After the US Supreme Court curtailed the powers of federal agencies in two cases last week, progressive critics predictably complained that the decisions favored “big business,” “corporate interests” and “the wealthy and powerful.”
He cited cases involving a veteran seeking disability benefits and an immigrant fighting to remain in the country. “Sophisticated entities and their lawyers may be able to keep pace with rule changes affecting their rights and responsibilities,” Gorsuch noted; they can lobby for “reasonable” agency interpretations and “even capture the agencies that issue them.”They are “the ones who suffer the worst kind of regulatory whiplash” when the law changes according to bureaucratic whims.
The petitioner in that case was a hedge-fund manager who was accused of lying to clients and inflating his fees.affected people of modest means facing more dubious allegations. The SEC, Gorsuch noted, sought to “penalize citizens without a jury, without an independent judge, and under procedures foreign to our courts.”