To: Associate. From: Supervising attorney. Re: Coastline Fishing Co. and the monitoring rule.
Our client, Coastline Fishing Co., runs two boats in a federally managed fishery. A new federal rule requires vessels in that fishery to pay part of the cost of the electronic monitoring equipment the agency may require them to carry. The agency relies on a provision of the federal fisheries statute that does not say who pays for monitoring. Coastline and the client company are invented for this exercise.
Coastline wants to know whether a court would defer to the agency's reading of the statute if it sued. Please write the Discussion section of a short memo answering that question. Use only the authorities in the library, and give each citation in the form The Citation Code gives for a memo.
Aim for three or four paragraphs. Answer the question in your first sentence.
The client and its rule are invented. The facts about the cases come from the public record of Chevron and Loper Bright.
Library
Each citation is in the book's form. Pinpoints and history are yours to add.
Chevron (1984)
Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984).
Pages 842–43 set out a two-step framework. A court first asked whether Congress had spoken directly to the question; if the statute was silent or ambiguous, the court accepted the agency's reading if it was a permissible one.
Later treatment: overruled by Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 412 (2024).
Loper Bright (2024)
Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).
Page 412: the Court overrules Chevron. On the same page it says that courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and that a court may not defer to an agency's reading simply because a statute is ambiguous.
Page 413: the Court's opinion ends and Justice Thomas's concurring opinion begins. He adds that Chevron deference also offends the separation of powers.
Loper Bright in the D.C. Circuit (2022)
Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 45 F.4th 359 (D.C. Cir. 2022), vacated, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).
The D.C. Circuit upheld a federal rule that required some herring vessels to pay for the observers the agency could require them to carry, deferring to the agency's reading of the fisheries statute under Chevron.
The Supreme Court vacated that judgment in the decision that overruled Chevron; the history phrase vacated tells the reader so.
Self-review
Read your draft against each line and tick it when it holds. 0 of 6 ticked; the ticks stay in this browser.
Your first sentence says the court will not defer to the agency's reading and will decide the statute's meaning itself.
If not: If the answer comes later, move it to the top and let the rest of the section prove it.
Chevron's full citation, with the pinpoint 842–43, ends with overruled by and Loper Bright's full citation.
If not: A reader who sees Chevron without its treatment may rely on a framework that no longer governs. Add it.
412 for the overruling and the independent-judgment rule, 413 for the concurrence, 842–43 for the two steps.
If not: Find each citation that supports a specific statement and add the page.
Each Id. points to the one case cited just before it. After another case intervenes, you return with Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 412.
If not: Read each Id. upward: if you cross another authority, switch to the short form.
The citation to page 413 ends with (Thomas, J., concurring).
If not: Add the author and role whenever the words are not the Court's.
The D.C. Circuit citation ends with vacated, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).
If not: A decision vacated in its own case must say so. Add the history phrase and the Supreme Court's citation.
Write your own first: the model is one good answer, not the only one.
A court would not defer to the agency's reading of the statute. It would decide for itself what the fisheries statute means.
For forty years, a court reviewing an agency's reading of a statute the agency administered asked two questions: whether Congress had spoken directly to the issue and, if it had not, whether the agency's answer was a permissible one. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842–43 (1984), overruled by Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 412 (2024). The Supreme Court overruled that framework in 2024 and held that courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority; a statute's ambiguity is no longer a reason to defer. Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 412. Justice Thomas added that Chevron deference also offended the separation of powers. Id. at 413 (Thomas, J., concurring).
The case that produced that holding involved a rule much like the one Coastline faces. The D.C. Circuit had upheld a rule requiring some herring vessels to pay for federal observers, deferring to the agency's reading of the fisheries statute, and the Supreme Court vacated that judgment. Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 45 F.4th 359 (D.C. Cir. 2022), vacated, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).
If Coastline sues, then, the court will read the statute's provision on monitoring itself, with the ordinary tools of interpretation, and will not accept the agency's reading because the statute is silent on who pays. Whether the rule survives will turn on the court's own best reading of that provision.
Write the discussion section of a short office memo on the standard a federal court now applies to an agency's reading of a statute.
Write in the box below. Italicize case names with the I button. When you are ready, check your citations, then compare your draft with the self-review list and the model answer in the task file.
Discussion
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Office memo: does the court defer to the agency? — The Citation Code