The Supreme Court may not have delivered the opinion that gun owners were hoping for in the Rahimi case, but on Friday the justices gave Second Amendment advocates new ammunition to use in their fights against the ATF’s rulemaking abuses by overturning the Chevron Doctrine.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, et al, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority that the doctrine, which requires courts to defer to federal agencies so long as they offered “a permissible construction” of a challenged statute even if it was not “the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding,” is no longer operative.
Instead, the majority held that “The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”
That’s very good news for the folks who are challenging the ATF’s rules on unfinished frames and receivers, pistol stabilizing braces, and who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms.