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

14 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

Opinion of the Court 

the  extent  necessary  to  decision  and  when  presented,  the 
reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law,
interpret  constitutional  and  statutory  provisions,  and  de-
termine  the  meaning  or  applicability  of  the  terms  of  an
agency action.”  5 U. S. C. §706.  It further requires courts 
to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and 
conclusions  found  to  be  . . .  not  in  accordance  with  law.” 
§706(2)(A).

The APA thus codifies for agency cases the unremarka-
ble, yet elemental proposition reflected by judicial practice 
dating back to Marbury: that courts decide legal questions
by  applying  their  own  judgment.  It  specifies  that  courts,
not agencies, will decide “all relevant questions of law” aris-
ing  on  review  of  agency  action,  §706  (emphasis  added)—
even  those  involving  ambiguous  laws—and  set  aside  any
such action inconsistent with the law as they interpret it.
And it prescribes no deferential standard for courts to em-
ploy in answering those legal questions.  That omission is 
telling, because Section 706 does mandate that judicial re-
view of agency policymaking and factfinding be deferential. 
See §706(2)(A) (agency action to be set aside if “arbitrary,
capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion”); §706(2)(E) (agency
factfinding in formal proceedings to be set aside if “unsup-
ported by substantial evidence”). 

In a statute designed to “serve as the fundamental char-
ter of the administrative state,” Kisor v. Wilkie, 588 U. S. 
558,  580  (2019)  (plurality  opinion)  (internal  quotation 
marks omitted), Congress surely would have articulated a 
similarly  deferential  standard  applicable  to  questions  of 
law had it intended to depart from the settled pre-APA un-
derstanding that deciding such questions was “exclusively
a  judicial  function,”  American  Trucking  Assns.,  310  U. S., 
at 544.  But nothing in the APA hints at such a dramatic 
departure.  On the contrary, by directing courts to “inter-
pret constitutional and statutory provisions” without differ-
entiating  between  the  two,  Section  706  makes  clear  that