“When an elected body creates guidance and gives you authority to do something, it depends on expert policymakers or administrators to sort out the facts. If your job is to make sure that the water people drink is clean, they don't go in and list every test in the water that has to be done, but they give you broad guidance to figure that out, Georges C. Benjamin, MD, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association explains. "For example, defining how much lead is in the water for you to drink that's permissible, but the understanding changes over time. They may alter those recommendations and actually bring the level of lead exposure that's permissible down.”
Dr. Benjamin went on to predict that a company could challenge the EPA's determination of how much lead can be in the water because it's cheaper to make a product that leaks the toxic substance into the drinking supply. “That's an example of where it isn't necessarily written in detail in the law,” he warns. “You're going to have confusion because every time someone doesn't like a regulatory decision, they will now go to court and try to challenge it. The decision is now going to a judge, who may not have any scientific knowledge in this area.”
“This will have a chilling effect on regulatory agencies,” says Dr. Raymond Robertson, Director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy and Professor. “Agencies have already started anticipating this, and they've been much more cautious in the way that they've been regulating. I don’t see anyone mentioning the court backlogs that we already see. It's going to potentially add pressure to the courts, and that means that decisions are not going to be made. So it's another significant factor that's going to be slowing down regulatory influence.”
Beyond what it might mean for the automotive industry, the decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo will have wide-reaching ramifications, the likes of which are difficult to anticipate so soon after the ruling. Since the original Chevron case involved environmental protection, it's safe to surmise that future challenges post-Loper Bright may be used to overturn federal mandates to improve air quality, including President Biden's electrification efforts.
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