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FDA v. BROWN & WILLIAMSON TOBACCO CORP.

Opinion of the Court

need not resolve this question, however, because assuming,
arguendo, that a product can be “intended to affect the struc-
ture or any function of the body” absent claims of therapeutic
or medical beneﬁt, the FDA’s claim to jurisdiction contra-
venes the clear intent of Congress.

A threshold issue is the appropriate framework for ana-
lyzing the FDA’s assertion of authority to regulate tobacco
products. Because this case involves an administrative
agency’s construction of a statute that it administers, our
analysis is governed by Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Re-
sources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). Under
Chevron, a reviewing court must ﬁrst ask “whether Con-
gress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue.”
Id., at 842.
If Congress has done so, the inquiry is at an
end; the court “must give effect to the unambiguously ex-
pressed intent of Congress.”
Id., at 843; see also United
States v. Haggar Apparel Co., 526 U. S. 380, 392 (1999); Holly
Farms Corp. v. NLRB, 517 U. S. 392, 398 (1996). But if Con-
gress has not speciﬁcally addressed the question, a reviewing
court must respect the agency’s construction of the statute
so long as it is permissible. See INS v. Aguirre-Aguirre,
526 U. S. 415, 424 (1999); Auer v. Robbins, 519 U. S. 452, 457
(1997). Such deference is justiﬁed because “[t]he responsi-
bilities for assessing the wisdom of such policy choices and
resolving the struggle between competing views of the pub-
lic interest are not judicial ones,” Chevron, supra, at 866, and
because of the agency’s greater familiarity with the ever-
changing facts and circumstances surrounding the subjects
regulated, see Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 187 (1991).

In determining whether Congress has speciﬁcally ad-
dressed the question at issue, a reviewing court should not
conﬁne itself to examining a particular statutory provision
in isolation. The meaning—or ambiguity—of certain words
or phrases may only become evident when placed in context.
See Brown v. Gardner, 513 U. S. 115, 118 (1994) (“Ambiguity
is a creature not of deﬁnitional possibilities but of statutory