North Dakota
Supreme Court ruling bolsters North Dakota cases, AG Wrigley says
Attorney General Drew
Wrigley (R-ND)
By Amy Dalrymple
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision curbing the regulatory power of the executive branch could give the state a boost in its roughly 30 pending lawsuits against the federal government.
The high court’s ruling, released June 28, reverses a 40-year policy that required federal courts to defer to executive branch agencies when interpreting vague laws.
“It’s a long time coming,” Wrigley said of the decision in Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo. “This was an unwise doctrine when it was first pronounced decades back.”
The practice — often called “Chevron deference” after the Supreme Court 1984 ruling that created it — applied to how federal agencies enacted regulatory marching orders from Congress.
When Congress passes a law directing an agency to regulate something, its instructions are seldom 100% clear. The court decided in the 1984 case that federal agencies could use their own expertise to fill in the blanks in areas where the law is ambiguous.
The idea was that the agencies would know best how to interpret the will of Congress, and that the doctrine would protect them from excessive legal challenges.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision revoked this power. Now, it’s up to federal judges to interpret gray areas in legislation.
The ruling is expected to lead to significant regulatory changes as the federal government implements the new standard.
Wrigley said he expects the ruling to be largely positive for North Dakota’s spate of lawsuits against the federal government — which includes cases challenging regulations passed by the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Education and more.
“This decision has taken away power from nameless, faceless bureaucrats,” he said.
The ruling could also have major impacts on the federal government’s relationships with Native tribes, said Tim Purdon, a former U.S. Attorney for North Dakota who represents tribal communities as a private practice lawyer.
“There are lots of regulations that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Interior and places like that have historically interpreted,” he said.
Some critics of the Chevron deference are hopeful its ouster will lead to more consistency in the executive branch.
Under Chevron, the regulatory environment could swing from one extreme to the other when new presidents took office, said Paul Traynor, an assistant professor for the University of North Dakota Law School whose specialties include insurance and corporate law.
“It kind of put both the country and people in sort of a whipsaw,” he said.(His brother, Dan Traynor, is a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of North Dakota.)
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn the doctrine, with the court’s three liberal judges dissenting.
The court’s opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, states that reversing Chevron is consistent with the intent of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal courts the power to interpret laws.
“The Framers … anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment,” Roberts wrote.
The court’s liberal justices countered that federal agencies are better suited to make sense of the instructions Congress gives them.
“Congress knows that it does not — in fact cannot — write perfectly complete regulatory statutes,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. “It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court.”
The North Dakota courts also have a history of deferring to state agencies’ interpretation of the law, according to Chief Deputy Attorney General Claire Ness.
The question remains as to whether the Supreme Court’s decision will lead North Dakota to reexamine the level of regulatory power it gives those agencies.
“I think that our state regulators … are going to have to very seriously look at the grant of authority that they have been delegated by the Legislature,” Traynor said.
The decision to overturn Chevron comes just two years after another landmark Supreme Court ruling that curbed the executive branch’s regulatory power, commonly referred to as West Virginia v. EPA. In that decision, the Supreme Court struck down an EPA rule that regulated carbon dioxide emissions by power plants. North Dakota was also a plaintiff in the case.
GRAND FORKS — A North Dakota composer’s dream is turning into a statewide invitation.
Williston-based musician Emily Black-Driscoll was chosen as the North Dakota Music Teachers Association’s commissioned composer for 2026. She’s preparing an original composition that will premiere in August.
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North Dakota
Challengers declare victory after ND Supreme Court rules against Legislature’s attempt to alter term limits
BISMARCK — A constitutional ballot measure to amend the state’s term limits law as proposed by the Legislature will not appear on November’s ballot, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday, siding with petitioners who argued the Legislature exceeded its authority and violated the state constitution in proposing the changes.
“The people’s voice was heard,” Grand Forks County Commissioner Terry Bjerke said in reaction to the news.
Bjerke was a member of the sponsoring committee behind the successful 2022 effort to pass a term limits initiative, which amended the state constitution by capping legislative term limits to eight years in the House and eight years in the Senate. The amendment, which became article XV of the state constitution, also included a clause barring the Legislature from making constitutional changes to term limits.
During the 2025 session, however, lawmakers narrowly approved Senate Concurrent Resolution 4008, in which the legislature proposed Constitutional Measure 1, a ballot measure to amend the term limits language to allow legislators to decide in which chamber they want to serve their 16 years, and to repeal the clause limiting the legislative assembly’s authority to propose an amendment to alter or repeal term limits.
Bjerke and former Minot legislator Oley Larsen brought the lawsuit challenging the validity of the Legislature’s action in January, and the state Supreme Court
heard oral arguments in the case
this spring.
“Those term limits may only be altered by a measure proposed by the people rather than the Legislative Assembly. And yet a few years later, the Legislative Assembly is doing what they are prohibited from doing,” attorney Zachary Wallen argued on Bjerke and Larsen’s behalf.
Tanner Ecker / The Bismarck Tribune
The Legislature’s attorneys argued the clause prohibiting legislative proposals to alter the constitutional term limits language “infringes on our republican form of government” by “limiting the people’s ability to vote on amendments proposed by their elected officials.”
Justice Jon Jensen seemed skeptical of that argument during the April 2 hearing, questioning whether a second vote was appropriate.
“The public did speak on this. The public spoke on it when it passed the original constitutional amendment and they said, ‘Legislature, you don’t even get to propose a change.’ They have already spoken on it,” Jensen said. “You want a second shot, or a second bite at the apple, not a first one, a second.”
In Thursday’s ruling, all five justices sided with Bjerke and Larsen.
“We … conclude the Legislative Assembly’s adoption of S.C.R. 4008 violated N.D. Const. art. XV … and declare S.C.R. 4008 and Constitutional Measure 1 void … We enjoin the Secretary of State from placing Constitutional Measure 1 on the November 2026 general election ballot,” the ruling said.
Bjerke thanked the legal team that worked on behalf of their lawsuit, and said he was grateful the court reached the conclusion it did.
“I’m thrilled that what the people voted on and approved has been validated,” Bjerke said.
He added that the Legislature had “multiple opportunities” to address term limits prior to 2022’s initiated measure and chose not to, and gave a nod to the country’s coming milestone and the process by which voters expressed their support for term limits.
“We’ve lasted 250 years,” Bjerke said. “I have two words for those elected leaders who think they aren’t: everyone’s replaceable.”
North Dakota
Fargo woman convicted in North Dakota fraud case now faces charges in Minnesota: A deeper dive
FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – A North Dakota woman who was sentenced to 180 days in jail in Cass County for defrauding healthcare providers and Medicaid programs is now facing additional fraud charges in Minnesota.
Christine Marie Pryor, 55, pleaded guilty in November 2024 to theft by deception involving more than $50,000. She was sentenced to first serve 180 days with a 3-year sentence suspended. She received credit for 44 days already served.
Pryor was ordered to pay $82,584.78 in restitution to Southeast Human Services in Fargo, where she worked between 2018 and 2019.
How the scheme unfolded
According to court documents, Pryor worked at multiple healthcare facilities in North Dakota and Minnesota between 2018 and 2023, using the identities and credentials of three licensed professionals without their knowledge. She submitted fraudulent Capella University diplomas and transcripts to gain employment.
Investigators say Pryor admitted she searched state licensing websites for therapists who shared her first name, then used those therapists’ last names and license numbers when applying for jobs.
At Southeast Human Services, where she worked as a Licensed Addiction Counselor, Pryor earned $55,584.82 while providing therapy services to approximately 150 patients. She also opened her own counseling center, NIAM Brain Injury Center, in Fargo between 2020 and 2021, and worked at The Lotus Center in Moorhead, Minnesota, from 2021 to 2023.
Court documents say the three licensed professionals whose identities were used told investigators they had no knowledge of Pryor’s actions and did not give her permission to use their information.
Two additional charges against Pryor in North Dakota, unauthorized use of personal identifying information, were dismissed on motion of the state.
Additional charges in Minnesota
Pryor is also facing charges in Minnesota. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced on Tuesday charges against Pryor in Clay County District Court for six theft offenses and six identity theft offenses related to defrauding Minnesota’s Medicaid program of more than $150,000.
According to the Minnesota complaint, Pryor claimed to provide psychotherapy and alcohol and drug counseling services to Medicaid recipients despite having no license or credentials to do so. Prosecutors allege she used the credentials and identities of three licensed professionals while claiming to provide Medicaid-funded services to 169 clients.
The Minnesota charges were filed as part of National Health Care Fraud Takedown Day, a joint effort involving the Department of Justice and more than 40 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units.
Copyright 2026 KVLY. All rights reserved.
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