Bullard Center Statement on the US Supreme Court Chevron Decision

The overturning of the “Chevron Doctrine” by the Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce is a serious setback for environmental, climate, healthcare, consumer protection and a host of other areas Americans have relied upon with decades of legal precedent, science, facts and experts to guide decision-making.  This Supreme Court ruling in effect undercut deference to federal agencies to interpret laws and shifted the power to judges to interpret. This move reverses the idea that experts in science and policy at government agencies should be considered an authority in contentious legal decisions, and instead places those decisions at the feet of the judges only. 

“The Supreme Court Chevron ruling turns the clock backward four decades.  It is a recipe for disaster that will hurt our most vulnerable people and places first, worst and longest,” states Dr. Robert D. Bullard, Director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University. “We’ve documented these disproportionate impacts with science, research, data and facts over the past 40-plus years. This wrong-headed court decision will likely worsen pollution and exacerbate existing and future environmental, climate, health, economic and consumer safety disparities in our nation’s most vulnerable populations and communities,” says Bullard, who is often called the “father of environmental justice.”

At a time when the federal government has committed to rebalancing the scales to achieve environmental and climate justice and allocated substantial resources to back it up, the Supreme Court has just undone 40 years worth of reason and defense of people’s rights and livelihoods. Today, there is little doubt the Supreme Court has shifted far right. We can only hope the tide will turn toward “justice for all” once again soon. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in a speech given at the National Cathedral in March 1968, “we shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

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Photo Credit: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States