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Page Number: 24

6 

GEORGE v. MCDONOUGH 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

where an error was “clear and unmistakable” from the out-
set.  It did not.  Instead, Congress instructed the agency to
assess whether—from its present vantage—one of its prior
administrative rulings suffers from a “clear and unmistak-
able error.” 

C 
Perhaps sensing these problems with its primary theory, 
the Court offers a second and slightly different one.  Now it 
insists that the phrase “clear and unmistakable error” is a
term  of  art  that  originated  in  (still  other)  agency  regula-
tions.  Ante, at 5.  Under those regulations, the Court ob-
serves, an error did not qualify as “clear and unmistakable” 
if it was based on a “change in law or . . . a change in inter-
pretation of law.”  38 CFR § 3.105 (Cum. Supp. 1963); see 
ante, at 6.  On the Court’s telling, Congress meant to incor-
porate  this  same  standard  when  it  adopted  §§ 5109A  and 
7111.  And,  the  Court  continues,  that  standard  precludes
relief in this case because the error here is apparent only
thanks  to  the  Federal  Circuit’s  intervening  Wagner  deci-
sion, which represented a “change in interpretation of law.” 
See ante, at 6–8. 

This  argument  is  no  more  persuasive  than  the  last. 
When  Congress  “transform[s]  . . .  a  regulatory  procedure 
[in]to a statutory form of relief,” we enforce only those com-
ponents Congress actually “codif[ied]” in the statutory text. 
Kucana v. Holder, 558 U. S. 233, 249–250 (2010) (internal 
quotation marks omitted).  And here Congress did not cod-
ify the part of the old agency regulation on which the Court
relies.  Nothing in the text of § 5109A or § 7111 says that 
errors resulting from “changes in law” or “changes in inter-
pretation”  are  immune  from  correction.  To  the  contrary,
Congress omitted this language from the agency’s prior reg-
ulations  when  it  adopted  §§ 5109A  and  7111.    Under  the 
law  Congress  actually  wrote,  prior  agency  decisions  are