I think it is important to note that the legal principle that allows the FCC to make rulings like this is called Chevron Deference, and many consider it to be under attack.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...
(If you look at the original Chevron decision, they were much more interested in trying to get out of the “understand and make determinations about complex environmental issues” business anyway, more so than the “understand the law” business.)
Postscript: For your next unfairly downvoted reply I recommend that you explain to someone Citizens United was actually a nonprofit trying to air a movie on cable television and was fighting the FEC over it. (Total hackjob of an organization, mind you. But core political speech.) Some facts are unpopular.
On one hand, fair. On the other hand, you can only coast along on the old post-cold war bi-partisan consensus for so long without getting new consensus before institutions lose their legitimacy (you can already see this happening a bit).
We can default back to the last time we had consensus for some things, for some time, but you do need to get it again before big changes happen. If you get to the point where the last time we had consensus is before the majority of the people in the system were alive, you either need to hard pivot your society to focus on ancestor worship, or you need to focus on something you do have consensus on.
This puts the courts in a difficult situation. The answer is often “congress needs to fix this”, but that can’t actually happen.
It's something that US political system allowed to fester for decades, arguably since 70s.
Take the entire situation around abortions. Supreme Court determined that there is a right, based in protection of privacy, that prohibits states from banning abortion before certain date. Congress didn't have to make a law about it, or even add amendment to constitution. So they didn't have to explain anything to their constituents. "It's the court! I can't do anything!" everybody was happy.
Except not. People who opposed it, saw it as undemocratic. Taking controversial issue out of the hands of representatives forever. So they pushed against it, and attempted to circumvent the ruling. Mostly they failed. But they never gave up, and their movement never died down. In fact it only became more and more powerful. And when they finally had favorable judges on the court they finally had their way.
Angering their opponents, who were now using similar "this isn't democratic" arguments. In the end, nobody really won. The only certain result is that people on both sides of political spectrum now have reasons to distrust Supreme Court.
Compare that to the situation in Europe. Lawmakers took their time, but eventually they arrived at set of laws that most of society agrees with, or at very least is able to tolerate.
TLDR: The existing system led to the congress being incapable of making laws. If america is to survive, courts can't keep saving congress from controversial laws.
Management has to be allowed to delegate. Those saying Congress should not be allowed to do so are really just saying they want the government abolished.
The problem is that this device was nothing more than a drawing on a business card sized piece of steel. It amounts to an egregious first amendment violation at the very least.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/federal-jury-convicts-t...
There's nothing earnest or in good faith here, and you can't reasonably make me believe otherwise. The person was trying to skirt the law and got caught.
Or let me put it another way: if this keycard isn't a big deal, why do gun owners care?
This is an objective fact.
> The person was trying to skirt the law and got caught.
What law? The law that says you can't distribute a chart of a lightning link? That's not a real law. The point here is that the ATF created the law out of whole cloth.
> Or let me put it another way: if this keycard isn't a big deal, why do gun owners care?
Are you serious? The guy is going to jail under the charge that he distributed a machine gun, for distributing legal information in a country that has freedom of speech as the first amendment. He didn't even violate ITAR. I have a shirt with the CNC instructions to create a lightning link printed on it. Should I go to prison too?
"First they came for the $some_group..."
Guess what I and almost everyone else doesn’t do: that.
Machine guns aren't evil because they're regulated.
In 1944 hundreds of thousands of liberator pistols were air dropped to the French resistance to fight Axis occupation.
In Myanmar today, 3d printed FGC-9 rifles are being used by rebels to resist a coup staged by the military.
In Ukraine, as I'm sure you're already aware, weaponry donated by NATO and the United States is being used in combination with improvised munitions delivered by drone to resist a large scale genocidal invasion by Russia.
Weapons are tools, no more good or evil than the person wielding the tool. Freedom of information destabilizes monopolies on violence and empowers people to communicate, organize, and defend themselves from aggressors.
> The ATF examined the Auto Key Cards and a firearms enforcement officer was able to remove the pieces of a lightning link from an Auto Key Card using a common Dremel rotary tool in about 40 minutes.
So in effect, the ATF was able to manufacture an unregistered machine gun conversion device from a legal piece of steel with a drawing on it, using tools. Steel is not illegal, nor are drawings. As mentioned by rpmisms, we have a first amendment right to freedom of speech in the United States.
The same thing can be accomplished, arguably more easily, by bending a metal coat hanger into the required shape, but Target isn't being raided by the ATF.
The globalists don't want you to know this, but you can print guns at home. I printed dozens of guns.
Everything I've read about this says it will result in mass deregulation of industries that must be regulated. (Koch Industries for example) In practical terms, in our current world, not in some libertarian-inspired fantasy that doesn't exist today.
There are definitely areas where Chevron deference can "hurt" us--for example political tampering at agencies.. but overall I think we should rely on experts to do the regulating and try to fix the existing system.
On top of that what happened to judicial precedent? Only good when it suits our ends I guess.
https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/1/10/24025127/supreme-court-...
If the courts decide to get rid of that, they're intentionally misinterpreting the laws that congress has passed over that time. They're also effectively rewriting a large fraction of US law, despite the fact that the constitution is carefully designed to prevent such a small group of (unelected or elected) people from modifying US law that quickly, and without safe guards.
The current Supreme Court has repeatedly undermined separation of powers, and they're explicitly doing so against the wishes of the electorate. Their behavior is fundamentally undemocratic.
Correct, because in the United States, our model of government is a Democratic Republic, not a democracy. For all of the flaws of our system of law, the Constitution is considered supreme, and any laws that violate the Constitution are to be considered null and void. The job of the Supreme Court is to decide the Constitutionality of laws.
One interpretation of removing Chevron deference is that it's defacto rewriting law, another is that executive agencies have been doing this for decades already. The truth is probably some mix of the two.
A plain and non-ideological reading of what you typed is that this is a contradiction at best and saying the SCOTUS supersedes the constitution at worst.
Agencies are often wrong and sometimes very seriously so. The FDA trying to take over regulation of tests is another example.
There is a perfectly legitimate view that Chevron deference is - at least in some circumstances - not indefeasible.
But the paradox is that is part of the constitution too. There are several creatures of the constitution that supersede the constitution. Treaties can.
If it were such that individual states with greater agency could negatively impact neighbouring states and in Chevrons original case, environment and agriculture, then it’s a dangerous precedent of opening up states to competitive market at the detriment greater societal impact and responsibilities. Both positive and negative but the incentives are there to push towards later in pursuit of fast profits and deferred responsibilities.
Am I making sense? States can compete for corporate interests, while we know full well who runs the senate: lobbyists with deep pockets.
It is literally the job of Congress to update laws. That they are bad at doing that is not relevant to the place of the Court in the structure of this country's government.
>If the courts decide to get rid of that, they're intentionally misinterpreting the laws that congress has passed over that time.
The opposite of this is true. If the Court decides to jettison Chevron deference (you should look in to why that case is called "Chevron") it means that gasp our legislators have to actually listen to constituents and write laws and not just bet that the executive branch in the next election cycle agrees with them.
Overturning Chevron means federal courts no longer have to give deference to agency experts. Unelected judges will have free rein to impose their own views in these cases.
Nothing about Chevron will force Congress to write more precise laws.
People are not interchangeable: if you take a financial regulatory expert from SEC and move them to FDA and ask them to regulate drug adjuvants, you're not going to get great results. Dropping Chevron would put judges in the position of being experts in all the fields where Congress requires regulation.
Besides, this works in other countries, in the Czech Republic for instance, I'm pretty sure I've seen lawsuits against regulatory agencies here.
Really simple example: Congress passes a law that requires the FAA to regulate the safety of commercial aviation, but doesn't explicitly say "all panels must be bolted to the fuselage".
FAA decides any removable panel must be positively attached to the fuselage using castle nuts and pins or an equivalent design.
Boeing thinks that rule is wrong (overbearing, overreach, poorly conceived, whatever).
Under Chevron, the judge hears both sides, and defers to the FAA on the issue of safety. The law wasn't explicit about design of door panel fasteners, but was clear the FAA should regulate the industry.
Without Chevron, there is no deference to the experts at the FAA. The judge is free to impose their own worldview on the case.
Note that with Chevron in place, the judge can still determine the FAA overreached its authority (like if they decided to regulate car transport on the way to the airport). The judge just can't ignore the presumed expertise of the executive branch in applying details to Congressionally mandated regulation.
Without Chevron, we trade executive expertise for the whims of an unelected judge. While bureaucrats are unelected, they are still beholden to Congress for both funding and legislation allowing their existence in the first place. The President can't simply conjure regulators out of thin air.
Our current Chevron regime works here under our existing set of laws and structures.
Genuinely curious as to why people think this. This is the standard talking point you see about this issue, and it's just not true. Getting rid of Chevron doesn't mean that judges need to become experts in all minutia of a particular field. It means the executive can't liberally interpret statute to their heart's desire. Maybe you mean that you expect more cases to come to the courts if Chevron is dropped, but cases on complex technical matters already come to the courts all the time in all fields. Are you concerned that the volume of cases goes up or something?
As opposed to unelected bureaucrats who serve at the whim of the executive branch and are often political appointees? Do you not remember the meltdown this site had over Trump's FCC commissioner and his views on net neutrality?
If an executive agency steps out of line, Congress can defund it or pass other legislation clarifying their intent.
No such mechanism exists with the federal bench (other than impeachment).
All Chevron does is impose a restriction on the federal courts when deciding cases brought against the executive branch. It doesn't give bureaucrats free rein to do what they want.
In this case, considering AI-generated voices "artificial" for the purposes of applying a law seems obvious enough to me that I don't think the Chevron doctrine would apply, personally.
Yes and it's in cases where a law gives authority and expectations to an agency. In the past, it was left up to experienced and qualified agency specialists to work out how best to implement it because 1) it's their job and 2) because Congress knows it can't write every possible contingency into a law.
Chevron supports this. The SCotUS case is brought by folks who want to shift that determination from agency specialists to judges who don't have the related experience or qualifications. It would effectively allow endless monkey wrenches to be thrown into the oversight process by corporations who aren't keen on oversight.
All correct until this bit. They in fact want to shift it back to congress, who should do a better job in specifying what power they delegate to unelected heads of executive branch agencies.
That is one potential, down-the-road outcome of non-qualified judges being inserted into the process. Stalling oversight is the outcome that dominates all of it tho.
> congress, who should do a better job in specifying what power they delegate to unelected heads of executive branch agencies.
A law with every possible contingency can not be written. It's why Congress signals the desired outcomes the language of the law and expects qualified agency employees to bring those outcomes to fruition.
When Congress does that and there is a dispute, it ultimately falls to judges to adjudicate until Congress can update the law.
> The idea behind such deference is that expert agencies, accountable to an elected president, are better suited than federal judges to make the policy choices that Congress left open.
>At the time of the 1984 Chevron v. NRDC ruling, Doniger notes, it was widely perceived in legal and political circles that judges in the lower federal courts were inappropriately crafting policy by deciding for themselves what certain laws meant, effectively substituting their own ideas for the discernment of agency experts. “So the Supreme Court was basically saying to the lower courts: Stop inserting your own policy preferences under the guise of interpreting the law,” Doniger says.
> Now the Supreme Court could reopen the door for federal judges to decide how executive-branch agencies should go about their daily business whenever Congress has used ambiguous language
This court has been very consistent about that and we’re going to have it until the 2050s so get with the program
I'm not sure where you see how Chevron skips those components. Congress gives authority to an agency and indicates what it wants done. Chevron says the agency (using qualified agency specialists) are who Congress intends to work out the many, many details that are impossible to write into effective law.
That's not entirely accurate. The doctrine only applies to ambiguous statutes and it's really that an agency has the authority to decide what Congress meant when it wrote them. The question is whether an agency can interpret what Congress intends for it to do, or if that should be left to Congress for clarification.
You make it sound like Chevron is the underpinning for execution of all statutory authority, and it isn't. It's an edge-case doctrine.
Again, that's still not my reading of it. The determination is still done by the agency, right? This is purely about the recourse of folks who don't like what the agency has decided and the futility of appealing it or not.
I feel like both you here and the original poster I replied to are implicitly saying that an agency only truly has the ability to implement laws based on expert qualifications if there's no "check" on them. But this isn't really true for Congress, is it? They make laws around specific topics based on expert input all the time, whether it be around trade or cryptography or whatever, while still having the courts sit above them with the ability to hear out someone who thinks the law is unconstitutional. How is this any different?
It's true that without Chevron, there's more freedom to appeal an agency's decisions. But as a general principle (i.e. not this specific moment in time but say 20 years from now), it seems just as likely to me that an agency is politicized, paid for by corporate donors, etc, as the courts, so it's not clear to me that an un-appealable agency decision is better than one that can be appealed.
Edge cases make great news, but I suspect in our sprawling administrative framework of government agencies, the vast, vast majority of interpretation of laws is done by experts, is relatively fair, and has gone and will continue to go unchallenged. So I don't think the characterization that "interpretation of laws by agencies will move to judges from experts" is fair, on the whole. Maybe only on the controversial parts where there are interests on all sides, but then maybe that's a fair place to have that, too.
- SCOTUS, in a judgement not yet issued or rendered (and thus currently wholly imagined by me).- Strict textualist judge that really loves his new RV.
> Here are some potential counterfactual arguments that the Chevron doctrine does not allow the FCC from regulating AI robocalls:
- The Communications Act of 1934, which gives the FCC authority to regulate communications by wire and radio, does not explicitly grant the FCC authority to regulate AI technology. Since AI was not envisioned at the time the Act was passed, one could argue that Congress did not intend to delegate regulatory authority over AI to the FCC. Therefore, the FCC's regulation of AI robocalls would fail the first step of the Chevron test as not being in accordance with clear congressional intent.
- Even if one argues that the FCC's authority to regulate "communications by wire and radio" could be broadly interpreted to include AI communications technologies, the FCC's specific regulation of AI robocalls could still be seen as an unreasonable interpretation of the Act under the second step of Chevron. Given the lack of explicit mention of AI in the Act, a court may find that the FCC's assertion of authority to regulate AI robocalls through additional restrictions beyond what applies to standard robocalls is an unreasonable stretch of its delegated authority.
- The nature of AI technologies is such that they raise novel issues that were not contemplated at the time of the Communications Act. Heavy-handed regulation of emerging AI technologies by the FCC without clear congressional authorization could stifle innovation. Under these circumstances, one could argue that deference to the FCC's interpretation of its authority is unwarranted.
- Kagi FastGPT
So, an agency says you broke the law.
You take the agency to court.
The court defers to the agency.
You’ve been denied your day in court.
The agency: we have determined that this action by company X is against our policies.
The courts: Congress said that the agency decides the policy. Even if we think an action is inside policy, the agency has Congressional authority to change the policy to put the contested action firmly outside policy.
The company should therefore lobby Congress to regulate the agency. Maybe you could make a case about retroactive or post-facto laws, but I suspect the company is not usually claiming that they abide by the letter of the policy, but that the policy is outside the agency's powers.
Ending the ability of federal agencies to write useful regulations means unregulated spam robocalls! It's the dream of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Rich people are unbounded. They would say we don't need regulations about food safety written by those ninnys in the federal government.
In short, good. How many here can even map the entire list of all the agencies and corresponding rules, recommendations, and guidance that has the weight of law.
<< It will cause chaos and disaster if congress has to make regulations for every little thing.
Free people pull in all sorts of directions. Its going to be ok.
We (unfortunately) need credit now. And we (unfortunately) cannot depend on congress to do anything.
Prior courts said that they were going to use Chevron deference when interpreting the laws that congress passed, since it keeps them simpler, and allows the executive branch to apply common sense (while retaining safeguards in case agencies overstep their bounds).
The current court has repeatedly decided to arbitrarily reinterpret settled portions of the law by overturning existing rulings. Getting rid of chevron deference would be a continuation of that, though on a scale that probably exceeds the fraction of the US legal code the court has actually read.
The current courts' actions are unprecedented in the US. The Supreme Court is not supposed to overturn prior Supreme Court rulings, except in exceptional circumstances. They even went so far as to mostly overturn the 4th amendment when they eliminated the right to privacy as part of the Roe v. Wade ruling.
At this point they're looking more like an unchecked legislative branch than a judicial body. This is the reason they are wildly unpopular. They understand this, and they've explicitly said they don't plan to follow the wishes of the electorate. On top of that they've done a lot to undermine US election integrity with recent rulings.
However, given ongoing demographic shifts, there's a good chance they'll have to cope with a unified executive and legislative branch. At that point, expect court packing or impeachments. The only other path I see is some sort of apartheid-style setup designed to ignore the votes of anyone that's urban, educated, female, minority, or not elderly.
Maybe the thing that guards against tyranny is that Congress can override them (by passing a law) if regulators screw up badly enough?
At least, in theory.
Just like, in theory, the people could elect a better Congress.
Congress can't even handle managing fiscal policy sanely, and that's the one job they can't delegate.
If every little thing now becomes an open question of law, we exist in a vacuum of power where courts arbitrarily decide all sorts of things, giving massive amounts of power to the government.
Uncertainty breeds timidness. In order for people to have freedom to act, they need to know in advance what is legal and what is not.
> a committee of leading experts from the private sector and the advocacy side of any given subject matter weigh in yearly on any topic before regulations can be changed
This is part of the design of regulatory agencies. Rulings like this come after an extensive process of consultation and public comment.
They could bundle these up regularly.
To be very specific: For each new chemical discovered or manuf'd, environmental protection laws would need to be amended by parliament. It is madness to think about.
Wishing the Congress had to study and pass legislation for all enforcement and regulation of society is tantamount to accelerationism.
We are a divided house.
> Republicans on Wednesday blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in exchange and severely jeopardizing President Biden’s push to replenish the war chests of American allies before the end of the year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/politics/senate-ukrain...
The Democrats said okay. Senators Sinema, Lankford (literally the 2nd most conservative senator according to his own congressional page), and Murphy spent the last couple months negotiating a new bill.
Trump then tanked it saying it would help Biden:
> Republican front-runner Donald Trump said he wants to be held responsible for blocking a bipartisan border security bill in the works in the Senate as President Biden seeks emergency authority to rein in a record surge of unauthorized border crossings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/27/trump-bor...
Now the GOP house refuses to bring the bill to the floor:
> House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson declared it "dead on arrival" if it reaches his chamber.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/04/1226427234/senate-border-deal...
We were a divided government when McConnell was Senate majority leader and Pelosi was House majority leader and still able to pass legislation.
What we have now is a House run by clowns.
See also the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform debacle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Oppo...
It would be literally impossible for congress to rule on every nuanced thing that Chevron allows agencies to do. Saying "congress should take care of it" shows either an intentional disregard for the roles agencies and their experts play, or a complete misunderstanding of the power it grants to federal agencies.
"It breeds tyranny" is absolutely ridiculous. When agencies rule in a manner people find unjust, they sue and win or lose in a court of law based on the content of the policy. It also gives congress a chance to rule on "big ticket" things that do need addressing without causing an absolute standstill having to rule on something as mundane as what the legal weight and length limit should be each season for catching a salmon from federal land in Montana.
We have departments that have traditionally been staffed with SMEs to make these rulings and decisions on behalf of congress, who legislates their existence and budget.
In other words, why would an agency be more persuadable than congress?
The alternative is requiring Congress to write every single rule explicitly and pass a law adapting to any change in circumstance or technology. In practice this means "no regulation" because Congress is pretty slow and adding more detail would only make them slower.
If and when agencies overstep that gets resolved through legal challenges.
Of course government is incompetent and can't be reasonable in regulation? Is that the idea? How dare these corporations not be given minutely detailed regulations that they can easily tear apart to pollute to their convenience? You mean you want REASON in government and regulation?
>Do you think this is an unreasonable interpretation? Or should Congress be required to list exactly what technologies are prohibited in this context and update that list every time something new comes around?
Not OP but this is the right question to ask. My answer is yes, congress is quite literally required to update statute to reflect modern technology (ensuring it conforms to the founding principles of course).
> The Commission shall prescribe regulations to implement the requirements of this subsection. In implementing the requirements of this subsection, the Commission — (A) shall consider prescribing regulations to allow businesses to avoid receiving calls made using an artificial or prerecorded voice to which they have not given their prior express consent; […]
Who do you think determines whether or not a particular voice is an 'artificial' voice? The FCC or the Courts? If it's the former, that's Chevron deference. You haven't quoted any legislation which expressly confers power on the FCC to interpret the law (which is typically the province of courts) and determine themselves whether or not a particular 'voice' is an 'artificial' ... 'voice'. But the legislation, at least arguably, impliedly confers that power per Chevron - like in Chevron, it was within the EPA's power to determine what a "source" of pollution was.
Compare Australia, where Chevron deference was rejected as forming part of Australian administrative law (Enfield v Development Assessment Commission (2000) 199 CLR 135), it would be a question for the courts whether the agency was authorised to make this regulation, without deferring to the agency's interpretation. The agency does it's best to conform with the law, but it's ultimately the courts that say what the law is.