Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 3

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

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Syllabus 

the agency.  See Gray v. Powell, 314 U. S. 402; NLRB v. Hearst Publi-
cations,  Inc.,  322  U. S.  111.    But  such  deferential  review,  which  the 
Court was far from consistent in applying, was cabined to factbound 
determinations.    And  the  Court  did  not  purport  to  refashion  the 
longstanding  judicial  approach  to  questions  of  law.    It  instead  pro-
claimed that “[u]ndoubtedly questions of statutory interpretation . . . 
are for the courts to resolve, giving appropriate weight to the judgment 
of those whose special duty is to administer the questioned statute.” 
Id., at 130–131.  Nothing in the New Deal era or before it thus resem-
bled the deference rule the Court would begin applying decades later
to  all  varieties  of  agency  interpretations  of  statutes  under  Chevron. 
Pp. 7–13.

(b) Congress in 1946 enacted the APA “as a check upon administra-
tors whose zeal might otherwise have carried them to excesses not con-
templated in legislation creating their offices.”  Morton Salt, 338 U. S., 
at 644.  The APA prescribes procedures for agency action and deline-
ates the basic contours of judicial review of such action.  And it codifies 
for agency cases the unremarkable, yet elemental proposition reflected
by  judicial  practice  dating  back  to  Marbury:  that  courts  decide  legal 
questions by applying their own judgment.  As relevant here, the APA 
specifies that courts, not agencies, will decide “all relevant questions 
of law” arising on review of agency action, 5 U. S. C. §706 (emphasis 
added)—even those involving ambiguous laws.  It prescribes no defer-
ential  standard  for  courts  to  employ  in  answering  those  legal  ques-
tions, despite mandating deferential judicial review of agency policy-
making and factfinding.  See §§706(2)(A), (E).  And by directing courts
to “interpret constitutional and statutory provisions” without differen-
tiating between the two, §706, it makes clear that agency interpreta-
tions of statutes—like agency interpretations of the Constitution—are 
not entitled to deference.  The APA’s history and the contemporaneous 
views of various respected commentators underscore the plain mean-
ing of its text.

Courts exercising independent judgment in determining the mean-
ing  of  statutory  provisions,  consistent  with  the  APA,  may—as  they
have from the start—seek aid from the interpretations of those respon-
sible for implementing particular statutes.  See Skidmore, 323 U. S., 
at  140.    And  when  the  best  reading  of  a  statute  is  that  it  delegates 
discretionary  authority  to  an  agency,  the role  of  the  reviewing  court
under  the  APA  is,  as  always,  to  independently  interpret  the  statute
and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits.  The 
court fulfills that role by recognizing constitutional delegations, fixing
the  boundaries  of  the  delegated  authority,  and  ensuring  the  agency 
has engaged in “ ‘reasoned decisionmaking’ ” within those boundaries. 
Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 750 (quoting Allentown Mack Sales &