Will the U.S. Supreme Court’s so-called swing vote swing the court in favor of employers by giving up his seat?

Mere days after Neil Gorsuch was officially sworn in to fill the Supreme Court seat that has been vacant since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016 came speculation that 80-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has been on the court since 1988, could soon retire. The speculation was fueled by someone presumably in the know: Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. While he didn’t specifically name Justice Kennedy, Sen. Grassley said he expected a justice resignation as soon as this summer.

This news is noteworthy coming so quickly after Justice Gorsuch was confirmed using the “nuclear option,” meaning Senate rules were changed to allow his confirmation with 51 votes rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now that the precedent has been set, far more controversial justices on either end of the political spectrum could be approved with simple majority votes.

Justice Gorsuch was generally seen as a good pick for employers, although perhaps not as good as Justice Scalia. But the newest associate justice — so new his picture is still not up on the Supreme Court’s biography page — is clearly no fan of the Chevron deference, which refers to the concept established in a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc., that requires courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of laws it implements or enforces. The Chevron deference is already under challenge via a legislative proposal, but even if that bill doesn’t pass, Justice Gorsuch’s resistance to the concept bodes well for employers who may find themselves on the wrong end of workplace safety citations from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration or enforcement orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or another federal agency.

Justice Gorsuch once clerked for Justice Kennedy, who has been the deciding vote on many critical and controversial decisions, including Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case in which the Supreme Court decided by a 5-4 margin that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed a fundamental marriage right to same-sex couples. Liberals would be wise to worry that a replacement selected by President Donald Trump and confirmed by a simple majority in the Senate could tip the balance of power to the conservative side for years to come and leave them on the losing side of cases such as Obergefell. Even though the president and then-nominee Gorsuch have both called same-sex marriage “settled law,” there’s no guarantee that a Justice Kennedy replacement would feel the same.

But for now, employers have Justice Kennedy in the middle of the restored balance of conservatives and liberals on the court. How long that lasts will be a great guessing game — something Washington excels at.