided with Atlantic herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island who challenged fees imposed to pay to have their catches tracked, in accordance with a National Marine Fisheries Service rule passed during the Donald Trump administration. In the process, the court satisfied a long-standing conservative wish list item.

Gov. Ron DeSantis argues that “the long and short of it is … who ultimately governs our society.”

“And the outcry on the left over the repeal of Chevron or the overruling of Chevron really shows how they view society. And those of us who welcome the decision to overrule Chevron, we believe in a conception of government that our Founding Fathers envisioned,” DeSantis said at Pensacola State College.

Indeed, the high court overruled lower court decisions in the cases that were rooted in the idea that Chevron deference, and the wide berth it gives unaccountable federal agencies, was settled law.

“There’s a lot of things that this big powerful bureaucracy can do,” DeSantis said.

“The question is: If they’re coming at you and they’re wrong on the law, do you have an ability to go in the court and have the court say, ‘You know what? You’re right on the law,’ and rule for you and give you relief? Or do you do this Chevron deference, which says, ‘Well, it doesn’t really matter if you’re actually right on the law, we are going to defer to what these experts in the bureaucracy think the law means’?”

He added that the decision “puts on a better foundation the separation of powers,” giving people standing to challenge federal agencies in court on the merit of the law.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.