SOS 3700 Module 3 Written Assignment: Loper Bright and Health Agencies Example

When the Courts Read the Statute First: Loper Bright and the Power of Federal Health Agencies

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B.S. in Health Studies, Thomas Edison State University

SOS-3700: Challenges in U.S. and Global Public Health

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

When the Courts Read the Statute First: Loper Bright and the Power of Federal Health Agencies

Introduction

Most public health policy in the United States is made not by Congress directly but by agencies that turn broad statutes into specific rules. The Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Environmental Protection Agency all write regulations that fill gaps Congress left. For forty years, courts reviewing those rules followed a doctrine that gave agencies the benefit of the doubt when a statute was unclear. In June 2024, the Supreme Court abandoned that doctrine. This paper explains what changed, applies it to a health regulation and considers what it means for public health law.

Chevron and Its End

In Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC (1984), the Supreme Court set out a two-step test. A court first asked whether Congress had spoken directly to the question. If the statute was silent or ambiguous, the court accepted the agency's interpretation as long as it was reasonable, even if the court would have read the statute differently. The rationale was that agencies have expertise and political accountability that judges lack, and that Congress often leaves gaps on purpose for agencies to fill.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) arose from a narrow dispute. Herring fishermen challenged a National Marine Fisheries Service rule requiring some boats to pay for the federal observers who rode along to monitor them. The fishermen argued that the governing statute did not authorize making them pay. Rather than decide only that question, the Court, in a six to three decision, overruled Chevron. It held that the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their own independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority. Ambiguity no longer means the agency wins. Courts may still give weight to an agency's views when its reasoning is thorough and consistent, a respect rooted in older precedent, but the final word on what a statute means belongs to the judge. The Court also said that past decisions upholding rules under Chevron remain good law, so earlier rulings are not automatically reopened.

Why It Matters for Health Agencies

Health statutes are full of the broad language Chevron used to protect. The Social Security Act lets CMS set requirements for nursing homes that are necessary for the health and safety of residents. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act defines drugs and devices in terms that new technologies keep testing. Under Chevron, an agency could defend a new rule by showing the statute was ambiguous and its reading reasonable. Now it must persuade a court that its reading is the best one. Writing before the decision, Agrawal et al. (2024) warned that ending deference could invite challenges to rules on drug approval, tobacco and environmental exposures, and could push agencies toward caution in the first place.

An Early Test: The Nursing Home Staffing Rule

The first large health rule to fall after Loper Bright illustrates the shift. CMS issued a final rule in 2024 that would have obliged every nursing home paid by Medicare or Medicaid to staff a set number of nursing hours for each resident daily and keep a registered nurse in the building at all hours. Industry groups sued, arguing that Congress had already set nurse staffing requirements in the Nursing Home Reform Act and had not authorized CMS to impose stricter numeric minimums. In American Health Care Association v. Kennedy (2025), a federal district court in Texas agreed and vacated the core staffing requirements, relying on Loper Bright to read the statute independently rather than deferring to the agency's view of its own authority. Congress later blocked enforcement of the rule for years in separate legislation.

From where I work, the decision cut both ways. The facility I work for would have struggled to hire enough nurses to comply, especially at night. Yet the rule responded to real evidence that low staffing harms residents. The legal question, however, was not whether the rule was wise but whether Congress had given CMS the power to make it. After Loper Bright, that question is answered by judges reading the statute, and a broad grant of authority to protect residents' health and safety may not be read as broadly as the agency would like.

What Does Not Change

Loper Bright is a rule about federal courts reviewing federal agencies. It does not limit the states' police power, the broad authority to protect public health that the Supreme Court recognized in cases such as Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). State health departments act under state statutes, and state courts apply their own doctrines on how much weight to give agency interpretations; some already gave agencies little deference, and others still give a great deal (Wilensky & Teitelbaum, 2023). Local quarantine orders, restaurant inspections and state vaccination requirements are therefore governed by state law and are not directly affected.

Congress also keeps a remedy. If it wants an agency to have a particular power, it can say so clearly in the statute. The practical difficulty is that Congress rarely legislates in detail on technical health questions, which is why it delegated to agencies in the first place.

Implications for Public Health Policy

Three implications follow. First, new federal health rules will rest on more careful statutory arguments, and agencies may avoid ambitious rules where their authority is uncertain. Second, more policy will be settled in court, often in districts chosen by challengers, which adds delay and uncertainty for regulated industries and the public. Third, states may become more important as sources of public health policy, since their authority does not depend on federal deference. For public health advocates, the lesson is that durable policy increasingly requires clear legislation, at the federal or state level, rather than relying on agencies to stretch older statutes to meet new problems.

How Agencies Are Adapting

Agencies have already begun to change how they write rules. Preambles to new regulations now spend more space tracing each requirement to specific statutory language and explaining why the agency's reading is the best one, not merely a permissible one. Some agencies favor narrower rules that rest on clearer authority, or they rely on guidance and enforcement discretion instead of binding regulations. Others ask Congress for explicit authority before acting. For a health agency facing a new threat, such as an emerging drug of abuse or a novel medical device, these adaptations can mean slower responses. They may also produce rules that survive challenge more often, because the legal ground has been tested before the rule is issued. Students of public health policy should therefore read a rule's statutory basis as closely as its health rationale.

Conclusion

Loper Bright moved the power to interpret health statutes from agencies to courts. The nursing home staffing case shows how quickly that can unsettle a rule built on broad statutory language. State public health law remains largely intact, but federal health policy now depends more on what Congress writes and less on what agencies can reasonably infer.

References

Agrawal, S., Ross, J. S., & Ramachandran, R. (2024). Implications for public health regulation if Chevron deference is overturned. JAMA, 331(17), 1443-1444. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2024.3654

American Health Care Association v. Kennedy, No. 2:24-CV-114-Z (N.D. Tex. Apr. 7, 2025).

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984).

Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905).

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).

Wilensky, S. E., & Teitelbaum, J. B. (2023). Essentials of health policy and law (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.