Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 72.0

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

25 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

returns  to  active  service.  But  armed  with  Chevron,  the 
agency  defeated  Mr.  Buffington’s  claim.  Maybe  the  self-
serving regulation the VA cited as justification for its action
was not premised on the best reading of the law, courts said,
but it represented a “ ‘permissible’ ” one.  598 U. S., at ___ 
(slip op., at 7).  In that way, the Executive Branch was able 
to evade Congress’s promises to someone who took the field 
repeatedly in the Nation’s defense.

In another case, one which I heard as a court of appeals
judge, De Niz Robles v. Lynch, 803 F. 3d 1165 (CA10 2015), 
the Board of Immigration Appeals invoked Chevron to over-
rule  a  judicial  precedent  on  which  many  immigrants  had 
relied, see In re Briones, 24 I. & N. Dec. 355, 370 (BIA 2007) 
(purporting  to  overrule  Padilla–Caldera  v.  Gonzales,  426 
F. 3d 1294 (CA10 2005)).  The agency then sought to apply 
its new interpretation retroactively to punish those immi-
grants—including Alfonzo De Niz Robles, who had relied on
that judicial precedent as authority to remain in this coun-
try with his U. S. wife and four children.  See 803 F. 3d, at 
1168–1169.  Our court ruled that this retrospective applica-
tion of the BIA’s new interpretation of the law violated Mr.
De Niz Robles’s due process rights.  Id., at 1172.  But as a 
lower court, we could treat only the symptom, not the dis-
ease.  So  Chevron  permitted  the  agency  going  forward  to
overrule a judicial decision about the best reading of the law
with  its  own  different  “reasonable”  one  and  in  that  way
deny relief to countless future immigrants.

Those  are  just  two  stories  among  so  many  that  federal
judges could tell (and have told) about what Chevron defer-
ence has meant for ordinary people interacting with the fed-
eral government.  See, e.g., Lambert v. Saul, 980 F. 3d 1266, 
1268–1276  (CA9  2020);  Valent  v.  Commissioner  of  Social 
Security, 918 F. 3d 516, 525–527 (CA6 2019) (Kethledge, J., 
dissenting); Gonzalez v. United States Atty. Gen., 820 F. 3d 
399, 402–405 (CA11 2016) (per curiam).

What does the federal government have to say about this?