ALEC Releases New Report on Judicial Deference
Report highlights how states are reclaiming judicial autonomy and reining in administrative overreach.
Arlington, VA – The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) today released its report on how states are reclaiming judicial autonomy, entitled Judicial Deference Reformed: How States are Reclaiming Judicial Autonomy from Bureaucratic Influence. The report highlights the work states across the country have done to restore separation of powers by allowing courts to independently interpret statutes and administrative rules.
Judicial deference occurs when courts defer to an executive agency’s interpretation of the law at issue, in lieu of the court itself interpreting the law anew. The origin of this federal doctrine, known as Chevron deference, stems from Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled 6-0 that if a statute is ambiguous, courts must defer to the government agency’s interpretation so long as it is “reasonable.”
“It’s fitting that we release this report during the 250th year of America’s independence,” said ALEC CEO Lisa B. Nelson. “One of our nation’s founding principles is the separation of powers; when the Supreme Court overruled Chevron deference, they restored the federal judiciary’s ability to interpret law independently. And alongside ALEC, the states have followed suit.”
Click here to read the full report.
In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a 6-2 decision. In the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts stated: “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
Currently, 22 states have eliminated judicial deference through judicial decisions, constitutional amendments, or legislation, with 15 state legislatures enacting deference reforms in just the past several years – most recently in South Carolina last month.
“ALEC has been a national leader on restoring judicial independence through advancing model policies like the Judicial Deference Reform Act,” said Nino Marchese, the report author and Director of the ALEC Judiciary Task Force. “This report is intended to provide lawmakers and policy stakeholders with a comprehensive understanding of how deference operates, why it has become a major structural issue in administrative law, and how states are responding in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its own 40-year-old mandatory deference framework.”
For more than 50 years, ALEC has been the national leader in developing trusted model policies to rein in administrative overreach such as the Independent Administrative Law Judges Act and the Targeted Legislative Review Act.
Judicial Deference Reformed continues this legacy and serves as a critical resource for policymakers to restore a foundational principle of American jurisprudence.