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4 

GEORGE v. MCDONOUGH 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

with a presumption of soundness and required the govern-
ment  to  prove  by  clear  and  convincing  evidence  that  any 
condition a veteran suffered was not aggravated by service.
Today, however, everyone accepts that the regulations the
agency relied on to reject Mr. George’s initial claim imper-
missibly  failed  to  implement  these  statutory  commands.
On any reasonable account, that amounts to a clear and un-
mistakable agency error entitling Mr. George to a new hear-
ing.  Regardless whether he can prevail under the test Con-
gress actually prescribed in § 1111, he is at least entitled to 
a  hearing  consistent  with  the  law’s  terms.  The  agency’s
failure to provide him that simple (and legally compelled) 
courtesy is inexcusable.

Of  course,  just  how  badly  the  agency’s  regulations  de-
parted from Congress’s commands in § 1111 may not have
been  widely  appreciated  until  the  Federal  Circuit  high-
lighted the problem in Wagner.  But a “judicial construction 
of a statute is an authoritative statement of what the stat-
ute meant before as well as after the decision.”  Rivers  v. 
Roadway Express, Inc., 511 U. S. 298, 311–313 (1994).  And 
an agency’s “ ‘regulation which . . . operates to create a rule 
out of harmony with the statute, is a mere nullity.’ ”  Dixon 
v. United States, 381 U. S. 68, 74 (1965).  From these prem-
ises, it follows that the agency’s ruling in this case, depend-
ing as it did on a statutorily impermissible regulation, was
infected by “clear and unmistakable error” that Mr. George
is entitled to have corrected “at any time.”  §§ 5109A, 7111. 

B 
What is the Court’s reply?  It highlights the fact that the
agency’s regulations bound its own internal administrative
decisionmakers  when  they  ruled  on  Mr.  George’s  initial 
claim.  Given that, the Court says, the agency’s ruling was 
perfectly sound at the time, infected by no error of any kind,
let alone clear and unmistakable error.  Of course, the Fed-