The U.S. Supreme Court’s burial of the Chevron doctrine, which invited judges to defer to federal agencies in interpreting the law, will help farmers and ranchers whipsawed by regulations, according to farm groups.

The court’s 6-3 ruling will restrain agencies from taking actions not clearly authorized by Congress, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

“Long-term, this decision will impact almost every regulation that NCBA has worked on,” the association’s chief counsel, Mary-Thomas Hart, said in a statement.

The ruling, issued June 28, overturned a 1984 high court decision instructing lower courts to accept how federal agencies interpreted “ambiguous” laws.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the doctrine conflicted with the Administrative Procedure Act and Marbury v. Madison, an 1803 decision that laid the foundation for judicial review of laws.

By surrendering their duty to interpret the law, judges gave agencies the license to change regulations as they saw fit, leaving the regulated in “an eternal fog of uncertainty,” Roberts wrote.

“Chevron proved to be fundamentally misguided,” the opinion reads.

Roberts was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.

The Supreme Court hasn’t cited Chevron in a decision since 2016. A rule requiring Atlantic herring fishermen to pay for observers to monitor catches presented the court with a chance to put the doctrine to rest.

In a concurring opinion, Thomas called the Chevron doctrine a “40-year misadventure” that gave the executive branch powers the Constitution assigns to the courts.

In another concurring opinion, Gorsuch wrote the doctrine gave power to influential lobbyists at the expense of “ordinary people.”

“They are the ones who suffer the worst kind of regulatory whiplash Chevron invites,” he wrote.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayer and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. In the dissent, Kagan scorned the majority for discarding a cornerstone of administrative law.

“It has been applied in thousands of judicial decisions,” she wrote. “It has become part of the warp and woof of modern government.”

The ruling places the court at the “administrative apex” as agencies, staffed by experts, try to carry out laws such as the Endangered Species Act and address issues such as climate change, Kagan wrote.

“Agencies know these programs inside-out,” she wrote, “courts do not.”

The majority said they respect agencies, but when it comes to interpreting the law, judges are the experts. Judges should determine the law, not let pass what’s merely “permissible,” according to the majority.

The ruling was the one sought by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the American Farm Bureau, the National Pork Producer’s Council, the North American Meat Institute and the Agricultural Retailers Association.

The groups co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief stating regulations reached “every nook and cranny” of their members’ businesses. Chevron put a heavy thumb on the scales of justice, favoring regulators, they wrote.

The groups pointed to the changing definitions of “waters of the United States” as an example of regulations that change, even if the underlying law doesn’t.

Farmers have been caught in a regulatory back-and-forth driven by political priorities, Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall said in a statement. “Chevron deference created a super-branch of government,” he said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council said the ruling was a profound change and a “terrible one.”