Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 77.0

30 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

criticisms  of  Chevron.  Buffington,  598  U. S.,  at  ___–___ 
(slip op., at 14–15) (collecting examples).  A number of state 
courts  did,  too,  refusing  to  import  Chevron  deference  into 
their own administrative law jurisprudence.  See 598 U. S., 
at ___ (slip op., at 15). 

Even if all that and everything else laid out above is true,
the government suggests we should retain Chevron defer-
ence  because  judges  simply  cannot  live  without  it;  some
statutes are just too “technical” for courts to interpret “in-
telligently.”  Post,  at  9,  32  (dissenting  opinion).    But  that 
objection is no answer to Chevron’s inconsistency with Con-
gress’s directions in the APA, so much surrounding law, or 
the challenges its multistep regime have posed in practice. 
Nor does history counsel such defeatism.  Surely, it would
be a mistake to suggest our predecessors before Chevron’s 
rise in the mid-1980s were unable to make their way intel-
ligently  through  technical  statutory  disputes.    Following 
their lead, over the past eight years this Court has managed 
to resolve even highly complex cases without Chevron def-
erence, and done so even when the government sought def-
erence.  Nor, as far as I am aware, did any Member of the
Court suggest Chevron deference was necessary to an intel-
ligent resolution of any of those matters.7  If anything, by 
affording  Chevron  deference  a  period  of  repose  before  ad-
dressing whether it should be retained, the Court has ena-
bled its Members to test the propriety of that precedent and 
reflect more deeply on how well it fits into the broader ar-
chitecture  of  our  law.  Others  may  see  things  differently, 
see post, at 26–27 (dissenting opinion), but the caution the 

—————— 

7 See,  e.g.,  Becerra  v.  Empire  Health  Foundation,  for  Valley  Hospital 
Medical Center, 597 U. S. 424, 434 (2022) (resolving intricate Medicare
dispute by reference solely to “text,” “context,” and “structure”); see also 
Sackett v. EPA, 598 U. S. 651 (2023) (same in a complex Clean Water Act 
dispute); Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, 594 U. S. 523 (2021) (same in tech-
nical immigration case).