What is clear is that the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute holds extensive authority to make the decision. This power can feel overwhelming, leaving many airmen confused and lost on their path to obtaining a medical certificate. With the recent overturning of a landmark administrative law case, many pilots are revisiting the FAA’s agency power for the first time in decades and asking: has anything changed in the aeromedical division with the new developments?
The Chevron Doctrine & the Loper Decision
The United States Supreme Court decided Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. in 1984. In Chevron, the issue was whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) interpretation of a “stationary source” in the amended Clean Air Act was correct. In answering that question, the Court established the Chevron doctrine, which governed how a reviewing court examined a federal agency’s interpretation of the statutes that the agency (the EPA, FAA, Department of Commerce, etc.) administers. The Chevron Doctrine implemented a two-step framework:1
The “reviewing court must first assess ‘whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue.’ If, and only if, congressional intent is ‘clear,’ that is the end of the inquiry.” In other words, Congress’ clear intent behind the statute is adopted.
If, however, “the court determines that ‘the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue’ at hand, the court must defer to the agency’s interpretation if it ‘is based on a permissible construction of the statute.’” In short, the agency’s interpretation of the statute controls, even if the reviewing court concludes the agency’s interpretation may not be the best reading.
The Chevron Doctrine’s reign ended in June of 2024 with the decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The Supreme Court’s Opinion in Loper provided a thorough examination of the history of agency authority in the US, the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act (the “APA”), and the reasoning behind the Chevron Doctrine. In summary, the Supreme Court concluded:2
Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation, while ensuring that the agency acts within it. But courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.
What Do Chevron and Loper Have to Do with Pilot Medical Certification?
The Administrator of the FAA is given statutory authority under the United States Code to issue airman certificates. Under this authority, the FAA has enacted regulations. Specifically, regulations related to airman medical certification, including the delegation of the Administrator’s authority to the Federal Air Surgeon (“FAS”) and the explicit medical standards, are outlined in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 67. When a pilot is denied based on the FAA’s interpretation of these statutory and regulatory standards, it can be understandably frustrating as the language used as the basis for the denial is often vague and with little to no explanation from the FAA. Given the recent Loper decision, many pilots are wondering whether the FAA’s interpretation of the medical standards in relation to their medical case will be granted the same level of deference it held during the Chevron Doctrine years?
Unfortunately, the language in both the statutes and regulations suggests the FAA will continue to have broad interpretive authority in medical cases. Loper proclaims that agencies are no longer given deference for their interpretations of ambiguous statutes. But Loper still requires that “when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation.” The FAA’s medical certification statutes, such as 49 U.S.C. §§ 44702 & 44703, place medical certification within the Administrator’s purview.
These specific delegations suggest Congress intended to place the Administrator, and by regulatory delegation, the FAS, directly in the position of the ultimate decision maker for medical certification, not the courts. Furthermore, it is at best unclear whether other legal precedent, such as Auer v. Robbins, Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., or Kisor v. Wilkie,3 which direct courts to give deference to an agency’s reasonable reading of its own genuinely ambiguous regulations, are overruled by the Loper decision. Thus, it appears that Loper’s decision will not be the broad overhaul in medical certification that many thought, at least initially.
