Last year, the City of Angels experienced Hell when the wildfires tore through its hillsides. More than five months after the flames died down, however, homeowners wanting to rebuild their lives have come across a new devil—a bureaucracy that has only approved a handful of building permits during the first half of the year, a staggering lack of competence in a city and state that considers itself to be on the cutting-edge.
Even if homeowners get through local agencies, however, a larger, more powerful administrative entity looms: the California Coastal Commission, a bureaucratic leviathan that holds so much power in court that liberal California Governor Gavin Newsom has had to issue multiple executive orders suspending its permitting requirements. That authority looms as a potential obstacle to recovery efforts because state courts, bound by deference doctrines, have relinquished their role as a meaningful check on the agency’s reach.
The Coastal Commission insists it won’t hinder the post-fire recovery, but the commission’s true power lies not in the paperwork, but in its authority to interpret the Coastal Act, law that governs land use and environmental protection along California’s coastline. That authority has been supercharged by a legal mechanism that tilts the playing field of the courts in its favor: judicial deference.
This is not an accident of history, nor an inevitable feature of the administrative state. Under modern judicial deference doctrines, courts have been instructed not to interpret the law, but to accept how agencies interpret it. The result is a courtroom where neutrality is surrendered and bureaucratic dominance prevails—where the government enjoys a built-in advantage, and judges, rather than checking administrative overreach, validate it. In this tilted system, agencies face fewer constraints when crafting regulations, denying permits, or expanding their jurisdiction well beyond any legislative mandate.
While courts in other states have peeled back this unjust advantage for government bureaucrats another venue for reform lies in democratic institutions—specifically, state legislatures. A growing number of states have begun to reject this judicial deference outright, reclaiming the judiciary’s role as a check on unelected bureaucrats and restoring the primacy of state lawmakers. That movement has been guided in part by legislation developed by the Goldwater Institute, where I work. These reforms redraw the boundary between state power and individual liberty—reaffirming that agencies serve the people, not the other way around.
In 2019, Arizona became the first state to eliminate judicial deference by statute. “In a proceeding brought by or against the regulated party,” the Arizona law declared, “the court shall decide all questions of law, including the interpretation of a constitutional or statutory provision or a rule adopted by an agency, without deference to any previous determination that may have been made on the question by the agency.” With a single sentence, Arizona reaffirmed the judiciary’s supremacy and stripped interpretive power from unelected bureaucrats. The effect was immediate: one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions gained even more momentum.
Arizona’s reform did not remain an outlier for long. Florida, Wisconsin, Georgia (in tax cases), and Tennessee soon followed, with Florida embedding this reform into its constitution. Over the past year, more states—Kentucky, Nebraska, Indiana, and Idaho—have also passed laws rejecting judicial deference. The trend is unmistakable. What began as a juridical doctrine interpreted through the lens of federal and state administrative law has become a legislative campaign to grant equal footing to the people agencies are supposed to serve and protect.
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Are Democrats abandoning Newsom’s “California Way”? Why President Trump’s tax on remittances is a bad idea Past public policy makes today’s crises more costly Proposed I-5 express lanes would help Southern California’s drivers and economy Tariffs on medicines will make Californians’ lives even more unaffordable Crucially, this movement isn’t just durable—it’s popular. Many of these reforms passed with overwhelming bipartisan support; some were even ratified directly by voters. Their appeal crosses ideological lines because the issue isn’t partisan—it’s structural. What’s at stake is who interprets the law: neutral courts, or self-interested agencies.Judicial deference has corroded the constitutional framework meant to hold our government accountable. But legislatures across the country are beginning to push back. If California is serious about helping homeowners rebuild—and about restoring a meaningful check on executive power—it should join the movement to end judicial deference. The people deserve a fighting chance when they go up against the administrative state. That means ensuring that all people receive a fair hearing in court, not a fixed system designed to benefit government bureaucrats.
Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute.
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