Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-916_f2ah.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

17 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

added).  We  did  not  need  to  overrule  Cuozzo,  because  the 
language  the  government  seized  upon  from  that  opinion
was dicta from the start.  Still, we made it clear that dicta’s 
day had come:  To read Cuozzo as “foreclosing judicial re-
view of any legal question bearing on the institution deci-
sion,” we explained, would “overrea[d] both the statute and 
our  precedent.”  SAS  Institute,  584  U. S.,  at  ___–___  (slip 
op., at 12–13).  The petitioner’s challenge to the Director’s
partial institution practice could go forward exactly because
it was something other than a disagreement about the Di-
rector’s initial determination under §314(a).  Id., at ___–___ 
(slip op., at 13–14). 

It’s  not  surprising  that  litigants  would  invite  us  to 
overread dicta or overlook an unfavorable precedent.  What 
is surprising is that the Court would accept the invitation.
In ‘‘cases involving property,” after all, “considerations fa-
voring  stare  decisis  are  at  their  acme.”    Kimble  v.  Marvel 
Entertainment,  LLC,  576  U. S.  446,  457  (2015)  (internal 
quotation marks omitted).  And we are often reminded that 
“stare decisis carries enhanced force when a decision . . . in-
terprets a statute.”  Id., at 456.  But rather than searching 
for the kind of “superspecial justification,” id., at 458, this 
Court supposedly requires to overrule a precedent like SAS 
Institute,  today’s  majority  quibbles  with  a  few  sentences
and quietly walks away.  If, as some have worried, “[e]ach
time the Court overrules a case, the Court . . . cause[s] the
public to become increasingly uncertain about which cases
the Court will overrule,” Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 
587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 13), (BREYER, J., dis-
senting), one can only imagine what a judicial shrug of the 
shoulders like this might yield. 

Litigants and lower courts will also have to be forgiven 
for the confusion to come about the meaning of §314(d)’s re-
view bar.  Whether it is limited to the §314(a) determina-
tion (as SAS Institute held and parts of Cuozzo suggested)
or also reaches to challenges grounded in “closely related”