Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 31

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

23 

Opinion of the Court 

tral Ltd. v. United States, 585 U. S. 274, 284 (2018) (empha-
sis  deleted).    So  instead  of  declaring  a  particular  party’s
reading “permissible” in such a case, courts use every tool
at their disposal to determine the best reading of the stat-
ute and resolve the ambiguity.

In an agency case as in any other, though, even if some
judges might (or might not) consider the statute ambiguous,
there is a best reading all the same—“the reading the court
would have reached” if no agency were involved.  Chevron, 
467  U. S.,  at  843,  n. 11.    It  therefore  makes  no  sense  to 
speak of a “permissible” interpretation that is not the one 
the court, after applying all relevant interpretive tools, con-
cludes is best.  In the business of statutory interpretation,
if it is not the best, it is not permissible.

Perhaps  most  fundamentally,  Chevron’s  presumption  is 
misguided because agencies have no special competence in 
resolving statutory ambiguities.  Courts do.  The Framers, 
as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront stat-
utory  ambiguities  and  expected  that  courts  would  resolve 
them by exercising independent legal judgment.  And even 
Chevron  itself  reaffirmed  that  “[t]he  judiciary  is  the  final 
authority  on  issues  of  statutory  construction”  and  recog-
nized that “in the absence of an administrative interpreta-
tion,”  it  is  “necessary”  for  a  court  to  “impose  its  own  con-
struction  on  the  statute.”  Id.,  at  843,  and  n. 9.  Chevron 
gravely erred, though, in concluding that the inquiry is fun-
damentally different just because an administrative inter-
pretation is in play.  The very point of the traditional tools 
of statutory construction—the tools courts use every day—
is  to  resolve  statutory  ambiguities.    That  is  no  less  true 
when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own 
power—perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor 
of the agency is least appropriate. 

The Government responds that Congress must generally 

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