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Page Number: 61.0

14 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

Much more could be said about Chevron’s inconsistency
with the APA.  But I have said it in the past.  See Buffington 
v. McDonough, 598 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) (opinion dis-
senting  from  denial  of  certiorari)  (slip  op.,  at  5–6); 
Gutierrez-Brizuela  v.  Lynch,  834  F. 3d  1142,  1151–1153 
(CA10  2016)  (concurring  opinion).    And  the  Court  makes 
many of the same points at length today.  See ante, at 18– 
22.  For present purposes, the short of it is that continuing 
to abide Chevron deference would require us to transgress
the  first  lesson  of  stare  decisis—the  humility  required  of
judges to recognize that our decisions must yield to the laws 
adopted by the people’s elected representatives.3 

B 
Lesson 2 cannot rescue Chevron deference.  If stare deci-
sis calls for judicial humility in the face of the written law,
it also cautions us to test our present conclusions carefully
against the work of our predecessors.  At the same time and 
as we have seen, this second form of humility counsels us to
remember that precedents that have won the endorsement 
of judges across many generations, demonstrated coherence
with our broader law, and weathered the tests of time and 
experience are entitled to greater consideration than those 
that have not.  See Part I, supra.  Viewed by each of these 
lights,  the  case  for  Chevron  deference  only  grows  weaker 
still. 

—————— 

3 The dissent suggests that we need not take the APA’s directions quite
so seriously because the “finest administrative law scholars” from Har-
vard  claim  to  see  in  them  some  wiggle  room.    Post,  at  18  (opinion  of 
KAGAN, J.).  But nothing in the APA commands deference to the views of 
professors any more than it does the government.  Nor is the dissent’s 
list  of  Harvard’s  finest  administrative  law  scholars  entirely  complete.
See S. Breyer et al., Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy 288 (7th
ed. 2011) (acknowledging that Chevron deference “seems in conflict with 
. . . the apparently contrary language of 706”); Kagan 212 (likewise ac-
knowledging Chevron deference rests upon a “fictionalized statement of 
legislative desire”).