Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 104.0

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

23 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 29 (1983) (“Ad-
ministrative application of law is administrative formula-
tion of law whenever it involves elaboration of the statutory 
norm”).  How  does  a  statutory  interpreter  decide,  as  in 
Hearst, what an “employee” is?  In large part through cases
asking whether the term covers people performing specific 
jobs, like (in that case) “newsboys.”  322 U. S., at 120.  Or 
consider one of the examples I offered above.  How does an 
interpreter  decide when one population segment of a spe-
cies is “distinct” from another?  Often by considering that
requirement with respect to particular species, like western 
gray squirrels.  So the distinction the majority offers makes
no  real-world  (or  even  theoretical)  sense.   If  the  Hearst 
Court was deferring to an agency on whether the term “em-
ployee” covered newsboys, it was deferring to the agency on 
the scope and meaning of the term “employee.” 

The  majority’s  next  rejoinder—that  “the  Court  was  far
from  consistent”  in  deferring—falls  equally  flat.  Ante,  at 
12.  I  am  perfectly  ready  to  acknowledge  that  in  the  pre-
APA period, a deference regime had not yet taken complete 
hold.  I’ll go even further: Let’s assume that deference was 
then an on-again, off-again function (as the majority seems 
to suggest, see ante, at 11–12, and 13, n. 3).  Even on that 
assumption,  the  majority’s  main  argument—that  Section 
706 prohibited deferential review—collapses.  Once again, 
the  majority  agrees  that  Section  706  was  not  meant  to 
change the then-prevailing law.  See ante, at 15–16.  And 
even if inconsistent, that law cannot possibly be thought to
have  prohibited  deference.    Or  otherwise  said:  “If  Section 
706 did not change the law of judicial review (as we have
long  recognized),  then  it  did  not  proscribe  a  deferential 
standard then known and in use.”  Kisor, 588 U. S., at 583 
(plurality opinion).

The majority’s whole argument for overturning Chevron 
relies on Section 706.  But the text of Section 706 does not 
support that result.  And neither does the contemporaneous