It is important to remember that removing the Chevron defense is not some unknown situation we've never seen before. It is a return to the status quo from before that case, and that was not a situation where every last regulation was instantly tied up in litigation on the theory that when Congress said "set just and reasonable price limits on prisoner comms" they actually meant "do nothing unless every sentence from the regulatory agency has been reviewed by the Supreme Court". The higher courts are all rate-limited by their time and after an initial burst of relitigation on the limits of regulation, we're going to settle into a status quo where federal agencies still have reasonable abilities to implement Congressional dictates, because the higher courts are going to start to refuse to hear cases that are clearly just "industry does not like being regulated in clear compliance with Congressional mandate".

A prison telco can bring any suit they like, but it's not like the removal of the Chevron defense requires the court to accept the case and laboriously work out an exact definition just because the prison telco wants them to. Courts aren't going to want to do this, especially the higher ones.

> It is a return to the status quo from before that case...

No; Chevron was a formalization of the status quo, not a change to it.

> the higher courts are going to start to refuse to hear cases that are clearly just "industry does not like being regulated in clear compliance with Congressional mandate"

Not when a single-judge jurisdiction in Northern Texas keeps happily issuing nationwide injunctions against things he doesn't like. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/07/texas-abortion-drugs...

The courts themselves have also changed. In particular, the Supreme Court has been overwhelmingly captured by one political party, and a Circuit Court that is extremely disposed towards business interests. There is every reason to think that the courts will hear cases "just because industry does not like being regulated in clear compliance with Congressional mandate".

The suit won't happen instantly, but an injunction can be granted extremely fast. That restores the status quo ante, and gives time to shop for a jurisdiction that will find in their favor. It may take years for that to work its way up to the Supreme Court, but that's to their advantage.

> It is a return to the status quo

No, it isn't because we've had 40 years of Congress writing laws assuming Chevron deference. If you're a programmer of any kind, think of it like one of our constraints or preconditions that you've built your entire software stack on suddenly changes or is removed.

Imagine your server was built assuming all packets would arrive in order because the networking layer beneath you guaranteed that. Now it doesn't.

> because the higher courts are going to start to refuse to hear cases

So the only court with discretion as to whether they want to hear a case or not is the Supreme Court. Every other court must hear a case brought to them, even if it's just to dismiss it, which they need to issue a ruling for.

> A prison telco can bring any suit they like, but it's not like the removal of the Chevron defense requires the court to accept the case

With Chevron, the courts would simply say "by Supreme Court precedent, we have to defer to Federal agencies on any ambiguous legislative language". That's quite literally what "deference" means.

Now they don't.

So a district court has the authority to rule on matters they previously didn't and we've seen courts do just that for things the judge simply doesn't like.

Worse, there's not even a statute of limitations on challenging Federal regulations anymore, thanks to Corner Post [1]. Previously there was a 6 year period from instituting a rule to challenge it. Now it's 6 years from when the injury began, which means you can challenge a century old rule by simply starting an LLC, knowing that the rule exists, and then saying you've suffered injury. That's not an exaggeration.

You also do that in a favorable jurisdiction to get a favorable judge to block the ruling. This is what happens in Texas. Previously most of the rulings friendly to patent holders came out of one court with one judge from the Eastern District of Texas. Now a lot of issues are coming from one judge in the Northern District of Texas.

Both of these courts are in the Fifth Circuit, which itself tends to be friendly to such causes.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_Post,_Inc._v._Board_of_...

Of course it’s still going to happen. Lawyers will find the most Fox News brain rotted free market conservative judge they can find and get them to take the case, just like what happened with mifepristone, and tie up every single piece of regulation because it’s cheap for them to do.

It’ll just be arbitrary regulation by whoever is least qualified to decide policy. The courts are the new regulators.

I think Chevron is a little different and one level higher. Courts would now rule on if price is a question of justice and reasonability.