I think it is important to note that the legal principle that allows the FCC to make rulings like this is called Chevron Deference, and many consider it to be under attack.
This thread wildly misunderstands "chevron deference". "Ending chevron deference" does not somehow throw us into a Mad Max anarchic hellscape where agencies cannot actually do anything, because there is always some standard for what administrative rulemaking is permissible. There is a broader question of how much leeway they have, but clarifying that AI generated voices count as "artificial" under the statute barely requires a regulation, any more than they need one to say "hit in the head with a computer" constitutes an "assault".
The problem with your argument is that, for decades, congress has been passing and failing to update laws under the understanding that the courts would apply Chevron deference.
If the courts decide to get rid of that, they're intentionally misinterpreting the laws that congress has passed over that time. They're also effectively rewriting a large fraction of US law, despite the fact that the constitution is carefully designed to prevent such a small group of (unelected or elected) people from modifying US law that quickly, and without safe guards.
The current Supreme Court has repeatedly undermined separation of powers, and they're explicitly doing so against the wishes of the electorate. Their behavior is fundamentally undemocratic.
Correct, because in the United States, our model of government is a Democratic Republic, not a democracy. For all of the flaws of our system of law, the Constitution is considered supreme, and any laws that violate the Constitution are to be considered null and void. The job of the Supreme Court is to decide the Constitutionality of laws.
One interpretation of removing Chevron deference is that it's defacto rewriting law, another is that executive agencies have been doing this for decades already. The truth is probably some mix of the two.
>Constitution is considered supreme, and any laws that violate the Constitution are to be considered null and void. The job of the Supreme Court is to decide the Constitutionality of laws.
A plain and non-ideological reading of what you typed is that this is a contradiction at best and saying the SCOTUS supersedes the constitution at worst.
At worst yes, the difficulty of overriding them via constitutional amendment or a restructured law is a vulnerability of our system
But the paradox is that is part of the constitution too. There are several creatures of the constitution that supersede the constitution. Treaties can.
>The problem with your argument is that, for decades, congress has been passing and failing to update laws under the understanding that the courts would apply Chevron deference.
It is literally the job of Congress to update laws. That they are bad at doing that is not relevant to the place of the Court in the structure of this country's government.
>If the courts decide to get rid of that, they're intentionally misinterpreting the laws that congress has passed over that time.
The opposite of this is true. If the Court decides to jettison Chevron deference (you should look in to why that case is called "Chevron") it means that gasp our legislators have to actually listen to constituents and write laws and not just bet that the executive branch in the next election cycle agrees with them.
Overturning Chevron means federal courts no longer have to give deference to agency experts. Unelected judges will have free rein to impose their own views in these cases.
Nothing about Chevron will force Congress to write more precise laws.
Courts acting as authorities of last appeal doesn't sound like some class of people imposing their views. They're just doing their jobs, and I don't see why they should be less trustworthy than (also unelected) bureaucrats.
It's less about being more or less trustworthy and more about spheres of competence. Judges are experts on the laws that are written, but they cannot be experts in all the areas Congress requires regulation.
People are not interchangeable: if you take a financial regulatory expert from SEC and move them to FDA and ask them to regulate drug adjuvants, you're not going to get great results. Dropping Chevron would put judges in the position of being experts in all the fields where Congress requires regulation.
>Dropping Chevron would put judges in the position of being experts in all the fields where Congress requires regulation.
Genuinely curious as to why people think this. This is the standard talking point you see about this issue, and it's just not true. Getting rid of Chevron doesn't mean that judges need to become experts in all minutia of a particular field. It means the executive can't liberally interpret statute to their heart's desire. Maybe you mean that you expect more cases to come to the courts if Chevron is dropped, but cases on complex technical matters already come to the courts all the time in all fields. Are you concerned that the volume of cases goes up or something?
True, but judges should be used to ruling on cases involving technical details they don't fully understand. They could refuse to weigh the opinions of outside experts, but I don't think they would.
Besides, this works in other countries, in the Czech Republic for instance, I'm pretty sure I've seen lawsuits against regulatory agencies here.
Chevron doesn't prevent lawsuits. All it does is require the judge overseeing the case to give deference to the regulatory agency when there is ambiguity in the law.
Really simple example:
Congress passes a law that requires the FAA to regulate the safety of commercial aviation, but doesn't explicitly say "all panels must be bolted to the fuselage".
FAA decides any removable panel must be positively attached to the fuselage using castle nuts and pins or an equivalent design.
Boeing thinks that rule is wrong (overbearing, overreach, poorly conceived, whatever).
Under Chevron, the judge hears both sides, and defers to the FAA on the issue of safety. The law wasn't explicit about design of door panel fasteners, but was clear the FAA should regulate the industry.
Without Chevron, there is no deference to the experts at the FAA. The judge is free to impose their own worldview on the case.
Note that with Chevron in place, the judge can still determine the FAA overreached its authority (like if they decided to regulate car transport on the way to the airport). The judge just can't ignore the presumed expertise of the executive branch in applying details to Congressionally mandated regulation.
Without Chevron, we trade executive expertise for the whims of an unelected judge. While bureaucrats are unelected, they are still beholden to Congress for both funding and legislation allowing their existence in the first place. The President can't simply conjure regulators out of thin air.
>Unelected judges will have free rein to impose their own views in these cases.
As opposed to unelected bureaucrats who serve at the whim of the executive branch and are often political appointees? Do you not remember the meltdown this site had over Trump's FCC commissioner and his views on net neutrality?
If an executive agency steps out of line, Congress can defund it or pass other legislation clarifying their intent.
No such mechanism exists with the federal bench (other than impeachment).
All Chevron does is impose a restriction on the federal courts when deciding cases brought against the executive branch. It doesn't give bureaucrats free rein to do what they want.
Congress can just overrule federal bench by saying their wrong and writing clarifying language. Very popular example of this is Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that specifically made it that issuing a discriminatory paycheck restarted 180 day clock.
If it were such that individual states with greater agency could negatively impact neighbouring states and in Chevrons original case, environment and agriculture, then it’s a dangerous precedent of opening up states to competitive market at the detriment greater societal impact and responsibilities. Both positive and negative but the incentives are there to push towards later in pursuit of fast profits and deferred responsibilities.
Am I making sense? States can compete for corporate interests, while we know full well who runs the senate: lobbyists with deep pockets.
Imagine the following: The FCC fines a company for using AI-generated voices in robocalls. That company appeals the fine. With Chevron intact, the court would need to defer to the FCC's interpretation of the TCPA and dismiss the appeal. With Chevron overturned, the court would be able to advocate for their own interpretation of the TCPA. A favorable judge could just claim textualism, and insist that the TCPA does not apply because it does not explicitly use the word AI. Then it is a slippery slope of forum shopping and companies moving their operations to districts with sympathetic judges.
Imagine the FCC goes to congress, proposes a new rule and then congresses passes it. Then there is debate and congress can't abdicate its responsibility.
In theory sure but have you been following Congress for the past decade? They can't even come to terms on continuing resolution funding bills, let alone pass complex rules related to new contentious technologies. Perhaps I'm just a pessimist but is something that makes you think this might drastically change?
> In theory sure but have you been following Congress for the past decade?
On one hand, fair. On the other hand, you can only coast along on the old post-cold war bi-partisan consensus for so long without getting new consensus before institutions lose their legitimacy (you can already see this happening a bit).
We can default back to the last time we had consensus for some things, for some time, but you do need to get it again before big changes happen. If you get to the point where the last time we had consensus is before the majority of the people in the system were alive, you either need to hard pivot your society to focus on ancestor worship, or you need to focus on something you do have consensus on.
The problem is that the previous consensus was created by corporate centralized media, and in many ways was actually against the interests of most people who accepted it. Now that corporate consensus has fallen apart, so we've got two tribes each focused on the specific ways they were screwed over, with each ascribing the previous state of affairs to the other tribe. In a vacuum their differences could certainly be worked out to support a consensus. But given how well ragebait sensationalism seems to work, and the popularity of feel-good (well, feel-something at least) authoritarian demagogues like Trump, I don't see much hope.
I would argue that existing setup which abdicates power of congress to courts and agencies is only making things worse. It keeps things running, somewhat, but only by applying bandaids that can be removed just as easily with new set of judges or new administration.
It's something that US political system allowed to fester for decades, arguably since 70s.
Take the entire situation around abortions. Supreme Court determined that there is a right, based in protection of privacy, that prohibits states from banning abortion before certain date. Congress didn't have to make a law about it, or even add amendment to constitution. So they didn't have to explain anything to their constituents. "It's the court! I can't do anything!" everybody was happy.
Except not. People who opposed it, saw it as undemocratic. Taking controversial issue out of the hands of representatives forever. So they pushed against it, and attempted to circumvent the ruling. Mostly they failed. But they never gave up, and their movement never died down. In fact it only became more and more powerful.
And when they finally had favorable judges on the court they finally had their way.
Angering their opponents, who were now using similar "this isn't democratic" arguments. In the end, nobody really won. The only certain result is that people on both sides of political spectrum now have reasons to distrust Supreme Court.
Compare that to the situation in Europe. Lawmakers took their time, but eventually they arrived at set of laws that most of society agrees with, or at very least is able to tolerate.
TLDR: The existing system led to the congress being incapable of making laws. If america is to survive, courts can't keep saving congress from controversial laws.
Imagine that rule is not precise enough to cover every possible specific situation, so nobody can ever be penalized for breaking any rule, as it becomes a fractal problem where the entire year’s “work” from Congress would not be sufficient to exactly define every term needed.
Management has to be allowed to delegate. Those saying Congress should not be allowed to do so are really just saying they want the government abolished.
Imagine an individual or company (who disagrees with the FCC's interpretation of the law) proposes a new rule to congress and then congress passes it. There is a debate and then congress updates the law they passed to reflect recent changes.
Even if it was unclear, ending Chevron deference wouldn’t say “the agency can no longer make these policy interpretations.” It just means that a court ought to test whether that interpretation is in compliance with the law, when that comes up in a dispute (which is something that courts are in the business of in many other areas) more so than simply deferring to the agency’s expertise on the law.
(If you look at the original Chevron decision, they were much more interested in trying to get out of the “understand and make determinations about complex environmental issues” business anyway, more so than the “understand the law” business.)
Postscript: For your next unfairly downvoted reply I recommend that you explain to someone Citizens United was actually a nonprofit trying to air a movie on cable television and was fighting the FEC over it. (Total hackjob of an organization, mind you. But core political speech.) Some facts are unpopular.
Chevron deference would come into play if the FCC tried to say that a test-tube baby was an artificial agent. I support ending the doctrine, because the shadow laws are strong and bad.
So because of this you think we should dismantle the administrative state in favor of the judicial apparatus?
Everything I've read about this says it will result in mass deregulation of industries that must be regulated. (Koch Industries for example) In practical terms, in our current world, not in some libertarian-inspired fantasy that doesn't exist today.
There are definitely areas where Chevron deference can "hurt" us--for example political tampering at agencies.. but overall I think we should rely on experts to do the regulating and try to fix the existing system.
On top of that what happened to judicial precedent? Only good when it suits our ends I guess.
Don't forget about Matt Hoover of CRS Firearms being charged for conspiracy to transfer unregistered machine gun conversion devices. His crime? Advertising a trinket known as an "Auto Key Card", a metal business card etched with the outline of a lightning link, a device that--properly manufactured--can make a semi-automatic rifle full-auto.
The problem is that this device was nothing more than a drawing on a business card sized piece of steel. It amounts to an egregious first amendment violation at the very least.
You'll have to excuse me if I don't take the word of the website "pewpewtactical" as gospel on this matter. Especially with lines like this: "Aside from the fact the ATF hates anything fun..."
There's nothing earnest or in good faith here, and you can't reasonably make me believe otherwise. The person was trying to skirt the law and got caught.
Or let me put it another way: if this keycard isn't a big deal, why do gun owners care?
> The ATF examined the Auto Key Cards and a firearms enforcement officer was able to remove the pieces of a lightning link from an Auto Key Card using a common Dremel rotary tool in about 40 minutes.
So in effect, the ATF was able to manufacture an unregistered machine gun conversion device from a legal piece of steel with a drawing on it, using tools. Steel is not illegal, nor are drawings. As mentioned by rpmisms, we have a first amendment right to freedom of speech in the United States.
The same thing can be accomplished, arguably more easily, by bending a metal coat hanger into the required shape, but Target isn't being raided by the ATF.
And of course, anyone with access to a 3d printer and the gatalog can create a lightning link in about 22 minutes. Guess it's time to ban the Internet!
Consider this: the kind of people who wouldn’t know how to do this otherwise are exactly the kind of people I don’t want given a die cut model for how to do it.
Meanwhile illegal full-auto Glock switches are flooding into urban areas such as Chicago across the country, ordered overseas from Aliexpress completely unimpeded, because the ATF would rather go after people that aren't violent criminals.
Funnily enough, they're pushing towards common use, which makes for an interesting legal argument that giggle switches are no longer dangerous and unusual.
> The person was trying to skirt the law and got caught.
What law? The law that says you can't distribute a chart of a lightning link? That's not a real law. The point here is that the ATF created the law out of whole cloth.
> Or let me put it another way: if this keycard isn't a big deal, why do gun owners care?
Are you serious? The guy is going to jail under the charge that he distributed a machine gun, for distributing legal information in a country that has freedom of speech as the first amendment. He didn't even violate ITAR. I have a shirt with the CNC instructions to create a lightning link printed on it. Should I go to prison too?
A large part of my life has been dedicated to distributing the means to self-defense to as many people as possible. The right to armament is inherent to humanity, and encoded in our DNA as a nation. I design, prototype and build guns. Too bad for you, everything I do is legal. There's no moral difference between what I do and installing a giggle switch to magdump into trash faster.
Machine guns aren't evil because they're regulated.
The idea of freedom of speech, and the Constitutional amendment that enshrines and protects that human right, doesn't exist to protect sending birthday cards to your grandkids.
In 1944 hundreds of thousands of liberator pistols were air dropped to the French resistance to fight Axis occupation.
In Myanmar today, 3d printed FGC-9 rifles are being used by rebels to resist a coup staged by the military.
In Ukraine, as I'm sure you're already aware, weaponry donated by NATO and the United States is being used in combination with improvised munitions delivered by drone to resist a large scale genocidal invasion by Russia.
Weapons are tools, no more good or evil than the person wielding the tool. Freedom of information destabilizes monopolies on violence and empowers people to communicate, organize, and defend themselves from aggressors.
You miss my point. I don't think any court would see the reasonable reach of Chevron to be the FCC being capable of determining what qualifies as an artificial person between people of natural or artificial insemination. "Reasonable" is part and parcel to the decision.
This is great that this is line of comments are under an article about banning something most people here would like to see banned. That is in fact doing something good, unless I guess you're on the side of robocalls. Perhaps choose to make this argument in another thread, it'd be far more convincing.
I've only read your link there, but aren't you mischaracterizing it? The Chevron doctrine isn't what allows agencies like the FCC to make rulings like this, it's what protects their decisions from being overruled by the courts. That is, even if all the justices privately agreed the agency's interpretation had issues, they'd still defer to it. But without Chevron, in that case, they could overrule it.
In this case, considering AI-generated voices "artificial" for the purposes of applying a law seems obvious enough to me that I don't think the Chevron doctrine would apply, personally.
> The Chevron doctrine isn't what allows agencies like the FCC to make rulings like this, it's what protects their decisions from being overruled by the courts.
Yes and it's in cases where a law gives authority and expectations to an agency. In the past, it was left up to experienced and qualified agency specialists to work out how best to implement it because 1) it's their job and 2) because Congress knows it can't write every possible contingency into a law.
Chevron supports this. The SCotUS case is brought by folks who want to shift that determination from agency specialists to judges who don't have the related experience or qualifications. It would effectively allow endless monkey wrenches to be thrown into the oversight process by corporations who aren't keen on oversight.
> shift that determination from agency specialists to judges
Again, that's still not my reading of it. The determination is still done by the agency, right? This is purely about the recourse of folks who don't like what the agency has decided and the futility of appealing it or not.
I feel like both you here and the original poster I replied to are implicitly saying that an agency only truly has the ability to implement laws based on expert qualifications if there's no "check" on them. But this isn't really true for Congress, is it? They make laws around specific topics based on expert input all the time, whether it be around trade or cryptography or whatever, while still having the courts sit above them with the ability to hear out someone who thinks the law is unconstitutional. How is this any different?
It's true that without Chevron, there's more freedom to appeal an agency's decisions. But as a general principle (i.e. not this specific moment in time but say 20 years from now), it seems just as likely to me that an agency is politicized, paid for by corporate donors, etc, as the courts, so it's not clear to me that an un-appealable agency decision is better than one that can be appealed.
Edge cases make great news, but I suspect in our sprawling administrative framework of government agencies, the vast, vast majority of interpretation of laws is done by experts, is relatively fair, and has gone and will continue to go unchallenged. So I don't think the characterization that "interpretation of laws by agencies will move to judges from experts" is fair, on the whole. Maybe only on the controversial parts where there are interests on all sides, but then maybe that's a fair place to have that, too.
>shift that determination from agency specialists to judges
All correct until this bit. They in fact want to shift it back to congress, who should do a better job in specifying what power they delegate to unelected heads of executive branch agencies.
> All correct until this bit. They in fact want to shift it back to congress,
That is one potential, down-the-road outcome of non-qualified judges being inserted into the process. Stalling oversight is the outcome that dominates all of it tho.
> congress, who should do a better job in specifying what power they delegate to unelected heads of executive branch agencies.
A law with every possible contingency can not be written. It's why Congress signals the desired outcomes the language of the law and expects qualified agency employees to bring those outcomes to fruition.
> The idea behind such deference is that expert agencies, accountable to an elected president, are better suited than federal judges to make the policy choices that Congress left open.
>At the time of the 1984 Chevron v. NRDC ruling, Doniger notes, it was widely perceived in legal and political circles that judges in the lower federal courts were inappropriately crafting policy by deciding for themselves what certain laws meant, effectively substituting their own ideas for the discernment of agency experts. “So the Supreme Court was basically saying to the lower courts: Stop inserting your own policy preferences under the guise of interpreting the law,” Doniger says.
> Now the Supreme Court could reopen the door for federal judges to decide how executive-branch agencies should go about their daily business whenever Congress has used ambiguous language
I don't know if you have been following politics recently but this sounds like a bad idea unless the idea is to kill the process (which is the desired outcome of the strategy). Theres no way congress can handle more of a workload nor should they be in charge of this - that should be in the bureaucracy not with the politicos.
Just because there is an ongoing consensus failure in our democratically elected components doesn’t mean we should skip the democratically elected components
This court has been very consistent about that and we’re going to have it until the 2050s so get with the program
> Just because there is an ongoing consensus failure in our democratically elected components doesn’t mean we should skip the democratically elected components
I'm not sure where you see how Chevron skips those components. Congress gives authority to an agency and indicates what it wants done. Chevron says the agency (using qualified agency specialists) are who Congress intends to work out the many, many details that are impossible to write into effective law.
>Chevron says the agency (using qualified agency specialists) are who Congress intends to work out the many, many details that are impossible to write into effective law.
That's not entirely accurate. The doctrine only applies to ambiguous statutes and it's really that an agency has the authority to decide what Congress meant when it wrote them. The question is whether an agency can interpret what Congress intends for it to do, or if that should be left to Congress for clarification.
You make it sound like Chevron is the underpinning for execution of all statutory authority, and it isn't. It's an edge-case doctrine.
I agree with you on the importance of Chevron deference, but I can't see any court getting to the second step of Chevron with this particular ruling, so no deference would be required. The legislation bans "artificial or prerecorded voices"; AI agents are by definition artificial.
> "Congress should have used more precise language rather than deferring to the supposed "expertise" of members of the administration in order to establish the artificiality of AI"
- SCOTUS, in a judgement not yet issued or rendered (and thus currently wholly imagined by me).
OK, I normally don't trick LLMs into lying or paste their leavings here, but enjoy:
> Here are some potential counterfactual arguments that the Chevron doctrine does not allow the FCC from regulating AI robocalls:
- The Communications Act of 1934, which gives the FCC authority to regulate communications by wire and radio, does not explicitly grant the FCC authority to regulate AI technology. Since AI was not envisioned at the time the Act was passed, one could argue that Congress did not intend to delegate regulatory authority over AI to the FCC. Therefore, the FCC's regulation of AI robocalls would fail the first step of the Chevron test as not being in accordance with clear congressional intent.
- Even if one argues that the FCC's authority to regulate "communications by wire and radio" could be broadly interpreted to include AI communications technologies, the FCC's specific regulation of AI robocalls could still be seen as an unreasonable interpretation of the Act under the second step of Chevron. Given the lack of explicit mention of AI in the Act, a court may find that the FCC's assertion of authority to regulate AI robocalls through additional restrictions beyond what applies to standard robocalls is an unreasonable stretch of its delegated authority.
- The nature of AI technologies is such that they raise novel issues that were not contemplated at the time of the Communications Act. Heavy-handed regulation of emerging AI technologies by the FCC without clear congressional authorization could stifle innovation. Under these circumstances, one could argue that deference to the FCC's interpretation of its authority is unwarranted.
Congress says: "Hey agency! You're the experts. Figure out and enforce the policy details."
The agency: we have determined that this action by company X is against our policies.
The courts: Congress said that the agency decides the policy. Even if we think an action is inside policy, the agency has Congressional authority to change the policy to put the contested action firmly outside policy.
The company should therefore lobby Congress to regulate the agency. Maybe you could make a case about retroactive or post-facto laws, but I suspect the company is not usually claiming that they abide by the letter of the policy, but that the policy is outside the agency's powers.
Congress makes the laws. The Executive enforces them. Separation of Powers precludes Congress from delegating lawmaking authority to the other branches.
It will cause chaos and disaster if congress has to make regulations for every little thing. Congress is so divided the result of Chevron reversal is that huge numbers of usefully regulated utilities, companies, etc will be unregulated. It also doesn't make sense for congress to spend all their time writing regulations, they'd get even less done. Congress can barely pass a budget shortly before the previous budget year ends.
Ending the ability of federal agencies to write useful regulations means unregulated spam robocalls! It's the dream of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Rich people are unbounded. They would say we don't need regulations about food safety written by those ninnys in the federal government.
Yes. Heavens forfend if they had to do the job they asked to be elected to do.
In short, good. How many here can even map the entire list of all the agencies and corresponding rules, recommendations, and guidance that has the weight of law.
<< It will cause chaos and disaster if congress has to make regulations for every little thing.
Free people pull in all sorts of directions. Its going to be ok.
Prior courts said that they were going to use Chevron deference when interpreting the laws that congress passed, since it keeps them simpler, and allows the executive branch to apply common sense (while retaining safeguards in case agencies overstep their bounds).
The current court has repeatedly decided to arbitrarily reinterpret settled portions of the law by overturning existing rulings. Getting rid of chevron deference would be a continuation of that, though on a scale that probably exceeds the fraction of the US legal code the court has actually read.
The current courts' actions are unprecedented in the US. The Supreme Court is not supposed to overturn prior Supreme Court rulings, except in exceptional circumstances. They even went so far as to mostly overturn the 4th amendment when they eliminated the right to privacy as part of the Roe v. Wade ruling.
At this point they're looking more like an unchecked legislative branch than a judicial body. This is the reason they are wildly unpopular. They understand this, and they've explicitly said they don't plan to follow the wishes of the electorate. On top of that they've done a lot to undermine US election integrity with recent rulings.
However, given ongoing demographic shifts, there's a good chance they'll have to cope with a unified executive and legislative branch. At that point, expect court packing or impeachments. The only other path I see is some sort of apartheid-style setup designed to ignore the votes of anyone that's urban, educated, female, minority, or not elderly.
This argument reminds me of people who wish for our credit system to burn down so they don’t owe money anymore. Both are completely short sighted and would result in catastrophic outcomes.
We (unfortunately) need credit now. And we (unfortunately) cannot depend on congress to do anything.
Congress should have gotten off their hands and written something by now, same with Crypto legislation. “Chevron Deference” breeds tyranny through legislative apathy
No, Chevron deference breeds sanity. it would be insane to think that every little detail of complex regulatory structure must be outlined specifically in legislation in order for it to be valid. For example, legislation gives the EPA the power to regulate waterways. Chevron deference allows the EPA to use its expertise to write rules that say you can't dump benzine into the river. Without Chevron deference, someone who wants to dump benzine in the river could challenge the EPA saying that the law doesn't specifically say you can't dump benzine in the river. Imagine relying on our elected officials to come up with a list of what is and isn't considered toxic.
Regulations and regulators existed before 1984 when the case was argued. In my opinion, it's a good idea to curtail the power of government whenever possible. I'd rather Congress specify in a bill/law that a committee of leading experts from the private sector and the advocacy side of any given subject matter weigh in yearly on any topic before regulations can be changed rather than blindly hoping regulators know what they are doing.
Chevron was ruled in 1984 but it was a codification of principles that had already been in practice. It was a standard Supreme Court ruling, a formalization of precedent. After all, some degree of deference to executive interpretation is required, because it's impossible to write truly unambiguous law in any regular language.
> a committee of leading experts from the private sector and the advocacy side of any given subject matter weigh in yearly on any topic before regulations can be changed
This is part of the design of regulatory agencies. Rulings like this come after an extensive process of consultation and public comment.
Curtailing the power of government means upholding the Chevron Deference, obviously.
If every little thing now becomes an open question of law, we exist in a vacuum of power where courts arbitrarily decide all sorts of things, giving massive amounts of power to the government.
Uncertainty breeds timidness. In order for people to have freedom to act, they need to know in advance what is legal and what is not.
I agree with your post. If you step back, can there be any highly developed countries that do not have the equivalent of the Chevron Deference? It seems impossible. Else, parliament would spend all of its time updating laws to add new corner cases that industry/people exploit. It would be very inefficient.
To be very specific: For each new chemical discovered or manuf'd, environmental protection laws would need to be amended by parliament. It is madness to think about.
They should make recommendations, and then before anything goes into effect, these recommendations must be passed into law (Congress passes bill, President signs it).
>Congress should have gotten off their hands and written something by now, same with Crypto legislation. “Chevron Deference” breeds tyranny through legislative apathy
It would be literally impossible for congress to rule on every nuanced thing that Chevron allows agencies to do. Saying "congress should take care of it" shows either an intentional disregard for the roles agencies and their experts play, or a complete misunderstanding of the power it grants to federal agencies.
"It breeds tyranny" is absolutely ridiculous. When agencies rule in a manner people find unjust, they sue and win or lose in a court of law based on the content of the policy. It also gives congress a chance to rule on "big ticket" things that do need addressing without causing an absolute standstill having to rule on something as mundane as what the legal weight and length limit should be each season for catching a salmon from federal land in Montana.
look no further than the recent border bill that got the "no not like that, it wasn't supposed to work". Now they have to answer for it in november, a major piece of legislation in their favor and they left it on the floor because the maniac running the party has hurt feelings on not being included.
From a practical point of view, it's hard to say whether Congress would make better or worse decisions, and it's probably good that the government can make decisions about new technologies while Congress is mostly dysfunctional.
Maybe the thing that guards against tyranny is that Congress can override them (by passing a law) if regulators screw up badly enough?
At least, in theory.
Just like, in theory, the people could elect a better Congress.
Congress did act. They passed the TCPA in 1991 knowing full well that Chevron deference would allow the FCC to tweak their interpretation of the law as facts change. Congress doesn't want to have to micromanage things like this. If they did they would write the laws in a way that prevents situations where Chevron comes into play. And anyway, getting rid of Chevron would transfer the agencies powers to the courts, not congress.
The language of the bill here, "artificial or prerecorded voice" isn't even ambiguous to a normal person. An AI agent's voice is undeniably "artificial". It'd be a much bigger stretch for the FCC to interpret it otherwise!
Have you listened to our congresspeople? Nothing they do or say suggests to me that they have the capabilities to legislate effectively on technical matters, be they AI, Pollution or Food Safety.
We have departments that have traditionally been staffed with SMEs to make these rulings and decisions on behalf of congress, who legislates their existence and budget.
With some sarcasm and much trepidation, I would submit that lobbyists would be more than happy to write the laws that their congresspeople will sign into law, ending the due diligence and oversight of qualified, established government departments. (I know they do this now, but think of how much worse it could be!)
I completely agree with this viewpoint, but what makes you think that congresspeople are not lobbyists or are somehow less beholden to those who would engage in lobbying?
In other words, why would an agency be more persuadable than congress?
Our country is falling apart because of the current level of congressional ineptitude. One party refuses to support important legislation they specifically asked for because it may give the opposition party a positive news article.
Wishing the Congress had to study and pass legislation for all enforcement and regulation of society is tantamount to accelerationism.
The border bill was not what the GOP was asking for. It was a compromise and not enough of one to get the deal done with the most fringe of that party.
It is quite literally what the GOP asked for not even 12 weeks ago (Dec 6, 2023):
> Republicans on Wednesday blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in exchange and severely jeopardizing President Biden’s push to replenish the war chests of American allies before the end of the year.
The Democrats said okay. Senators Sinema, Lankford (literally the 2nd most conservative senator according to his own congressional page), and Murphy spent the last couple months negotiating a new bill.
Trump then tanked it saying it would help Biden:
> Republican front-runner Donald Trump said he wants to be held responsible for blocking a bipartisan border security bill in the works in the Senate as President Biden seeks emergency authority to rein in a record surge of unauthorized border crossings.
there is simply no way for congress to enact every regulation. This is all a power grab for corporations bankrolling republican judges and congress critters to be able to ignore any regulations they want in order to make a few more bucks.
I think the current SCOTUS thrives on chaos (6 of 9 members anyway) and Chevron will go down in flames just like Roe. This is the modern "conservative" party.
Glad to see Chevron Deference at the top here. Basically, the FCC can’t “rule” they can “dictate” and this isn’t a power explicitly granted by congress. It’s some made up judicial rules that say these federal agencies can do it
The controlling legislation here, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, prohibits initiating "any telephone call to any residential telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to deliver a message without the prior express consent of the called party" (I got this quote directly from the FCC ruling). The legislation does not define "artificial or prerecorded voice". The FCC here is stating that they interpret "artificial voice" as including interactive AI voice agents, which did not exist in 1991. Do you think this is an unreasonable interpretation? Or should Congress be required to list exactly what technologies are prohibited in this context and update that list every time something new comes around?
In 1991 "artificial" probably meant something like "pre-recorded and re-cut". Which is basically AI voice generation, but at scale.
>Do you think this is an unreasonable interpretation? Or should Congress be required to list exactly what technologies are prohibited in this context and update that list every time something new comes around?
Not OP but this is the right question to ask. My answer is yes, congress is quite literally required to update statute to reflect modern technology (ensuring it conforms to the founding principles of course).
Chevron Reference is the idea that when a statute is ambiguous the agencies can interpret it according to their expert opinion.
The alternative is requiring Congress to write every single rule explicitly and pass a law adapting to any change in circumstance or technology. In practice this means "no regulation" because Congress is pretty slow and adding more detail would only make them slower.
Executive agencies are granted authority by the legislature. The legislature can at any time make additional legislation overriding or limiting specific actions taken by executive agencies. It isn't made up.
Nonsense. The law in question explicitly grants the FCC the right to make this determination via regulation.
> The Commission shall prescribe regulations to implement the requirements of this subsection. In implementing the requirements of this subsection, the Commission — (A) shall consider prescribing regulations to allow businesses to avoid receiving calls made using an artificial or prerecorded voice to which they have not given their prior express consent; […]
Chevron deference is about whose interpretation governs when a law is ambiguous; that’s not even close to being the case here.
Be careful using strong language like "nonsense" unless you're very sure that's you're right. For starters, it's hostile. Also, I think you're incorrect.
Who do you think determines whether or not a particular voice is an 'artificial' voice? The FCC or the Courts? If it's the former, that's Chevron deference. You haven't quoted any legislation which expressly confers power on the FCC to interpret the law (which is typically the province of courts) and determine themselves whether or not a particular 'voice' is an 'artificial' ... 'voice'. But the legislation, at least arguably, impliedly confers that power per Chevron - like in Chevron, it was within the EPA's power to determine what a "source" of pollution was.
Compare Australia, where Chevron deference was rejected as forming part of Australian administrative law (Enfield v Development Assessment Commission (2000) 199 CLR 135), it would be a question for the courts whether the agency was authorised to make this regulation, without deferring to the agency's interpretation. The agency does it's best to conform with the law, but it's ultimately the courts that say what the law is.
Who will think of the poor corporations and their armies of on-retainer lawyers?
Of course government is incompetent and can't be reasonable in regulation? Is that the idea? How dare these corporations not be given minutely detailed regulations that they can easily tear apart to pollute to their convenience? You mean you want REASON in government and regulation?
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...