Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

had arrangements with several coal mines was not a coal 
“producer”  under  the  Bituminous  Coal  Act  of  1937.    Con-
gress had “specifically” granted the agency the authority to
make that determination.  Id., at 411.  The Court thus rea-
soned that “[w]here, as here, a determination has been left 
to an administrative body, this delegation will be respected
and the administrative conclusion left untouched” so long 
as the agency’s decision constituted “a sensible exercise of
judgment.”  Id., at 412–413.  Similarly, in NLRB v. Hearst 
Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111 (1944), the Court deferred 
to the determination of the National Labor Relations Board 
that  newsboys  were  “employee[s]”  within  the  meaning  of 
the  National  Labor  Relations  Act.  The  Act  had,  in  the 
Court’s  judgment,  “assigned  primarily”  to  the  Board  the 
task  of  marking  a  “definitive  limitation  around  the  term
‘employee.’ ”  Id., at 130.  The Court accordingly viewed its
own role as “limited” to assessing whether the Board’s de-
termination had a “ ‘warrant in the record’ and a reasonable 
basis in law.”  Id., at 131. 

Such  deferential  review,  though,  was  cabined  to  fact-
bound  determinations  like  those  at  issue  in  Gray  and 
Hearst.  Neither Gray nor Hearst purported to refashion the 
longstanding  judicial  approach  to  questions  of  law. 
In 
Gray, after deferring to the agency’s determination that a
particular  entity  was  not  a  “producer”  of  coal,  the  Court 
went  on  to  discern,  based  on  its  own  reading  of  the  text, 
whether another statutory term—“other disposal” of coal—
encompassed a transaction lacking a transfer of title.  See 
314  U. S.,  at  416–417.    The  Court  evidently  perceived  no 
basis for deference to the agency with respect to that pure
legal question.  And in Hearst, the Court proclaimed that
“[u]ndoubtedly questions of statutory interpretation . . . are 
for the courts to resolve, giving appropriate weight to the
judgment of those whose special duty is to administer the 
questioned statute.”  322 U. S., at 130–131.  At least with