Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 32

24 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

Opinion of the Court 

intend for agencies to resolve statutory ambiguities because 
agencies have subject matter expertise regarding the stat-
utes  they  administer;  because  deferring  to  agencies  pur-
portedly promotes the uniform construction of federal law; 
and  because  resolving  statutory  ambiguities  can  involve 
policymaking best left to political actors, rather than courts.
See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 16–19.  The 
dissent offers more of the same.  See post, at 9–14.  But none 
of  these  considerations  justifies  Chevron’s  sweeping  pre-
sumption of congressional intent.

Beginning  with  expertise,  we  recently  noted  that  inter-
pretive  issues  arising  in  connection  with  a  regulatory
scheme often “may fall more naturally into a judge’s baili-
wick” than an agency’s.  Kisor, 588 U. S., at 578 (opinion of 
the Court).  We thus observed that “[w]hen the agency has
no comparative expertise in resolving a regulatory ambigu-
ity,  Congress  presumably  would  not  grant  it  that  author-
ity.”  Ibid.  Chevron’s broad rule of deference, though, de-
mands that courts presume just the opposite.  Under that 
rule,  ambiguities  of  all  stripes  trigger  deference.    Indeed, 
the Government and, seemingly, the dissent continue to de-
fend the proposition that Chevron applies even in cases hav-
ing little to do with an agency’s technical subject matter ex-
pertise.  See  Brief  for Respondents  in  No.  22–1219,  p. 17; 
post, at 10. 

But even when an ambiguity happens to implicate a tech-
nical matter, it does not follow that Congress has taken the 
power  to  authoritatively  interpret  the  statute  from  the 
courts and given it to the agency.  Congress expects courts
to handle technical statutory questions.  “[M]any statutory
cases” call upon “courts [to] interpret the mass of technical 
detail  that  is  the  ordinary  diet  of  the  law,”  Egelhoff  v. 
Egelhoff, 532 U. S. 141, 161 (2001) (Breyer, J., dissenting), 
and courts did so without issue in agency cases before Chev-
ron, see post, at 30 (GORSUCH, J., concurring).  Courts, after 
all, do not decide such questions blindly.  The parties and