The New York Times asked some public health advocates and legal experts what effect the Supreme Court’s repeal of the so-called Chevron Doctrine would have on public health. Apparently, the end of the Chevron Doctrine will hasten the End of the World!
“We anticipate that today’s ruling will cause significant disruption to publicly funded health insurance programs, to the stability of this country’s health care and food and drug review systems, and to the health and well-being of the patients and consumers we serve,” several of the nation’s largest health organizations, including the American Public Health Association and the American Cancer Society, said in a joint statement on Friday.
One has to wonder how the World got by before the Chevron Doctrine came about in the mid-1980s. It must have been the Dark Ages before regulatory overreach. Advocates told the New York Times:
Consumer advocates are calling the decision a travesty that could upend the rules and regulations Americans depend upon for their safety.Federal officials will feel a “chilling effect” that will slow regulations in areas in which they do not have explicit authority…
Do they mean like whether Americans should be allowed to buy gas stoves? Or were consumer advocates worried that our dishwashers and clothes washers would be allowed to wash too quickly and clean too effectively for federal bureaucrats’ comfort? You have to admit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has done a pretty good job of keep Americans safe from the superior European and Asian sunscreen products that are not available in the U.S. thanks to the FDA. As an aside, I have long maintained that most so-called consumer advocates don’t seem to care about what consumers want. Consumer advocates were long opposed to health savings accounts too.
Courts have already “chipped away at the authority of regulatory bodies to make public health decisions,” according to the New York Times. Some recent examples of the type of policies that the Supreme Court put an end to:
In November 2021, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction that barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from enforcing a national moratorium on evictions from rental housing, despite fears that a wave of such displacements would exacerbate the spread of Covid-19.
November of 2021 was more than a year after Covid peaked and began to decline. Why did the CDC even have the authority to issue a nationwide ban on evictions? Let’s assume your rent is $2,000 a month. Eighteen months later you’ve been relieved of paying $36,000. Shouldn’t that be considered a takings for a public purpose? In addition, I find it hard to believe the eviction moratorium was really about public health, rather than a political move to buy votes. More from the New York Times.
In January 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration could not require large businesses to vaccinate their employees against Covid.
I’m not a vaccine skeptic but making private businesses force employees to accept vaccines as a condition of employment seems rather undemocratic.
In April 2022, a federal judge in Florida struck down a C.D.C. mandate that required passengers to wear masks on public buses, trains and planes.
I have less of an issue with requiring masks on public transportation. Masks are mostly just an annoyance. Public transportation is regulated for passenger safety. I flew to Costa Rica and back in July of 2021. The mask was uncomfortable, but I also recognized that I was in a pressurized aluminum tube with 200 other people for five hours, all breathing the same air that was just being recirculated. Also, April 2022 was two years after Covid peaked in April 2020. Another expert had this to say:
Instead of hiring more scientific and technological experts, federal agencies will have to arm themselves with lawyers, she predicted.
Perhaps those staff attorneys will provide some guidance about when the law is ambiguous, and when the agency lacks the legal authority.
I have to question whether Chevron was a policy debate, an ideological divide; was it about agency expertise or was it really about agency prerogatives? If Congress was silent on a topic, does that make the law ambiguous? Or does it mean Congress never really intended to give explicit authority? I don’t think the Chevron Doctrine began to bother Republicans until it became a tool for regulatory overreach. Over the 40-year period after Chevron regulatory agencies began to feel emboldened and began to view their own agendas as legitimate. There likely will be some chaos. However, I tend to think bureaucratic agencies brought it on themselves.
Also see, Competitive Enterprise Institute: A Big Win for Representative Government