Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 234

529US1

Unit: $U36

[09-26-01 08:36:38] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 120 (2000)

159

Opinion of the Court

FDA Comm’r Goyan (Nov. 25, 1980), id., at 67 (“Insofar as
rulemaking would relate to cigarettes or attached ﬁlters as
customarily marketed, we have concluded that FDA has no
jurisdiction”). Thus, what Congress ratiﬁed was the FDA’s
plain and resolute position that the FDCA gives the agency
no authority to regulate tobacco products as customarily
marketed.

C

Finally, our inquiry into whether Congress has directly
spoken to the precise question at issue is shaped, at least
in some measure, by the nature of the question presented.
Deference under Chevron to an agency’s construction of a
statute that it administers is premised on the theory that a
statute’s ambiguity constitutes an implicit delegation from
Congress to the agency to ﬁll in the statutory gaps. See
Chevron, supra, at 844.
In extraordinary cases, however,
there may be reason to hesitate before concluding that Con-
gress has intended such an implicit delegation. Cf. Breyer,
Judicial Review of Questions of Law and Policy, 38 Admin.
L. Rev. 363, 370 (1986) (“A court may also ask whether the
legal question is an important one. Congress is more likely
to have focused upon, and answered, major questions, while
leaving interstitial matters to answer themselves in the
course of the statute’s daily administration”).

This is hardly an ordinary case. Contrary to its represen-
tations to Congress since 1914, the FDA has now asserted
jurisdiction to regulate an industry constituting a signiﬁcant
In fact, the FDA con-
portion of the American economy.
tends that, were it to determine that tobacco products pro-
vide no “reasonable assurance of safety,” it would have the
authority to ban cigarettes and smokeless tobacco entirely.
See Brief for Petitioners 35–36; Reply Brief for Petitioners
14. Owing to its unique place in American history and soci-
ety, tobacco has its own unique political history. Congress,
for better or for worse, has created a distinct regulatory
scheme for tobacco products, squarely rejected proposals to