Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to overturn a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision that, according to Republicans, gave the executive branch “too much power” to impose regulations that annually cost Americans trillions of dollars.

“Lawmakers approved the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, or SOPRA, in a mostly party-line 220-211 vote. Republicans have argued for the last several years that the Supreme Court precedent set in the Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. case effectively told courts that they should defer to federal agencies when they interpret laws passed by Congress as they write regulations. Republicans say that since that ruling, courts have failed to do their due diligence in assessing whether those regulations can be fairly justified under the law,” Fox News reported.

“Since 1984, when the Supreme Court ruled that courts must defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute rather than what Congress intended, the executive branch has begun usurping the legislative branch to issue regulations with the force of law. It is certainly not what our founders intended,” Fitzgerald said.

“The total annual cost of regulation is almost $2 trillion, or about 8% of the U.S. GDP,” he added. “If it were a country, for comparison, U.S. regulation would be the world’s eighth largest economy.”

Democrats opposed the overturning of the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that it would burden the courts with a substantial amount of work in interpreting federal law.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, stated that the measure would “disrupt the administrative process by eliminating judicial deference to agencies and requiring federal courts to review all agency rulemakings and interpretations of the statute de novo.”

“While Congress sets broad policies, we delegate authorities to executive agencies because we do not have the expertise to craft the technical regulations ourselves, and we rely on these agencies to carry out the policies we enact,” Nadler said.

Recently, the Supreme Court made headlines for another case.

In what some are calling a “landmark” decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a decades-old law that prioritizes the placement of Native American children with Native families or tribes in child custody proceedings.

“The law was passed in 1978 to protect tribal sovereignty after Congress documented the alarmingly high number of children with Native American ancestry being placed with non-Native families or institutions in state child welfare and private adoption proceedings. The 7-2 decision backs the law passed in the wake of decades of hostility on the part of the federal government when it comes to child custody issues and the traditional values of Indian tribes,” CNN reported.

More on this story via Conservative Brief:

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, argued that Congress did not exceed its authority when it passed the law. CONTINUE READING…