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22 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

229–231.  But that test has proved as indeterminate in ap-
plication  as  it  was  contrived  in  origin.    Perhaps  for  these 
reasons, perhaps for others, this Court has sometimes ap-
plied Mead and often ignored it.  See Brand X, 545 U. S., at 
1014, n. 8 (Scalia, J., dissenting). 

Things do not improve as we move up the Chevron ladder. 
At “step one,” a judge must defer to an executive official’s 
interpretation  when  the  statute  at  hand  is  “ambiguous.” 
But  even  today,  Chevron’s  principal  beneficiary—the  fed-
eral government—still cannot say when a statute is suffi-
ciently ambiguous to trigger deference.  See, e.g., Tr. of Oral 
Arg.  in  American  Hospital  Assn.  v.  Becerra,  O.  T.  2021, 
No. 20–1114, pp. 71–72.  Perhaps thanks to this particular 
confusion, the search for ambiguity has devolved into a sort
of Snark hunt: Some judges claim to spot it almost every-
where, while other equally fine judges claim never to have
seen it.  Compare L. Silberman, Chevron—The Intersection 
of Law & Policy, 58 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 821, 826 (1990), with
R. Kethledge,  Ambiguities  and  Agency  Cases:  Reflections 
After (Almost) Ten Years on the Bench, 70 Vand. L. Rev. En
Banc 315, 323 (2017).

Nor do courts agree when it comes to “step two.”  There, 
a  judge  must  assess  whether  an  executive  agency’s  inter-
pretation  of  an  ambiguous  statute  is  “reasonable.”  But 
what does that inquiry demand?  Some courts engage in a
comparatively  searching  review;  others  almost  reflexively 
defer to an agency’s views.  Here again, courts have pursued 
“wildly different” approaches and reached wildly different
conclusions  in  similar  cases.  See  B.  Kavanaugh,  Fixing
Statutory  Interpretation,  129  Harv.  L.  Rev.  2118,  2152
(2016) (Kavanaugh).

Today’s cases exemplify some of these problems.  We have 
before us two circuit decisions, three opinions, and at least
as many interpretive options on the Chevron menu.  On the 
one hand, we have the D. C. Circuit majority, which deemed 
the  Magnuson-Stevens  Act  “ambiguous”  and  upheld  the