Government Part 2

Continued from Vol 1, Issue 2

The “Purpose” of Government in the United States having been established in the previous issue, this article will address how we reached the point of being servants to government rather than gov

ernment serving us to secure our rights?

That story is a long and sad saga. Many rights reserved for The People have been stolen from us. Some in the dark-of-night, some in the full light of day and some while the people were celebrating favorite holidays. As most of these abridgments are semi-ancient history, we will focus on some of the most recent.

With any deconstruction project, where the desire is to preserve the foundation, it is required to carefully remove the unwanted parts. It is logical to start this process with the most recently added parts on top. That process took a very significant step in the last week of June, 2024.

June 29, 2024: In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) over- ruled the 1984 case Chevron vs. Natural Resources, which became known as Chevron deference. Chevron deference requires courts to defer to experts from government agencies, such as the IRS, FBI, CIA, FDA, BATF, CDC, HHS, and NIH, to interpret the ‘ambiguities of the laws’ that govern those agencies and the corporations and public policies they regulate.

In Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, he wrote; “Chevron deference was ‘not a harmless transfer of power.’ The Constitution carefully imposes structural constraints on all three branches, and the exercise of power free of those accompanying restraints subverts the design of the Constitution’s ratifiers,’

In particular, the Founders envisioned that “the courts would check the Executive by applying the correct interpretation of the law.”

Chevron was thus a fundamental disruption of our separation of powers. It improperly strips courts of judicial power by simultaneously increasing the power of executive agencies. By overruling Chevron, we restore this aspect of our separation of powers. To safeguard individual liberty, “structure is everything.”

Although the Court finally ends our 40-year misadventure with Chevron deference, its more profound problems should not be overlooked. Regardless of what a statute says, the type of deference required by Chevron violates the Constitution.

This ruling is a HUGE step in reining in an out-of-control regulatory branch of unconstitutional government powers. SCOTUS should be applauded.