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Page Number: 45.0

14 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

BARRETT, J., concurring 

enactment conduct does not control the meaning of a stat-
ute, but “this Court has long said that courts may consider 
the consistency of an agency’s views when we weigh the per-
suasiveness  of  any  interpretation  it  proffers  in  court.” 
Bittner v. United States, 598 U. S. 85, 97 (2023) (citing Skid-
more  v.  Swift  &  Co.,  323  U. S.  134,  140  (1944)).  The 
agency’s track record can be particularly probative in this 
context:  A  longstanding  “want  of  assertion  of  power  by
those  who  presumably  would  be  alert  to  exercise  it”  may
provide some clue that the power was never conferred.  FTC 
v.  Bunte  Brothers,  Inc.,  312  U. S.  349,  352  (1941).    Once 
again, Brown & Williamson is a good example.  There, we 
balked  at  the  FDA’s  novel  attempt  to  regulate  tobacco  in 
part  because  this  move  was  “[c]ontrary  to  its  representa-
tions  to  Congress  since  1914.”  529  U. S.,  at  159.    And  in 
Utility  Air,  we  were  dubious  when  the  EPA  discovered 
“newfound authority” in the Clean Air Act that would have 
allowed it to require greenhouse-gas permits for “millions 
of small sources—including retail stores, offices, apartment
buildings,  shopping  centers,  schools,  and  churches.”    573 
U. S., at 328. 

If the major questions doctrine were a substantive canon,
then  the  common  thread  in  these  cases  would  be  that  we 
“exchange[d]  the  most  natural  reading  of  a  statute  for  a
bearable one more protective of a judicially specified value.” 
Barrett  111.    But  by  my  lights,  the  Court  arrived  at  the 
most plausible reading of the statute in these cases.  To be 
sure,  “[a]ll  of  these  regulatory  assertions  had  a  colorable 
textual basis.”  West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 
18).  In  each  case,  we  could  have  “[p]ut  on  blinders”  and
confined ourselves to the four corners of the statute, and we 
might have reached a  different outcome.   Sykes v.  United 
States, 564 U. S. 1, 43 (2011) (KAGAN, J., dissenting).  In-
stead, we took “off those blinders,” “view[ed] the statute as
a  whole,”  ibid.,  and  considered  context  that  would  be  im-
portant to a reasonable observer.  With the full picture in