Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In 1984, in a seemingly innocent decision, the Supreme Court consolidated all three branches of government into one branch, the executive branch.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: And they did that through something we now know and has been in the news quite a bit lately as the Chevron deference doctrine.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Chevron deference. Chevron doctrine. Chevron deference doctrine. And you'll hear it called many different things, but it's in the news right now.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: And being that it was in the news, like hot, hot item, top of the list on all of our news feeds, we kind of just were wondering, wait, what is this? What are they talking about? Because I don't know if I really remember this from a civics class.
[00:00:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Or government from my senior year in high school. I'm not sure that got covered in that six months.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: And so I ended up doing a little bit of research and writing a blog on it and got the question, if the Supreme Court overturns the chevron doctrine, what does that mean for your farm?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: We don't know. We didn't know the answer, so we had to go looking. Here we go. How does it apply? So what is it? What is the Chevron deference doctrine? Actually.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: In simple terms, what it means is that Congress often passes laws that are ambiguous and all of the details can't be contained in the law. So what it allows for is government agencies to then fill in those details with regulation.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: And it seems like that kind of makes a little bit of sense because the government agency, they're the experts on the matter. Whatever the thing is, they're the experts. So whenever they deferred it to them, they were trying to put the rules and the regulations into the hands of the experts.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: The only thing I would say is they're the seeming experts. One would hope that they are the experts.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: I don't know that that's always true.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: And deference, the word deference, specifically in law means what exactly the actual word. What is the definition of deference? So what is happening?
[00:02:17] Speaker A: What did they do when a judge claims or decides on deference, that judge is deferring to someone else's authority or power. So they're saying somebody else has already said something about this and so I'm not going to do anything about it.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Okay. And in law, that's required.
If there has been a precedent for that.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: The lower courts have to follow it.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: So what happened in this case?
So to continue as the agencies, then fill in the laws, if you will, with different regulations, because Congress doesn't think of each specific detail as they write the laws. So the executive branch of government now appoints the agency heads, and the agencies then fill in the laws with all of the different regulations. So, okay, then the agencies are the ones that also enforce those regulations.
The Chevron doctrine, or Chevron deference, comes.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: In then from a court case specific.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Yes.
The company Chevron in 1984 ended up in the Supreme Court with a government agency trying to figure out who interprets these laws. What the Supreme Court decided was in cases like this, where there's ambiguity in the law coming down from Congress, that they will rely on the experts in the agencies to know the details about the law. And so the judges, the court systems, will defer to the agencies anytime that there's a conflict or an indecision between an individual or a company and the agency. So the courts basically just hand over the decision back to the agency.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Okay, so it's kind of complicated. Can we break this down? Let's use an analogy of some sort in order to break this down, because it just gets a little bit muddled because we're talking about government. Government. And they're all government. Now, we all understand, or we should understand that there are three different branches of government. We have an executive branch of which the agencies belong to because they are appointed by the president. So they are underneath the executive branch. We have the legislative branch, which is Congress. They write the laws. As vague as they may be, they do write them. And then we have the judicial branch, and they're the ones that are supposed to determine what is applied and what isn't, correct? Yeah. Simply put. Okay.
They make judgments.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Sure. Okay.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: So an analogy, let's use the NFL.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:05:19] Speaker B: NFL. Football.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Football.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Football. It's football season. We're in the playoffs. Let's talk about some football. Okay. So we have players, we have referees, and we have.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: You could say the NFL.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: The NFL at large, the commissioner, the big kahunas.
So the players play the game. That's it. That's all they do is play the game. And the best thing that they can do is follow the rules.
[00:05:50] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: They know the rules and they need.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: To follow them well, okay.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Or else they get penalties.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: And they get flags thrown on them.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: By the referees. Now, for this particular analogy, let's just pretend that the referees make the rules.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Well, the referees would be like the agencies.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Okay? So they.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Government agencies.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Let's just say they make the rules and they enforce the rules.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: So NFL says, here's the game of football.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:06:21] Speaker A: And then they broadly define the game. You need two teams and you need to score points and play fair. That would be Congress writing a law. Okay, so the NFL broadly says, here's the game now that is then handed over to the referees. And now the referees make the rules.
You can't hold, you can't be offsides, you can't interfere if they're trying to receive a pass.
All of the rules now are filled in. The referees now fill in that broad game.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: And so the referees are making the regulations.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Then the referees enforce the regulations.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: So they're the ones throwing the flags.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: That's right. On the regulations.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: You're offsides and you're pass interference and you're holding. And you're holding.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Okay. But then they also, after they throw that flag, they say, what's the penalty?
[00:07:28] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Back them up.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Half distance to the goal, all the things.
So at this point, the referee has decided what the rule is.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: They have decided if the rule has been broken.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: And they have penalized the rule, they have enforced the rule and penalized the player.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: At this point, the player has had no say.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: I did not do that.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Doesn't matter.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: I did not hold him. Let's go back and watch the play again. I did not hold him.
[00:08:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Sorry.
You have no say in any of it.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Just take it in this analogy, then what Chevron deference is, is like if the coach throws the red flag, and I want a review on this. Okay, well, then it goes to, in our analogy, let's say it goes to the big referee.
And the big referee says, yeah, the law was actually written. The game that was handed down from the NFL. Just know, play the game. Two teams, whatever.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: The referees are the experts.
So if the referees say, you broke the rules, then I'm just going to.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Defer to the referees every single time.
[00:08:55] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Now there's an if. As long as the referees aren't being unreasonable, like, if it's unreasonable, whatever their penalty was, then the big referee in the sky might say, okay, that was unreasonable.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Outside of that, every single time they would say, we're going to go with.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: The referee, we defer to the referee. They're the expert.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Okay. I think they get a couple of challenge flags per half now. And they can say if it's egregious and they really think that it was just a bad call, they can throw the challenge flag and say, hey.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Let'S.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Talk about this and review it. I would like to appeal what you just said.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: And it goes to a review booth.
[00:09:44] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: And the review booth in this analogy would be a court system, correct, to say, hey, let's talk about this.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Right?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: And so at that point, if there is no Chevron deference doctrine, that review Booth can say, no, we're overturning that. That player didn't actually do that. That's a bad call on that referee.
[00:10:12] Speaker C: That's correct.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: So it adds accountability.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Okay.
Now that we've explained it through an analogy, let's go back to what's happening within the agencies and how that's going to affect us or could or could not affect us.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: It's in the news right now because some fishermen and some specific boats are challenging a government agency, and it has made its way all the way to the Supreme Court. And for 40 years, almost the courts have just deferred to the agencies as a result of this 1984 case.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: And in these two particular cases that are in the news this week, the lower courts deferred, just like always, to the agencies, and it has made its way up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court is now hearing these two cases. The bottom line gist of the cases is that the government agency says you have to have somebody watch you when you catch your fish, and it has to be one of our employees, and you have to pay for that employee to be on your boat. So you have to be governed while you're fishing, and you have to pay for the person to be on the boat to govern you. And it's about $700 a day is what it says. And that is somewhere around 20% of the profits, normally, that they would make catching herring. So that's sort of the background of the case. And the reason it's even, I don't know, interesting right now is that it appeared while they were hearing the case that a majority of the judges might be in favor of doing something different.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: So there is potential, at least, for overturning the Chevron doctrine.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Now, it's going to be a few.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Months, summer, but it is all really good conversation between now and then, right over in the event that they do overturn the 1984 ruling, what is that going to mean for people, citizens across the board and people who are really regulated by these different agencies?
[00:12:29] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:32] Speaker B: We are regulated by the USDA. We farm and we grow food and we sell eggs in June or July. I can't remember which month it was. About this summer, I hear somebody running down the. Rolling down the driveway, and I look out, I'm in the kitchen, I look out the window, and there's somebody outside. And I'm like, somebody's here. But people come here often to pick up some things. And I look out and it's a white van and there's something on the side of the door. And I looked at it and I recognized it and like, ah, USDA is here unannounced.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: And why?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: And why, why are you here? Because nobody really wants any government agency just popping in. I don't.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: But that's what we subject ourselves to. And so I walked out and kindly greeted the man before he even got out of his car and just kind of stood there and chatted with him for a bit while he was still in his car.
He was here to see about our egg production. And I promptly told him at that point, it was too hot. We didn't have any eggs at all, really. And he thought that we could have had 30,000 worth because of the type of license that we had.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: And so he was here to check on that. And it was a nothing visit.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: It was.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: It was completely nothing. He filled out his little form or whatever. No eggs, basically, don't come back.
But it sets your stomach when an agency shows up because they have so much power.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: All three branches of the government are now consolidated with this. So the executive branch, currently, the way it's currently operating, the executive branch appoints.
And then now the agencies are built under the executive branch. The legislative branch has said, here's a crappy law that doesn't have the details that it needs. So you fill in all of the details. So now they're actually writing the laws. And then the judicial branch says, I defer to you because you're the expert.
And so all three branches of the government now are contained inside these agencies.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: There's zero balance of power. It's all consolidated in one within the agencies. That's right.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Which was not the idea of the founding fathers as they were building this nation. And the government, the people, the governed, were not going to have to be under one rule. It wasn't a king. Right. We had branches of the government, and we balanced the power amongst those branches so that you didn't end up with a king, with a monarch or queen.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: And so the whole idea with this style of government was that you would balance the power across the different branches. Branches of government.
In this case, that has gone away.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: There are lots of industries that fall underneath specific agencies. And those industries, whether it's food safety, forestry, just landowners, we're all affected because we own land.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: The Environmental Protection Agency at any point can say that is a wetland habitat, and it now belongs to us, and you can't do something with it.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: That's just like the most helpless feeling.
[00:16:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Okay. If this thing goes away, that sounds like the wild, wild west, then that's.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Exactly what the opponents or the people that love the chevron doctrine, the people that want it to stay, that's exactly what they're saying. They're saying if this goes away, you're going to have courts all over the nation making decisions on something, and you might decide one thing and I decide something else. And neither of us are the experts, okay?
[00:16:57] Speaker B: But the courts are there to judge based on the written law, and that means Congress is going to have to get their crap together and start writing better laws, being far more clear whenever they have an idea in their mind and they want to take that idea and add some coherent regulation. I am all for regulation. That's fine. To a degree. To a degree.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: What you're saying is you don't want to live in anarchy.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: No, I don't want to live in anarchy.
[00:17:28] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Absolutely not.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Some rules are. I think they're appropriate.
[00:17:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: And let's all know the rules and follow the rules. But whenever the rules are written, they need to be written in such a way that any person making a judgment on it can make the same judgment.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: So Congress is going to have to do better.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Well, they're the law writers.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: No, you're absolutely right.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: And some rules and some regulations are fine. And let the agencies write them. Let them add to it. That's fine, but we need accountability.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: How can we gain accountability?
[00:18:17] Speaker A: What this would change is that Congress would still write the laws, probably still write crappy laws, the agencies would still fill in all of the holes and the blanks left with all of their regulations.
Were this to go away, the difference would be that a court could say, nah, that's not what Congress meant, which.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Is what they do with the constitution.
[00:18:45] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: They apply it, but currently they're not even allowed because of. Because of this Supreme Court precedent that is set that says you have to defer to the experts. So if this goes away, it would allow the courts, they would now have the opportunity to say, that's not what Congress meant.
And so there would be some, at least checks and balance on these government agencies.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: So what implications is it going to have on farmers?
[00:19:19] Speaker A: I don't know. For us specifically, I thought about it, and I can't really come up with what exactly would change for us other than were we to start getting into legal issues. If we started getting into trouble. If we started, which we try really.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Hard not to do, but, I mean.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: If we got sideways with one of the agencies, which happens. Right. If we ended up getting sideways with one of the agencies, then this could potentially give us the opportunity to be heard by a judge without the judge just saying, they're the experts.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: You can't win this.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: The people that write the laws and enforce the laws are now going to penalize you.
And I can't do anything about it because they're the experts.
[00:20:09] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: So we would be in favor of such a thing as having hope within the legal system.
[00:20:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: For me, I believe that this thing should go away, and I think that we can overcome the wild, wild west.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: It'll take a minute, but you know what?
I don't see it. Like, some big thing is going to change. The rules and the regulations are all still there.
Everything is still in place as is. All we're doing is adding a booth.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Some of the things that, if you research it, some of the things that you will see is they're worried about past cases coming back up. And does this reopen all of the things over the past 40 years where the courts have just deferred? Are those things then able to be reopened? That's something that the Supreme Court would probably have to address.
As they're making their written ruling, ruling opinion on this case, they're saying that they will probably have to address what has happened in the past. So that's something that would absolutely need to be done.
I don't know, the Wild west.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Maybe for a minute until things are worked out. But the way that it is.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: It'S.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: So hopeless and helpless for people when, if they do get wrapped up with an agency, whether it's the EPA or the USDA or whatever, like one of.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: The judges that is in favor of the chevron deference says that they don't want some judge somewhere deciding on whether or not this is a supplement or a drug because judges don't know that kind of thing. The experts do.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Oh, like with the FDA.
[00:22:11] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: So the FDA needs to be the ones making that kind of ruling, not a judge.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Got it.
Well, they've all got big brains. Surely they can figure out how to.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Work this out, right? And maybe they could say, I don't know, let's go to a higher court, or, I don't know, I will defer to the FDA.
[00:22:39] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Generally, whenever things go to court, aren't there oftentimes experts brought.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: In the. In the name of. We don't want this to be the wild, Wild west. Everything is consolidated under one branch.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Not fair. Not fair to the people. That is not fair to the people.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: We could say that with the entire government.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: If we just had a monarch, we wouldn't have all of this fussing and fighting and gridlock.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Gridlock. Which gridlock is not a bad thing.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: It was part of the design.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: It should be a real struggle.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: A real struggle in order to change.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: To change something significant.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: It should be an absolute, really difficult thing to change.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: That's the way it was designed.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Right.
The way it is currently. It's basically just agencies. Are the monarchs.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Yes, they are.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: You want to know who rules the place?
[00:23:45] Speaker A: The agencies. They have all of the power.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: They have all of the power.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: And not even with the chevron deference doctrine, not even the judges, not even the court system.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Can come against that.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Totally against it. I think it should absolutely. Go away.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Go away. Okay, well, we'll keep an eye on it and continue to watch what's happening. And if we see something new come out, maybe we'll chat about it again.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we should keep it on the docket.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll keep it on the docket. Yes, for sure. All right, well, this has been fun.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: All right. And hey, guys, if you're enjoying these videos, make sure to subscribe, hit like and share with your friends and family. And until next time. Bye, y'all.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Bye, y'all.
