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Page Number: 28

20 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

Opinion of the Court 

and reasoned” consideration, the policy-laden nature of the
judgment supposedly required, and the agency’s indirect ac-
countability  to  the  people  through  the  President.  Id.,  at 
843, 844, and n. 14, 865. 

Employing this new test, the Court concluded that Con-
gress had not addressed the question at issue with the nec-
essary  “level  of  specificity”  and  that  EPA’s  interpretation 
was “entitled to deference.”  Id., at 865.  It did not matter 
why  Congress,  as  the  Court  saw  it,  had  not  squarely  ad-
dressed  the  question,  see  ibid.,  or  that  “the  agency  ha[d]
from time to time changed its interpretation,” id., at 863. 
The latest EPA interpretation was a permissible reading of
the Clean Air Act, so under the Court’s new rule, that read-
ing controlled.

Initially,  Chevron  “seemed  destined  to  obscurity.”    T. 
Merrill, The Story of Chevron: The Making of an Accidental
Landmark, 66 Admin. L. Rev. 253, 276 (2014).  The Court 
did  not  at  first  treat  it  as  the  watershed  decision  it  was 
fated to become; it was hardly cited in cases involving stat-
utory questions of agency authority.  See ibid.  But within 
a few years, both this Court and the courts of appeals were 
routinely invoking its two-step framework as the governing 
standard in such cases.  See id., at 276–277.  As the Court 
did so, it revisited the doctrine’s justifications.  Eventually, 
the Court decided that Chevron rested on “a presumption 
that Congress, when it left ambiguity in a statute meant for 
implementation by an agency, understood that the ambigu-
ity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and 
desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess what-
ever degree of discretion the ambiguity allows.”  Smiley v. 
Citibank  (South  Dakota),  N. A.,  517  U. S.  735,  740–741 
(1996);  see  also,  e.g.,  Cuozzo  Speed  Technologies,  LLC  v. 
Lee, 579 U. S. 261, 276–277 (2016); Utility Air Regulatory 
Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. 302, 315 (2014); National Cable & 
Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 
U. S. 967, 982 (2005).