Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 5.0

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

5 

Syllabus 

action it reviews—is to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “in-
terpret . . . statutory provisions.”  §706 (emphasis added).  It requires 
a  court  to  ignore,  not  follow,  “the  reading  the  court  would  have 
reached” had it exercised its independent judgment as required by the 
APA.  Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843, n. 11.  Chevron insists on more than 
the “respect” historically given to Executive Branch interpretations; it 
demands that courts mechanically afford binding deference to agency 
interpretations, including those that have been inconsistent over time, 
see id., at 863, and even when a pre-existing judicial precedent holds 
that an ambiguous statute  means something else, National Cable & 
Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 
982.  That regime is the antithesis of the time honored approach the
APA prescribes. 

Chevron cannot be reconciled with the APA by presuming that stat-
utory ambiguities are implicit delegations to agencies.  That presump-
tion does not approximate reality.  A statutory ambiguity does not nec-
essarily reflect a congressional intent that an agency, as opposed to a 
court,  resolve  the  resulting  interpretive  question.    Many  or  perhaps 
most  statutory  ambiguities  may  be unintentional.  And  when  courts 
confront statutory ambiguities in cases that do not involve agency in-
terpretations  or  delegations  of  authority,  they  are  not  somehow  re-
lieved of their obligation to independently interpret the statutes.  In-
stead of declaring a particular party’s reading “permissible” in such a
case, courts use every tool at their disposal to determine the best read-
ing of the statute and resolve the ambiguity.  But in an agency case as 
in  any  other,  there  is  a  best  reading  all  the  same—“the  reading  the 
court would have reached” if no agency were involved.  Chevron, 467 
U. S., at 843, n. 11.  It therefore makes no sense to speak of a “permis-
sible”  interpretation  that  is  not  the  one  the  court,  after  applying  all
relevant interpretive tools, concludes is best.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided
because  agencies  have  no  special  competence  in  resolving  statutory 
ambiguities.  Courts do.  The Framers anticipated that courts would 
often  confront  statutory  ambiguities  and  expected  that courts  would 
resolve  them  by  exercising  independent  legal  judgment.    Chevron 
gravely erred in concluding that the inquiry is fundamentally different
just  because  an  administrative  interpretation  is  in  play.    The  very 
point of the traditional tools of statutory construction is to resolve stat-
utory ambiguities.  That is no less true when the ambiguity is about 
the  scope  of  an  agency’s  own  power—perhaps  the  occasion  on  which 
abdication in favor of the agency is least appropriate.  Pp. 21–23. 

(3) The  Government  responds  that  Congress  must  generally  in-
tend  for  agencies  to  resolve  statutory  ambiguities  because  agencies 
have subject matter expertise regarding the statutes they administer;