Federal courts have remarkably little law-making authority. They aren't common-law courts, so must defer to existing Congressional enactments or (in state-law cases) state law. And courts in general don't legislate through interpretation. There are only so many ways to interpret a provision, and when courts act dutifully, they aren't going to stray from those, regardless of their personal views or biases. Moreover, courts don't reach out and decide to change the law on a whim--there must be an actual case or controversy brought before the courts by outside parties before the courts will opine on an issue.
Even setting all of those differences aside, one very important difference remains: the judicial power is assigned to undemocratic courts in our democratic Constitution. Much as I dread the use of the phrase, "we the people" gave the courts that power. You'll search in vain for our grant to executive agencies of the legislative or judicial powers, though they now exercise both concurrently with Congress and the courts.
Executive agencies should not have the discretion to either call a spade a spade, or not. Congress shouldn't be giving them sufficient leeway to make that determination, especially when the consequences of whether the tool is a spade or not are as significant as they are in this case. At the very least, when the change in classification is as significant as it is here, reclassification should be a legislative task, not an executive task, and Congress should be making the call.
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