https://www.lsta.org/news-resources/the-supreme-court-a-bad…

July 9, 2024 - In the waning days of its recent term, the Supreme Court released three critical decisions each of which is important in a different way. Taken together, the decisions will profoundly reduce the power of the federal administrative agencies.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court overturned the “Chevron Doctrine” which required courts to defer to “permissible” agency interpretations of the statutes those agencies administer.
Willkie notes that the Loper Bright majority concludes that Chevron “cannot be squared with the constitutional assignment of responsibility for declaring what the law is to the judiciary or with the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (the “APA”). Thus, instead of deferring to an agency’s reading of an ambiguous statute so long as it is “permissible,” a reviewing court must now use every tool at its disposal to determine the “best” meaning of the statute and resolve the ambiguity itself.” The Court also concluded that the APA itself does not anticipate deference to the agencies’ statutory constructions. Ultimately, the Court ruled that courts–not agencies–are to decide relevant questions of law and interpret statutory provisions.
In SEC v. Jarkesy, the Court that when the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles a defendant to a jury trial and the SEC cannot try such a defendant through its own, in-house, administrative proceeding. According to a recent memo from Skadden, “[d]eciding that a defendant is entitled to a jury trial when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud violations was “straightforward,” according to the Court. The Seventh Amendment guarantees ‘the right of trial by jury’ in ‘[s]uits at common law.’ That means there is a right to a jury trial in all suits not based in ‘equity or admiralty jurisdiction.’ When it comes to statutory claims, the Seventh Amendment guarantees a trial by jury when the claim is legal as opposed to equitable…