By a 6-3 vote at the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1984 Chevron decision — and in doing so, reined in federal agencies’ unchecked power to make law without congressional oversight.
Many pundits and legal experts in the media seemed not to focus on the fact that much administrative power still remains in the federal bureaucracies post Chevron. This monumental decision solves a portion of the problem by removing the judicial or "deference" portion of agencies' power to interpret their own laws.
However, they still have the self-granted power to usurp the legislative role of Congress and make laws, rules, and regulations that Congress itself should be doing.
This new situation may be setting up a game of Whac-A-Mole. Can the courts act fast enough to uphold or strike down overreaching, vague, or unconstitutional regulations and administrative laws the agencies will continue to crank out?
Under Chevron for the last 40 years, the courts have deferred vague or unclear rules to the issuing agency to interpret and decide their own agency powers. That's no way to run a government that is supposed to be managed by elected officials who are accountable to the voters!
Our freedoms and economy will continue to suffer under an avalanche of unnecessary rules and regulations. There are way too many agencies with career bureaucrats pushing out proclamations that too often are to justify their existence or to fulfill ideological goals. Reversal of the Chevron deference doctrine was a great first step toward deconstructing the administrative fourth branch of the federal government.
However, there's more that can and should be done to right-size our bloated federal government, including having state legislatures call a Convention of States to reclaim the rightful powers of states under Article V of our US Constitution.
In a June 2024 poll of likely registered Ohio voters by the Susquehanna Polling and Research firm, 76% of representative Ohioans supported calling for a Convention of States to limit the power and scope of the federal government.
So far, 19 states have already made that call for a state amending convention, with 15 more needed to reach the 34-state threshold for calling a 50 state convention for proposing constitutional amendments. It is time for the Ohio legislature to join those other 19 states in calling for a convention.
For more about Convention of States or to find out how you can get involved, please visit: www.conventionofstates.com.
