Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 96.0

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

15 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

or reauthorized hundreds of statutes.  The drafters of those 
statutes knew all about Chevron.  See A. Gluck & L. Bress-
man, Statutory Interpretation From the Inside—An Empir-
ical  Study  of  Congressional  Drafting,  Delegation,  and  the 
Canons: Part I, 65 Stan. L. Rev. 901, 928 (fig. 2), 994 (2013).
So if they had wanted a different assignment of interpretive
responsibility, they would have inserted a provision to that 
effect.  With just a pair of exceptions I know of, they did not. 
See  12  U. S. C.  §25b(b)(5)(A)  (exception  #1);  15  U. S. C.
§8302(c)(3)(A) (exception #2).  Similarly, Congress has de-
clined  to  enact  proposed  legislation  that  would  abolish 
Chevron  across  the  board.    See  S.  909,  116th  Cong.,  1st 
Sess., §2 (2019) (still a bill, not a law); H. R. 5, 115th Cong., 
1st Sess., §202 (2017) (same).  So to the extent the majority 
is  worried  that  the  Chevron  presumption  is  “fiction[al],” 
ante, at 26—as all legal presumptions in some sense are—
it has gotten less and less so every day for 40 years.  The 
congressional reaction shows as well as anything could that 
the Chevron Court read Congress right. 

II 

The  majority’s  principal  arguments  are  in  a  different 
vein.  Around 80 years after the APA was enacted and 40
years after Chevron, the majority has decided that the for-
mer precludes the latter.  The APA’s Section 706, the ma-
jority  says,  “makes  clear”  that  agency  interpretations  of 
statutes “are not entitled to deference.”  Ante, at 14–15 (em-
phasis in original).  And that provision, the majority contin-
ues, codified the contemporaneous law, which likewise did 
not allow for deference.  See ante, at 9–13, 15–16.  But nei-
ther the APA nor the pre-APA state of the law does the work 
that  the  majority  claims.    Both  are  perfectly  compatible 
with Chevron deference. 

Section  706,  enacted  with  the  rest  of  the  APA  in  1946, 
provides for judicial review of agency action.  It states: “To 
the  extent  necessary  to  decision  and  when  presented,  the