{"id":2897,"date":"2026-08-21T16:59:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T20:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/?page_id=2897"},"modified":"2026-08-21T16:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T20:59:15","slug":"dodging-chevrons-redux-the-proper-place-for-state-farm-arbitrary-and-capricious","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print\/volume-24-issue-1-winter-2026\/dodging-chevrons-redux-the-proper-place-for-state-farm-arbitrary-and-capricious\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodging Chevron\u2019s Redux: The Proper Place for State Farm Arbitrary and Capricious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Loper Bright<\/em> instructed courts to rework how they review challenges to agency decision making and no longer defer to agency construction of statutes. But one critical question remains\u2014how and when courts should engage in a different type of review: the deferential \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d standard. In applying this standard post-<em>Loper Bright<\/em>, courts face a dual risk. First, they may be too hard on government agencies and end up substituting the policy judgments of the court for those of agency experts; <em>State Farm<\/em> arbitrariness review should be highly deferential. But second, if they engage in this deferential review too early in the process\u2014merging it together with de novo legal review\u2014they may be committing the sin of <em>Chevron<\/em> and deferring to agencies on legal questions of statutory construction. To avoid this pitfall, this paper lays out a simple formula for courts, combining a decades-long review of statutory and judicial history with an application of the Supreme Court\u2019s most recent decisions.<\/p>\n<p>This article makes two arguments. First, leaning on cases from before the enactment of the Administrative Procedure Act to the present, this paper argues that State Farm arbitrariness review should be extremely deferential to agency decision making. So long as the agency\u2019s action is \u201creasonable and reasonably explained,\u201d then courts have no role in substituting their own judgment for that of the agency\u2019s. Second, the Supreme Court was clear in both <em>Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo<\/em> and an even-more recent case, <em>Seven County Infrastructure v. Eagle County<\/em>, that de novo legal review and deferential arbitrariness review are two distinct and different steps. If a court conflates the two steps\u2014and some have\u2014it will smuggle deference into legal review and risk a <em>Chevron<\/em> redux.<\/p>\n<p>Using hypotheticals and real-life cases, including <em>Loper Bright<\/em> and its sister case <em>Relentless<\/em> on remand, this paper establishes a clear path for courts to follow. This paper\u2019s recommendation might seem paradoxical: courts should both go easier on agencies when reviewing discretionary decision making for arbitrariness, while being stricter when analyzing whether an agency is behaving lawfully. But this is consistent with the Supreme Court\u2019s guidance\u2014courts must sharply distinguish these two steps and their differing standards of review.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/08\/24.1-Bolinder.pdf\">Continue reading Dodging <em>Chevron<\/em>\u2019s Redux: The Proper Place for <em>State Farm<\/em> Arbitrary and Capricious<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Loper Bright instructed courts to rework how they review challenges to agency decision making and no longer defer to agency construction of statutes. But one critical question remains\u2014how and when courts should engage in a different type of review: the deferential \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d standard. In applying this standard post-Loper Bright, courts face a dual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":2883,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2897","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2898,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2897\/revisions\/2898"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}