Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the high court overturned another long-standing precedent on Friday that could undue both recent reproductive rights court wins and further erode environmental protections.

The court decided Lober Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce, two similar suits which challenged the long-standing Chevron Deference. In its decision, the high court overturned the decades old judicial decision. The Supreme Court decided the Chevron v. the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1984 and it became known as the Chevron Deference. It, essentially, gave deference to agency rule-making decisions and allowed federal agencies to interpret laws passed by Congress.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director for Western Environmental Law Center told NM Political Report, that the judicial precedent was important because agencies rely on scientific and technical experts in their decisions and interpretations of the law. He said that when Congress passes laws involving complex subjects such as air quality or water quality protections, Congress charges federal agencies to apply the statutes and provide authority to protect public interest, especially as new science and new technology emerges. Schlenker-Goodrich called the decision “wildly unsettling.”

“They have completely upended judicial norms since Chevron was decided. It usurps agency authority,” Schlenker-Goodrich said.

He said the Supreme Court did not provide guidance on how lower federal courts will go forward with interpreting ambiguous laws passed by Congress, reliant only upon legal briefs and law clerks to help them. He said the end result could be patchworks of interpretations, a greater polarization of both our political system and our judicial system and really negative outcomes in the ways laws will be interpreted. It also places enormous power in the federal court system, Schlenker-Goodrich said.

“That’s the key aspect of what the Supreme Court is doing. It is aggregating power to itself,” he said. 

Schlenker-Goodrich said that one of the ways the decision is unsettling for New Mexico, with its increased aridification of rivers and streams and watersheds due to climate change, is that, going forward, the courts will have enormous power in figuring out solutions to these “significantly intensifying problems.”

Schlenker-Goodrich called it “truly a usurpation of the powers of Congress and the executive branch.”

Schlenker-Goodrich said it will likely mean, going forward, the Supreme Court will take on more politically charged cases “to radically impose their policy judgment over” laws as disagreements begin to occur in lower courts over how laws should be interpreted. It could also create more work for environmental state agencies, which are already overtaxed and understaffed, Schlenker-Goodrich said.

Schlenker-Goodrich said federal agencies are “far from perfect,” and environmental law groups litigate them frequently. But he said it’s important to give confidence to experts within federal agencies to work through important problems. 

“It’s saying private industry and private rights should trump overarching protections provided to the people in taking this power from Congress and the executive branch and instilling the power in judges and a judicial system dominated by a 6-to-3 conservative majority. Right-wing justices are taking control of our country’s policy apparatus. If it sounds hyperbolic, it is not,” he said. 

It also ups the stakes on the upcoming presidential election because the next president could pick Supreme Court appointees and if former Pres. Donald Trump wins, he would likely further solidify the conservative majority on the court, Schlenker-Goodrich said.

The case, though it involves a fish hatchery, has far broader implications than environmental impacts. Josh Altic, director of research for the digital encyclopedia Ballotpedia, told NM Political Report that it has the potential to impact, for instance, the court’s recent reproductive rights decisions.

For instance, with the FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case, the high court ruled that the alliance lacked standing to bring the lawsuit. The high court did not rule upon the merits of the case. 

The alliance sought to challenge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s original rulemaking when it approved mifepristone for the market in 2000. Mifepristone is one of a two-drug regimen for abortion medication. More than 50 percent of abortions now occur through abortion medication.

Jocelyn C. Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, said through a news release that regulations put into place to protect marginalized groups such as women, people of color, disabled individuals, LGBTQIA+ individuals, are now at jeopardy.

“The Relentless power grab could open the door for ultra-conservative judges to dictate the rules that govern contraceptive coverage, prohibit federally funded family planning providers from referring patients for abortion care and expand religious exemptions to undermine our rights and access to care, amidst a host of other potential threats. At the same time, the Supreme Court continues to evade any meaningful ethics reforms that would shield its own members from the corrupting influence of special interests,” Frye said through the release. 

The court’s decided on Thursday to dismiss Idaho v. U.S. It was a challenge brought against Idaho’s abortion ban because it requires that a pregnant person be about to die before an Idaho hospital can stabilize the patient if doing so requires an abortion. 

The Supreme Court sent the decision back to the lower courts to decide and resumed a stay on the ban that had previously been in place. Currently, because the high court resumed the stay on the ban, Idaho hospitals can provide an abortion to stabilize a patient to protect the patient’s health.

But the court fight is not over, it will resume in the lower federal courts in Idaho. But, the federal law, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding to stabilize a patient regardless of ability to pay. Because it does not expressly define abortion care within the federal law, the court’s new ruling could change how the lower court’s decide the case.

Altic said that in cases where “unambiguous authority wasn’t granted by Congress, the courts would have given the benefit of the doubt to the agencies.”

“Now, it doesn’t anymore,” he said.

Update: This story was updated to reflect that Erik Schlenker-Goodrich is executive director, not staff attorney.