The disad is zero after Chevron overrule---FTC won’t have regulatory power.

ANALYSIS The US Supreme Court has ruled that the judges should no longer defer to government agency interpretations of ambiguous laws – a decision with potential ramifications for some of the biggest cases against tech companies.

That deference, known as Chevron deference, dates to 1984 when the court ruled in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that the US Environmental Protection Agency could define ambiguous terms in government legislation, provided the agency was trying to apply the law as Congress intended.

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed that 40-year-old precedent with a decision covering two cases – Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce – about whether the US National Marine Fisheries Service could force US fishing vessels to pay the wages of federal observers in the absence of specific rules to that effect.

"The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled," the judges in the 6-2 majority wrote [PDF].

The majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue – no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden

Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, characterized the ruling as a judicial power grab, because it invites judges to make determinations previously trusted to government agencies and expert staff.

(Bear in mind, for bonus irony points, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion in the Supreme Court's separate Ohio v EPA decision last week, mixed up nitrous and nitrogen oxide in his ruling. The error was corrected.)

"In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue – no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden – involving the meaning of regulatory law," wrote Justice Kagan. "As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country's administrative czar."

Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown recused herself from the Loper decision – presumably due to prior involvement with the litigation at the appellate level – but joined the dissenting opinion as it applied to the 6-3 Relentless decision.

The ruling has the potential to severely curtail the effectiveness of US regulators like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – and therefore to change the way the technology industry is regulated

The FTC, for example, is engaged in fights with Adobe over subscriptions, all the big AI players on antitrust, and is being challenged for abolishing that mainstay of Silicon Valley, the non-compete agreement. With Chevron dismissed, that last one could prove to be a test case for the new order of business.