Deference or Preference: Analyzing the Treatment of Chevron U.S.A., INC. v. NRDC as a Precedent at the Supreme Court

Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. is one of the most cited Supreme Court cases in history, with over 18,000 citations in federal courts alone (Merrill, 2012). It has reached doctrinal status and was widely considered a vital precedent, one that guided the fields of environmental and administrative law. However, in June of 2024, the Supreme Court released their opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned Chevron. With the ubiquity of Chevron in US Courts, this decision caused widespread confusion and worry over what would replace the precedent. In an era where environmental policy is run by executive agencies, the answer to this question is vital to the future of conservation efforts in the US. In this paper, I examine the treatment of Chevron as a precedent in environmental Supreme Court opinions over time to determine what led to its overturn. In doing so, I discovered that Chevron has been plagued by controversy since its inception, and that it may not have ever constrained justice behavior. Further, the attitudes that led to Chevron’s overturn closely follow the ideological realignment of the court in the past twenty years.