The end of the Chevron deference is already impacting whistleblower award cases. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recently reversed and remanded an appeals court decision in an IRS whistleblower case where a whistleblower is challenging the denial of their award application.

On June 28, SCOTUS overruled a long-standingcase requiring the courts to defer to agency interpretation of ambiguous terms in statutes. SCOTUS’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, reversed Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which was decided by the Court in 1984, and held that courts are no longer compelled to defer to agency expertise when interpreting statutes. In the aftermath of this ruling, the Supreme Court also reversed and remanded to the D.C. Circuit a whistleblower’s petition in an IRS tax whistleblower case.

In Loper, Chief Justice Robertsasserted in the majority opinion that “the Court does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework.” Previously, in Chevron, the Supreme Court had held that a government agency must conform to clear legislative statements but, the agency is given deference in ambiguous situations within a reasonable interpretation. A two-step test under Chevron was adopted by the Court to determine (1) if the language in a regulatory rule is ambiguous and (2) if the agency's interpretation of that law is reasonable. If the answer to both questions is yes, the Court ruled that it should defer to the...

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