Biden’s gameplan against tech giants faces new legal dangers (Cristiano Lima-Strong and Eva Dou, July 5, 2024, Washington Post)
The Biden administration’s aggressive attempt to regulate tech and telecom giants like Google, Meta and Verizon has relied on the power of federal agencies, which have proposed sweeping rules for the internet age amid inaction in Congress.The dynamic has granted outsize influence to enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission, among other agencies, who have pressed to rein in alleged misconduct by industry titans.
The strategy is now under threat after the Supreme Court curtailed agencies’ powers in a landmark ruling, overturning a decades-old legal precedent giving agencies greater leeway to interpret ambiguous federal laws. The court’s decision Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo last week, striking down a principle known as the Chevron deference, has given business and industry groups ammunition to thwart tighter tech regulations proposed by the administration — imperiling some of the most significant actions ever by the U.S. government to check the world’s most powerful companies. If they succeed in slowing regulation, it could put the United States further behind its counterparts in Europe, who have moved more swiftly to set new rules.
the entire argument–that it’s so much easier to just impose laws via the Executive branch than to hash them out in the Legislature–is self-indicting.