We can probably all agree that July has been one of the strangest in living memory: from the assassination attempt on President Trump to the Republican National Convention to the bizarre “coup” against Biden within the Democratic Party. With all of this going on, it's easy to forget the truly momentous events that happened this month.
For example, the Supreme Court recently handed down three decisions that will be of particular interest to defenders of individual liberty and limited constitutional government. In two of these cases, the Court limited the exercise of federal agencies' legislative and judicial powers. Unfortunately, in the third, the Court refused to protect the free speech rights of government officials.
The Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which addressed the issue of federal regulations forcing commercial fishermen to pay the costs of having federal inspectors on their vessels. Established in the 1984 case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Chevron deference requires federal courts to accept a federal agency's interpretation of legal authority so long as the agency's interpretation is “reasonable” and does not directly conflict with the federal law that governs the agency.
The Chevron deference gives federal agencies almost unlimited power to determine the scope of their authority. The agencies then enforce their interpretation of that authority through regulations. This combination of legislative and executive power violates the principle of separation of powers. Federal agencies also exercise judicial power through administrative law judges (ALJs), who are federal agency employees, to adjudicate cases brought by the agencies against U.S. citizens. Fortunately, the Supreme Court also limited the power of ALJs in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Jarcasm. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress violated the Seventh Amendment's right to a jury by giving the SEC the power to impose fines on individuals accused of securities fraud.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court failed to protect people's First Amendment rights against the administrative state when it refused to hear Missouri v. Murphy, a lawsuit brought against the federal government by Americans who were censored by social media companies acting at the behest of government authorities. Many of the censored posts contained information about COVID that was factual rather than fear-based, unlike government-generated COVID misinformation.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing because the social media companies removed the posts without government coercion and because the government stopped pressuring social media companies to censor after the COVID-19 panic subsided, regardless of the fact that government authorities have pressured private social media companies to remove certain posts and are likely to continue to do so in the future.
If the courts will not protect online speech from the government, Congress must pass and protect it through the Free Speech Protection Act. This bill prohibits federal employees from taking any action that interferes with the ability of U.S. citizens to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment. Anyone who violates this rule can be fined, suspended, fired, and barred from future federal employment. Another important bill is the REINS Act, which requires agencies to get congressional approval for major regulations. Congress must also begin reading the budgets of all regulatory agencies with the goal of eliminating all unconstitutional federal bureaucracy.
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas. This article originally appeared on the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and is reprinted here with permission.
