In a closely watched case last term, the high court abandoned a long-standing legal doctrine that gave agencies wide latitude to craft rules even without express direction from Congress. The judges also restricted how certain federal watchdogs can pursue alleged wrongdoers and opened the door for some companies to launch new lawsuits over apparently established government rules, some of them decades old.

Since then, the three separate but intertwined rulings have influenced a flurry of litigation, particularly from conservative and corporate interests that bristle at the power of the federal bureaucracy. Between June and mid-October, the cases considered more than 150 new or ongoing legal challenges, according to court records reviewed by The Washington Post and data compiled by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy group that had urged the Court Supreme to decide differently. . New citations include new and updated lawsuits, briefs, and rulings.

Lawsuits touch almost every aspect of the US economy, especially federal labor law. Major companies, including Amazon and SpaceX, and leading lobby groups for restaurants and other industries have incorporated elements of the new Supreme Court decisions into a series of lawsuits challenging regulations on wages, overtime pay, whistleblower protections or union organizing. court records show. . (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

Lobbying groups for AT&T and Verizon cited the opinions in their campaign to counter federal regulations that would prevent them from interfering with Internet traffic. Airlines including American, Delta and United cited one of the cases to prevent the government from requiring them to disclose baggage fees.

The mounting legal challenges illustrate the tectonic shifts underway in Washington as voters cast ballots in a hotly contested presidential contest.

As he did during his first term, former President Donald Trump has broadly called for the rollback of a wide range of federal regulations on climate, education, health care and labor, arguing that they hinder economic growth. Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, called for new federal initiatives to fight fraud, combat high taxes and lower the costs Americans face for prescriptions and other necessities.

The victor will face key, early decisions about which rules to issue or overturn, and which judges to appoint to adjudicate disputes over them. All of these elections will take place amid a vastly changed legal landscape after the Supreme Court removed a longstanding shield for federal regulation.

For nearly four decades, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council essentially instructed judges to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law, on the grounds that those regulators could best guess the intentions of a Imprecise congress. In June, however, the court struck down that framework, known as the Chevron doctrine, sending shockwaves through the court system.

Republican policymakers soon took advantage of the evolution of their fight against the Biden administration, targeting its climate change initiatives and their protections for transgender students. Major companies have also sought to leverage the rulings to hit back at the government agencies that oversee them.

In October, for example, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of KalshiEx, a betting site that initially tried to allow bets of up to $100 million on the outcome of the presidential election. Regulators saw such bets as an emerging threat to democracy, but judges sided with the company, which argued that Congress never explicitly gave the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the authority to outlaw the practice.

An organization representing insurance marketers sought to capitalize on the ruling in its long-running battle with the Federal Communications Commission over robocalls. After the agency tried to crack down on some of the unwanted, automated contacts, the Insurance Marketing Coalition told a federal judge in August that regulators did not have the blessing of Congress to issue such rules, citing the Supreme Court’s overturn of Chevron.

A conservative-leaning outfit, NCLA has spent years seeking to come down on Chevron. The group served as counsel for Relentless, a fishing company that sued over federal rules that would require such firms to pay for federal monitors. The Supreme Court heard its arguments in tandem with another company, Loper Bright, which charged that Congress never gave the Commerce Department explicit power to require industry-funded surveillance.

“I don’t think there’s been enough time for the effects to really be well understood,” Chenoweth said of the fallout, noting that lower courts have yet to rule on the initial claims brought by Relentless and Loper Bright. But he predicted the cases would have a “disciplinary effect” on regulators more generally.

In the immediate aftermath, some conservative groups and major corporations were especially quick to capitalize on the Supreme Court’s rulings against the Department of Labor, targeting a wide range of rules issued under Biden aimed at protecting workers and their wages.

For years, the Restaurant Law Center has opposed Biden-era rules aimed at increasing wages for tipped workers. But the group, whose board includes executives from Chipotle and Yum! Brands, incorporated the Loper Bright decision into its broad legal strategy in July, leading an appeals court the following month to overturn the administration’s policy.

The decision has left some experts fearful about the future of federal labor law.

“Congress will need to adapt quickly to craft policy that takes this new legal landscape into account,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward.