Principal Loren Dunn (Seattle) spoke with Bloomberg Law on the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Chevron deference and its impacts on environmental law in, “Overturned Chevron Sets up Steeper Courtroom Hurdles for EPA.”

Loren said that overturning Chevron, “may not have immediate effects, but will lead to a sea change in the coming years.” He noted that the decision “may spur regulators to take twice the time to craft proposals, weigh comments, and then finalize rules that are rooted in environmental authority that haven’t been updated meaningfully in decades.”

Loren explained that from a “how we govern ourselves” standpoint, “there are very few matters that are of as great significance” as Chevron.

For new rules on more novel issues, Loren said that there may be a “slower regulatory process,” and that it will be “more challenging for agencies to start up regulatory activity in areas where they have not done much previously, even if it is an area that, at least arguably, there is authorization to pursue.”

Bloomberg Law used EPA’s finalized oil and gas methane emission rule, which is thousands of pages long, as an example of what new rules may look like in a post-Chevron world.

The now-overturned Chevron doctrine required federal courts to defer to administrative agencies’ interpretations of their governing statutes in cases where those statutes are ambiguous.

B&D’s litigators are actively involved in cases in courts nationwide, including the U.S. Supreme Court, where we recently secured a victory for a natural gas pipeline client in Ohio v. EPA relating to the CAA and are preparing to argue a CWA case in the Court’s upcoming fall term for the City and County of San Francisco.