In a major 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court has finally addressed the expansive regulatory use of executive agencies to create law through interpretation. The 40-year-old Chevron ruling granted the executive agencies of government the ability to interpret laws and apply restrictions/regulations based on their own rules and definitions therein.
The Supreme Court put the judicial branch back into the equation by ruling that courts will decide what laws apply when the legislation is ambiguous on detail. This shift in prior precedent could have major ramifications. [MORE AT SCOTUS BLOG]
In another big case, the court ruled in favor of Joseph Fischer a Pennsylvania police officer charged in the January 6th protest with “obstructing an official proceeding.” [FULL RULING HERE]
The law at the center of Fischer’s case is 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), and as noted by Julie Kelly, “The statute … has been applied in roughly 350 J6 cases; it also represents two of four counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Washington.”
Julie Kelly – […] In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the “c2” subsection is tethered to the “c1” subsection that addresses tampering with a record, document, or “object.”
Roberts was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the dissent (!) joined by Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.