Principal John Cruden (Washington, DC) recently spoke on an episode of Environmental Law Explored: A Podcast SEERies, hosted by the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources. In the episode, he weighed in on the impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo and discusses the implications for future administrative law cases.

John discussed how the Loper Bright decision overruled the prior Chevron deference, which required federal courts to defer to administrative agencies’ interpretations of their governing statutes in cases where those statutes were ambiguous. John explained that this shift could lead to more judicial intervention in agency decisions, put more pressure on agencies to justify their regulations, and spur increased litigation.

He also touched on the broader implications for the balance of power between the judiciary and federal agencies. He advised that Loper Bright, and other major decisions of this term, give the judiciary more power, potentially reopen prior regulatory decisions, and narrow the authority of administrative law judges.

For more than two decades, John served as a senior leader on environment and natural resource matters at DOJ, where he supervised some of the department’s most significant litigation. As the Senate-confirmed, Assistant Attorney General at the Environment and Natural Resources Division, John worked on the most high-profile environment cases, and personally negotiated the multi-billion-dollar resolutions of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Volkswagen emissions scandal. In addition, John is the former President of the Environmental Law Institute, the former President of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and the former Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources.

B&D’s litigators pursue major environmental cases nationwide, including in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the firm 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 San Francisco. For a full analysis of the recent major Supreme Court decisions, and links to the decisions, read the firm’s commentary in Implications of Recent Supreme Court Decisions on Administrative, Environmental, and Natural Resources Law.