Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf
Page Number: 34

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

U. S. ___, ___–___ (2018) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., 
at 2–3).  Or with the framers’ explicit rejection of allowing 
this  Court  to  serve  as  a  council  of  revision  free  to  amend 
legislation.  See Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104
Va.  L. Rev.  933,  954–960  (2018).    Let  alone  with  our  con-
stant  admonitions  that  policy  choices  belong  to  Congress, 
not this Court.  E.g., Pereida v. Wilkinson, 592 U. S. ___, ___ 
(2021) (slip op., at 16).  And certainly none of the early cases 
the Court cites today proceeded as it does.  See ante, at 19, 
22. 

Nor does the Court pause to consider whether venturing
further down this remedial path today risks undermining
the very separation of powers its merits decision purports 
to vindicate.  While the Court’s merits analysis ensures that 
executive power properly resides in the Executive Branch, 
its severability analysis seemingly confers legislative power 
to the Judiciary—endowing us with the authority to make
a raw policy choice between competing lawful options.  No 
doubt, if Congress is dissatisfied with the choice the Court
makes  on  its  behalf  today,  it  can  always  reenter  the  field 
and revise our judgment.  But doesn’t that just underscore
the legislative nature of the Court’s judgment?  And doesn’t 
deciding for ourselves which policy course to pursue today
allow Congress to disclaim responsibility for our legislative 
handiwork much as the President might the PTAB’s execu-
tive decisions under the current statutory structure?

Instead of confronting these questions, the Court has jus-
tified modern “severance” doctrine on assumptions and pre-
sumptions about what Congress would have chosen to do, 
had  it  known  that  its  statutory  scheme  was  unconstitu-
tional.  See, e.g., Seila Law, 591 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 32) 
(“We will presume that Congress did not intend the validity 
of the statute in question to depend on the validity of the
constitutionally  offensive  provision”  (internal  quotation
marks  omitted)).  But  any  claim  about  “congressional  in-
tent” divorced from enacted statutory text is an appeal to