Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-954_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 29.0

24 

BIDEN v. TEXAS 

Opinion of the Court 

things”).  But the agency’s ex ante preference for terminat-
ing MPP—like any other feature of an administration’s pol-
icy  agenda—should  not  be  held  against  the  October  29 
Memoranda.  “It is hardly improper for an agency head to
come into office with policy preferences and ideas . . . and 
work with staff attorneys to substantiate the legal basis for 
a preferred policy.”  Department of Commerce, 588 U. S., at 
___  (slip  op.,  at  26);  see  also  State  Farm,  463  U. S.,  at  59 
(Rehnquist,  J.,  concurring  in  part  and  dissenting  in  part)
(“As long as [an] agency remains within the bounds estab-
lished  by  Congress,  it  is  entitled  to  assess  administrative
records and evaluate priorities in light of the philosophy of
the administration.” (footnote omitted)). 

And the critique is particularly weak on these facts.  The 
Court of Appeals took the agency to task for its September 
29 announcement of its “inten[tion] to issue in the coming 
weeks a new memorandum terminating” MPP.  20 F. 4th, 
at 954; see ibid. (“Rather than announcing an intention to 
reconsider its Termination Decision, the announcement set 
forth DHS’s conclusion in unmistakable terms.”).  But that 
announcement  came  over  six  weeks  after  the  District 
Court’s August 13 remand—a substantial window of time 
for the agency to conduct a bona fide reconsideration. 

More importantly, this Court has previously rejected crit-
icisms of agency closemindedness based on an identity be-
tween proposed and final agency action.  See Little Sisters 
of  the  Poor  Saints  Peter  and  Paul  Home  v.  Pennsylvania, 
591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 24) (“declin[ing] to eval-
uate the [agency’s] final rules under [an] open-mindedness 
test” where interim and final rules were “virtually identi-
cal” but procedural requirements were otherwise satisfied).
Similar principles refute the Court of Appeals’ criticism of 
the  October  29  Memoranda  for  their  failure  to  “alter  the 
Termination Decision in any way.”  20 F. 4th, at 946.  It is 
black-letter law that an agency that takes superseding ac-