In the wake of a flurry of major Supreme Court decisions this week, one of the rulings involved a close personal family member of one of the sitting justices. 

According to USA Today, in the decision that trashed the Chevron precedent, Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the majority opinion even though his mother, Anne Gorsuch, helped put the Chevron precedent into play decades ago.

Anne Gorsuch, for a roughly two-year stint, ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

Her time at the help of the controversial agency was described as "rocky" and full of controversy, as she was routinely attacked by politicians from both sides of the aisle.

What happened?

Anne Gorsuch, who passed away in 2004, was fully convinced that the attacks coming her way were politically motivated.

"Nobody can be that wrong, all that much, all the time," Anne Gorsuch told a 1983 Senate hearing while she was under attack. She would later be forced out of the agency in 1986.

She added, "Personally, I have to finally judge that a great deal of it is political harassment…The thing that makes me very upset is that this type of harassment will probably impede our progress in our goal of cleaning up America."

USA Today noted:

Under Anne Gorsuch, the agency issued a rule that was challenged by environmental groups as insufficiently aggressive against polluters.The case went to the Supreme Court, where a unanimous decision created what’s known as the Chevron precedent – which asked judges to defer to federal agency experts in cases where regulatory law was unclear. Back in the 1980s, those were Anne Gorsuch’s experts, and the ruling was seen as a defeat for environmentalists.

While the Chevron malarky might have been a part of his mother's legacy, Justice Neil Gorsuch held nothing back in describing how horrible it was, calling it a "Goliath of modern administrative law."

It was on Friday that the 6--3 majority high court finally overturned Chevron, marking a massive blow to the administrative state.

Justice Gorsuch's opinion

It was noted that Justice Gorsuch was "almost gleeful" in writing his concurring opinion on overturning Chevron.

"Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss," he wrote. "In doing so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation’s founding."

603 U. S. (2024)
[June 28, 2024] JUSTICE GORSUCH, concurring

pg1: Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss.

pg8: . . . the Constitution promises, the American people are sovereign . . . Unelected judges enjoy no such power.

Read it here:… pic.twitter.com/n7mumfw1o5

— Pilsner 📄 (Gen 1:27 📖) (@ipilsner) July 1, 2024

His mother was the first woman to run the EPA.