Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 112.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

31 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

reasonable reliance need not be predicated on a prior judi-
cial  decision.  Some  agency  interpretations  never  chal-
lenged  under  Chevron  now  will  be;  expectations  formed
around  those  constructions  thus  could  be  upset,  in  a  way 
the majority’s assurance does not touch.  And anyway, how 
good  is  that  assurance,  really?  The  majority  says  that  a
decision’s  “[m]ere  reliance  on  Chevron”  is  not  enough  to
counter the force of stare decisis; a challenger will need an
additional “special justification.”  Ante, at 34.  The majority 
is sanguine; I am not so much.  Courts motivated to over-
rule  an  old  Chevron-based  decision  can  always  come  up
with something to label a “special justification.”  Maybe a
court  will  say  “the  quality  of  [the  precedent’s]  reasoning” 
was  poor.  Ante,  at  29.  Or  maybe  the  court  will  discover
something “unworkable” in the decision—like some excep-
tion that has to be applied.  Ante, at 30.  All a court need do 
is look to today’s opinion to see how it is done. 

IV 

Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part 
of either political branch of the Government. 

— Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources 
Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 865 (1984) 

Those  were  the  days,  when  we  knew  what  we  are  not. 
When we knew that as between courts and agencies, Con-
gress would usually think agencies the better choice to re-
solve  the  ambiguities and  fill  the  gaps  in  regulatory  stat-
utes.  Because  agencies  are  “experts  in  the  field.”    And 
because they are part of a political branch, with a claim to 
making  interstitial  policy.  And  because  Congress  has
charged them, not us, with administering the statutes con-
taining  the  open  questions.    At  its  core,  Chevron  is  about 
respecting that allocation of responsibility—the conferral of 
primary authority over regulatory matters to agencies, not 
courts.