Letter to The Honorable Isabella Casillas Guzman, Administrator (July 10, 2024)

Summary

The House Committee on Small Business and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability write, in a letter dated July 10, 2024, to Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman of the United States Small Business Administration about Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The letter states that the Supreme Court decision precludes courts from deferring to agency interpretations of the statutes they administer, and that the Court overruled Chevron. The Committees ask the agency to answer no later than July 24, 2024, with lists of pending challenges, rules, rulemakings, adjudications, enforcement actions and judicial decisions that may be affected. The signature block names Roger Williams, Chairman of the Committee on Small Business, and James Comer, Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

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Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: 2024 07 10 Housesbc Majority To Sba Letter To Sba Re Loper Bright V Raimondo
Date: 2024-07-10
Case: 2024 07 10 Housesbc Majority To Sba Letter To Sba Re Loper Bright V Raimondo

Cite this document

“Letter to The Honorable Isabella Casillas Guzman, Administrator (July 10, 2024).” Original at smallbusiness.house.gov, dated 2024-07-10. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/2024-07-10-2024-07-10-housesbc-majority-to-sba-letter-to-sba-re-loper-bright-v-raimondo/, SHA-256 ff83a0175cc3d4e868e17b93a9f42b504c464a90855c636335dcbd9e869f1e43.

Full text

July 10, 2024

The Honorable Isabella Casillas Guzman
Administrator
United States Small Business Administration
409 3rd Street, SW
Washington, DC 20416

Dear Administrator Guzman:

The House Committee on Small Business and House Committee on Oversight and
Accountability (the Committees) write to call to your attention Loper Bright Enterprises v.
Raimondo, a recent Supreme Court decision that precludes courts from deferring to agency
interpretations of the statutes they administer.1 In its decision, the Court overruled Chevron
U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), which had allowed
courts to defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. By allowing such deference, the
Court in Chevron upset the founders’ careful separation of powers, permitting courts to abdicate
the judicial role granted exclusively to them through Article III of the Constitution and enabling
the Executive to usurp the legislative authority granted exclusively to Congress through Article I.
Unsurprisingly, Chevron unleashed decades of successively broader, more costly and more
invasive assertions of agency power over citizens’ lives, liberty and property, as agencies
adopted expansive interpretations of assertedly ambiguous statutes, demanding courts defer to
them.

Perhaps no administration has gone as far as President Biden’s to found sweeping and
intrusive agency dictates on such questionable assertions of agency authority. The Biden
Administration has promulgated far more major rules, imposing far more costs and paperwork
burdens, than either of its recent predecessor administrations.2 Many of these rules—such as
those promulgated to impose President Biden’s climate, energy and Environment, Social and
Governance (ESG) agendas—have been based on aggressive interpretations of statutes enacted
by Congress years and even decades ago, before many issues against which the Biden
administration has sought to deploy them were even imagined.

The expansive administrative state Chevron deference encouraged has undermined our
system of government, overburdening our citizenry and threatening to overwhelm the founders’
system of checks and balances. Thankfully, the Court in Loper Bright has now corrected its

1
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. ___ (2024).
2
See, e.g., Burdensome Regulations: Examining the Biden Administration’s Failure to Consider Small Businesses:
Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Small Business, 118th Cong. (May 22, 2024) (statement of Dan Goldbeck, Director
of Regulatory Policy, American Action Forum), available at
https://www.americanactionforum.org/testimony/burdensome-regulations-examining-the-biden-administrations-
failure-to-consider-small-businesses/.
The Honorable Isabella Casillas Guzman
July 10, 2024
Page 2 of 4

Chevron error, reaffirming that “‘[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial
department to say what the law is.’” 603 U.S. at ___ (slip op. at 7-8) (quoting Marbury v.
Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803)). This long-needed reversal should stem the vast tide of
federal agencies’ overreach. Given the Biden Administration’s track record, however, the
Committees are compelled to underscore the implications of Loper Bright and remind you of the
limitations it has set on your authority.

As the Committees of jurisdiction overseeing your agency, we assure you we will
exercise our robust investigative and legislative powers not only to reassert forcefully our Article
I responsibilities, but to ensure the Biden Administration respects the limits placed on its
authority by the Court’s Loper Bright decision. Accordingly, to assist in this effort, please
answer the following no later than July 24, 2024:

1. Please provide the following concerning agency legislative rules proposed or
promulgated since January 20, 2021, identifying in each relevant listing the rule or
rulemaking and agency statutory interpretation concerned:

a. A list of all pending judicial challenges to final agency rules that may be
impacted by the Court’s Loper Bright decision.

b. A list of all final agency rules not yet challenged in court that may be
impacted by the Court’s Loper Bright decision if they are so challenged.

c. A list of all pending agency rulemakings in which the agency is relying on an
agency interpretation of statutory authority that might have been eligible for
Chevron deference prior to the Court’s decision in Loper Bright.

2. Please provide the following concerning agency adjudications initiated or completed
since January 20, 2021, identifying in each relevant listing the adjudication and
agency statutory interpretation concerned:

a. A list of all pending judicial challenges to final agency adjudications that may
be impacted by the Court’s Loper Bright decision.

b. A list of all final agency adjudications not yet challenged in court that may be
impacted by the Court’s Loper Bright decision if they are so challenged.

c. A list of all pending agency adjudications in which the agency is relying on an
agency interpretation of statutory authority that might have been eligible for
Chevron deference prior to the Court’s decision in Loper Bright.

3. Please provide the following concerning enforcement actions brought by the agency
in court since January 20, 2021, identifying in each relevant listing the agency
statutory interpretation sought to be enforced:
The Honorable Isabella Casillas Guzman
July 10, 2024
Page 3 of 4

a. A list of all pending enforcement actions in which the agency is relying on an
agency interpretation of statutory authority that might have been eligible for
Chevron deference prior to the Court’s decision in Loper Bright.

b. A list of all concluded enforcement actions in which the court deferred under
Chevron to an agency interpretation of statutory authority as a basis for its
judgment against a non-agency party.

4. Please provide the following concerning agency interpretive rules proposed or issued
since January 20, 2021, identifying in each relevant listing the statutory authority the
rule interprets and the agency statutory interpretation set forth in the rule:

a. A list of all proposed or final agency guidance documents or other documents
or statements of the agency containing interpretive rules likely to lead to—

i. an annual effect on the economy of $100,000,000 or more;

ii. a major increase in costs or prices for consumers, individual industries,
Federal, State, local, or Tribal government agencies, or geographic
regions; or

iii. significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment,
productivity, innovation, public health and safety, or the ability of
United States-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based
enterprises in domestic and export markets.

b. A list of all proposed or final agency guidance documents or other documents
or statements of the agency containing interpretive rules related to—

i. novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates or the
President’s priorities; or

ii. other significant regulatory issues not already identified in response to
Request 4(a) above.

5. Please provide the following concerning judicial decisions in cases to which your
agency has been a party since the Supreme Court issued its Chevron decision in 1984,
identifying in each relevant listing the statutory authority the agency interpreted and
the agency statutory interpretation upheld:

a. A list of all judicial decisions not ultimately overturned by a higher court in
which the court deferred under Chevron to the agency’s interpretation of a
statute.
The Honorable Isabella Casillas Guzman
July 10, 2024
Page 4 of 4

To schedule the delivery of responsive documents or ask any related follow-up questions,
please contact Committee on Small Business Majority Staff at (202) 225-5821 or Committee on
Oversight and Accountability Majority staff at (202) 225-5074. The Committee on Small
Business has broad authority to investigate “problems of all types of small business” under
House Rule X. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight
committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any
matter” at “any time” under House Rule X. Thank you in advance for your cooperation with this
inquiry.

Sincerely,

____________________________ ____________________________
Roger Williams James Comer
Chairman Chairman
Committee on Small Business Committee on Oversight and Accountability

cc: The Honorable Nydia M. Velázquez, Ranking Member
Committee on Small Business

The Honorable Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member
Committee on Oversight and Accountability

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