Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 76.0

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

29 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

stare decisis is not a rule of “if I thought it yesterday, I must
think it tomorrow.”  And rather than cling to the pride of 
personal  precedent,  the  Justice  began  to  express  doubts 
over the very project that he had worked to build.  See Perez 
v.  Mortgage  Bankers  Assn.,  575  U. S.  92,  109–110  (2015) 
(opinion  concurring  in  judgment);  cf.  Decker  v.  Northwest 
Environmental Defense Center, 568 U. S. 597, 617–618, 621 
(2013) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part).
If Chevron’s ascent is a testament to the Justice’s ingenuity, 
its demise is an even greater tribute to his humility.6 

Justice Scalia was not alone in his reconsideration.  After 
years spent laboring under Chevron, trying to make sense 
of it and make it work, Member after Member of this Court 
came to question the project.  See, e.g., Pereira v. Sessions, 
585  U. S.  198,  219–221  (2018)  (Kennedy,  J.,  concurring); 
Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 760–764 (2015) (THOMAS, 
J., concurring); Kisor, 588 U. S., at 591 (ROBERTS, C. J., con-
curring  in  part);  Gutierrez-Brizuela,  834  F. 3d,  at  1153; 
Buffington,  598  U. S.,  at  ___–___  (slip  op.,  at  14–15);  Ka-
vanaugh 2150–2154.  Ultimately, the Court gave up.  De-
spite repeated invitations, it has not applied Chevron def-
erence  since  2016.    Relentless  Tr.  81;  App.  to  Brief  for 
Respondents in No. 22–1219, p. 68a.  So an experiment that
began only in the mid-1980s effectively ended eight years 
ago.  Along the way, an unusually large number of federal
appellate judges voiced their own thoughtful and extensive 

—————— 

6 It should be recalled that, when Justice Scalia launched the Chevron 
revolution, there were many judges who “abhor[red] . . . ‘plain meaning’ ” 
and preferred instead to elevate “legislative history” and their own cu-
rated accounts of a law’s “purpose[s]” over enacted statutory text.  Scalia 
515, 521.  Chevron, he predicted, would provide a new guardrail against 
that practice.  Scalia 515, 521.  As the Justice’s later writings show, he
had the right diagnosis, just the wrong cure.  The answer for judges elid-
ing statutory terms is not deference to agencies that may seek to do the 
same, but a demand that all return to a more faithful adherence to the 
written law.  That was, of course, another project Justice Scalia champi-
oned.  And as we like to say, “we’re all textualists now.”