Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 92

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

11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

statutory  ambiguities,  as  Congress  well  knows,  is  “often
more a question of policy than of law.”  Pauley v. BethEn-
ergy Mines, Inc., 501 U. S. 680, 696 (1991).  The task is less 
one of construing a text than of balancing competing goals 
and  values.   Consider  the  statutory  directive  to  achieve
“substantial  restoration  of  the  [Grand  Canyon’s]  natural 
quiet.”  See supra, at 6.  Someone is going to have to decide
exactly what that statute means for air traffic over the can-
yon.  How many flights, in what places and at what times,
are consistent with restoring enough natural quiet on the
ground?  That is a policy trade-off of a kind familiar to agen-
cies—but peculiarly unsuited to judges.  Or consider Chev-
ron  itself.  As  the  Court  there  understood,  the  choice  be-
tween defining a “stationary source” as a whole plant or as
a pollution-emitting device is a choice about how to “recon-
cile”  two  “manifestly  competing  interests.”  467  U. S.,  at 
865.  The  plantwide  definition  relaxes  the  permitting  re-
quirement  in  the  interest  of  promoting  economic  growth; 
the device-specific definition strengthens that requirement
to  better  reduce  air  pollution.  See  id.,  at  851,  863,  866. 
Again, that is a choice a judge should not be making, but 
one  an  agency  properly  can.    Agencies  are  “subject  to  the
supervision  of  the  President,  who  in  turn  answers  to  the
public.”  Kisor, 588 U. S., at 571–572 (plurality opinion).  So 
when faced with a statutory ambiguity, “an agency to which
Congress has delegated policymaking responsibilities” may 
rely on an accountable actor’s “views of wise policy to inform
its judgments.”  Chevron, 467 U. S., at 865. 

None of this is to say that deference to agencies is always
appropriate.  The Court over time has fine-tuned the Chev-
ron  regime  to  deny  deference  in  classes  of  cases  in  which 
Congress has no reason to prefer an agency to a court.  The 
majority treats those “refinements” as a flaw in the scheme, 
ante, at 27, but they are anything but.  Consider the rule 
that an agency gets no deference when construing a statute
it  is  not  responsible  for  administering.    See  Epic  Systems