Justice Gorsuch’s nomination generated a lot of press about the Chevron doctrine–the idea that, under federal law, courts must defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of a statute that it is charged with enforcing. See e.g. this SCOTUSblog post and this NYTimes article. With Gorsuch confirmed, pundits expect SCOTUS to take on the “administrative state” soon. Looks like SCOW will beat it to the punch at least with respect to courts and administrative agencies in Wisconsin. Yesterday, SCOW granted a petition for review in Tetra Tech EC, Inc v. Wisconsin Department of Revenue and took the unusual step of asking the parties to brief an additional issue. Here it is:
Does the practice of deferring to agency interpretations of statutes comport with Article VII, Section 2 of the Wisconsin Constitution, which vests the judicial power in the unified court system?
