Loper Bright v. Raimondo Supreme Court Decision

• A 1984 case called Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 8 held (decided) that courts should go by agencies’ reasonable interpretations of congressional statutes, including regulations. The Court should give deference to regulations, and judges should go by what the experts who drafted the regs wrote. This became known as the Chevron Doctrine. This principle was used for 40 years.
• The Loper case held (decided) that judges should make the decisions, and that courts do not have to follow the regulations. Decisions are up to the judges expertise not the regulations. 
• Problem: This requires judges to have expertise in all areas where there are regulations, or where the laws can be interpreted more than one way.
  
  Emergency management, public health, environmental protection, Medicaid and Medicare, civil rights laws, Food and Drug Administration matters, and many other areas of law have regulations.

Summary: Many disability rights laws have many regulations. Loper is saying that judges should make up their own minds and not depend on the regulations for guidance. This gives the courts a policy-making role. The problem is that judges aren’t experts in disability, technology, emergency management, medicine, and all of the other laws that have regulations interpreting them.

 

Disability rights laws that the Loper decision can impact:

• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
  • The ADA has a lot of regulations, but it has relatively robust statutory language. However, although the internet technically existed in 1990 when the ADA was signed, its ramifications could not begin to be contemplated. Therefore, regulations did not and could not have anticipated access to the internet and other forms of electronic communication that we now take for granted. Now, judges could make rulings without considering the regulations. Like all regulations, they were written by experts in the field and the public had the opportunity to comment on them.
  • It is conceivable that Olmstead, the Supreme Court case holding that people with disabilities have the right to services in the most integrated setting which has freed disabled people from institutions could be weakened or overturned (reversed). 
• Rehabilitation Act (Rehab Act) including sections 504 and 508
  • The Rehab Act also has lots of regulations. Judges no longer have to give deference to the regulations, including the new 504 regulation for the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
  • Again, judges will be considered the experts and will not have to give deference to the regulations that were written by experts.

 

What does this mean for disabled disaster survivors and disabled people preparing for disasters?

The Loper decision can impact disabled people when they go to court because they think that they have been discriminated against because of their disability in disaster-related programs and services. The case may allow a judge to decide whether or not there is disability-based discrimination without having to look to regulations of the ADA, Rehab Act, or other disability rights laws.

 

What might happen as a result of this decision?

Nothing will happen right away. The decision will only impact disabled people after cases go to federal court. Then we risk judges substituting their non-expert opinions for well thought-out regulations. Keep in mind the regulations often didn't give disabled people as much protection as we thought that we should have under the law. Now disabled people may have even less protection. Because of the Loper decision, judges may now make decisions without using regulatory guidance. This could cause our rights to be weakened.

The decision could result in more people dying and being institutionalized in nursing, psychiatric and other institutions from their rights not being protected.