Blockbuster Ruling Seals Gorsuch Quest to Gut Agency Power (1)

Justice Neil Gorsuch achieved his decades-long goal of burying a legal principle that has empowered regulatory agencies at the expense of judges.

Gorsuch, 56, has frequently criticized Chevron, a 40-year-old precedent that tells courts in regulatory disputes to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation when the governing law is ambiguous. The court decided 6-3 along ideological lines Friday to overturn that decision in a case challenging a National Marine Fisheries Service regulation of herring fishermen.

“Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss,” Gorsuch said in a separate concurrence, echoing a graveyard refrain he ...