Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 75.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

19 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

particular agency’s exercise of authority.  In each case, the 
Court thought, the agency had strayed out of its lane, to an 
area where it had neither expertise nor experience.  The At-
torney General making healthcare policy, the regulator of
pharmaceutical concerns deciding the fate of the tobacco in-
dustry,  and  so  on.  And  in  each  case,  the  proof  that  the
agency  had  roamed  too  far  afield  lay  in  the  statutory
scheme itself.  The agency action collided with other statu-
tory provisions; if the former were allowed, the latter could
not  mean  what  they  said  or  could  not  work  as  intended. 
FDA having to declare tobacco “safe” to avoid shutting down
an industry; or EPA having literally to change hard num-
bers contained in the Clean Air Act.  There, according to the
Court, the statutory framework was “not designed to grant” 
the authority claimed.  Utility Air, 573 U. S., at 324.  The 
agency’s  “singular”  assertion  of  power  “would  render  the
statute unrecognizable to the Congress” that wrote it.  Ibid. 
(internal quotation marks omitted). 

B 

The  Court  today  faces  no  such  singular  assertion  of 
agency power.  As I have already explained, nothing in the 
Clean Air Act (or, for that matter, any other statute) con-
flicts with EPA’s reading of Section 111.  Notably, the ma-
jority does not dispute that point.  Of course, it views Sec-
tion 111 (if for unexplained reasons) as less clear than I do. 
Compare ante, at 28, with supra, at 7–9.  But nowhere does 
the majority provide evidence from within the statute itself 
that  the  Clean  Power  Plan  conflicts  with  or  undermines 
Congress’s design.  That fact alone makes this case differ-
ent from all the cases described above.  As to the other crit-
ical matter in those cases—is the agency operating outside
its sphere of expertise?—the majority at least tries to say 
something.  It claims EPA has no “comparative expertise”
in “balancing the many vital considerations of national pol-
icy”  implicated  in  regulating  electricity  sources.    Ante,  at