Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1041_0861.pdf
Page Number: 15.0

12

PEREZ v. MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSN. 

Opinion of the Court 

  As  for  Guernsey,  that  case  is  fully  consistent  with—
indeed,  confirms—what  the  text  of  the  APA  makes  plain: 
“Interpretive  rules  do  not  require  notice  and  comment.”
514 U. S., at 99.  Sidestepping this inconvenient language,
MBA instead quotes a portion of the Court’s opinion stat-
ing  that  “APA  rulemaking  would  still  be  required  if  [an 
agency]  adopted  a  new  position  inconsistent  with  . . . 
existing  regulations.”    Id.,  at  100.  But  the  statement  on 
which MBA relies is dictum.  Worse, it is dictum taken out 
of context.   The “regulations” to which the  Court referred
were  two  provisions  of  the  Medicare  reimbursement 
scheme.  And it is apparent from the Court’s description of 
these regulations in Part II of the opinion that they were 
legislative  rules,  issued  through  the  notice-and-comment 
process.  See id., at 91–92 (noting that the disputed regu-
lations  were  codified  in  the  Code  of  Federal  Regulations).
Read  properly,  then,  the  cited  passage  from  Guernsey
merely means that “an agency may only change its inter-
pretation  if  the  revised  interpretation  is  consistent  with 
the  underlying  regulations.”  Brief  for  Petitioners  in  No. 
13–1052, p. 44. 

B 
In  the  main,  MBA  attempts  to  justify  the  Paralyzed 
Veterans  doctrine  on  practical  and  policy  grounds.    MBA 
contends  that  the  doctrine  reinforces  the  APA’s  goal  of 
“procedural  fairness”  by  preventing  agencies  from  unilat-
erally  and  unexpectedly  altering  their  interpretation  of
important regulations.  Brief for Respondent 16.

There  may  be  times  when  an  agency’s  decision  to  issue 
an  interpretive  rule,  rather  than  a  legislative  rule,  is
driven  primarily  by  a  desire  to  skirt  notice-and-comment 
provisions.  But  regulated  entities  are  not  without  re-
course  in  such  situations.  Quite  the  opposite.  The  APA 
contains  a  variety  of  constraints  on  agency  decisionmak-
ing—the  arbitrary  and  capricious  standard  being  among