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6  NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS v.

OSHA 
GORSUCH, J., concurring 

417 (CADC 2017) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting from denial of 
rehearing  en  banc);  see  also  N.  Richardson,  Keeping  Big
Cases From Making Bad Law: The Resurgent Major Ques-
tions Doctrine, 49 Conn. L. Rev. 355, 359 (2016). 

Whichever the doctrine, the point is the same.  Both serve 
to  prevent  “government  by  bureaucracy  supplanting  gov-
ernment by the people.”  A. Scalia, A Note on the Benzene 
Case,  American  Enterprise  Institute,  J.  on  Govt.  &  Soc.,
July–Aug. 1980, p. 27.  And both hold their lessons for to-
day’s  case.  On  the  one  hand,  OSHA  claims  the  power  to
issue a nationwide mandate on a major question but cannot 
trace its authority to do so to any clear congressional man-
date.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  statutory  subsection  the 
agency cites really did endow OSHA with the power it as-
serts, that law would likely constitute an unconstitutional 
delegation of legislative authority.  Under OSHA’s reading,
the  law  would  afford  it  almost  unlimited  discretion—and 
certainly  impose  no  “specific  restrictions”  that  “meaning-
fully constrai[n ]” the agency.  Touby v. United States, 500 
U. S. 160, 166–167 (1991).  OSHA would become little more 
than  a  “roving  commission  to  inquire  into  evils  and  upon
discovery correct them.”  A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. 
United States, 295 U. S. 495, 551 (1935) (Cardozo, J., con-
curring).  Either way, the point is the same one Chief Jus-
tice  Marshall  made  in  1825:    There  are  some  “important 
subjects,  which  must  be  entirely  regulated  by  the  legisla-
ture itself,” and others “of less interest, in which a general
provision may be made, and power given to [others] to fill 
up  the  details.”  Wayman  v.  Southard,  10  Wheat.  1,  43 
(1825).  And on no one’s account does this mandate qualify 
as some “detail.” 

* 
The question before us is not how to respond to the pan-
demic,  but  who  holds  the  power  to  do  so.  The  answer  is 
clear:  Under the law as it stands today, that power rests