Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 27

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

19 

Opinion of the Court 

emitting  devices  within  the  same  industrial  grouping  as
though they were encased within a single ‘bubble’ ” was con-
sistent  with  the  term  “stationary  source”  as  used  in  the 
Clean Air Act.  467 U. S., at 840.  To answer that question
of statutory interpretation, the Court articulated and em-
ployed a now familiar two-step approach broadly applicable 
to review of agency action. 

The first step was to discern “whether Congress ha[d] di-
rectly spoken to the precise question at issue.”  Id., at 842. 
The  Court  explained  that  “[i]f  the  intent  of  Congress  is
clear, that is the end of the matter,” ibid., and courts were 
therefore to “reject administrative constructions which are 
contrary to clear congressional intent,” id., at 843, n. 9.  To 
discern such intent, the Court noted, a reviewing court was 
to  “employ[ ]  traditional  tools  of  statutory  construction.” 
Ibid. 

Without mentioning the APA, or acknowledging any doc-
trinal shift, the Court articulated a second step applicable
when  “Congress  ha[d]  not  directly  addressed  the  precise 
question at issue.”  Id., at 843.  In such a case—that is, a 
case in which “the statute [was] silent or ambiguous with 
respect  to  the  specific  issue”  at  hand—a  reviewing  court 
could not “simply impose its own construction on the stat-
ute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administra-
tive  interpretation.”    Ibid.  (footnote  omitted).  A  court  in-
stead had to set aside the traditional interpretive tools and
defer to the agency if it had offered “a permissible construc-
tion of the statute,” ibid., even if not “the reading the court
would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a
judicial proceeding,” ibid., n. 11.  That directive was justi-
fied, according to the Court, by the understanding that ad-
ministering statutes “requires the formulation of policy” to
fill  statutory  “gap[s]”;  by  the  long  judicial  tradition  of  ac-
cording  “considerable  weight”  to  Executive  Branch  inter-
pretations; and by a host of other considerations, including 
the  complexity  of  the  regulatory  scheme,  EPA’s  “detailed