Lessons for Deference From the Telephone Consumer Protection Act
The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in?McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp.?is ostensibly about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the 1990s-era law that—also ostensibly—makes robocalls and junk faxes illegal. But the opinion’s real importance is to reinforce last year’s decision in?Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. That decision formally overruled?Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, and with it the era of default deference to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
McLaughlin expands Loper Bright’s holding: Courts—not agencies—bear primary responsibility for interpreting statutes, unless the U.S. Congress expressly provides otherwise. Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that “fundamental principles of administrative law establish the proper default rule: In an enforcement proceeding, a district court must independently determine for itself whether the agency’s interpretation of a statute is correct.”