Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-58_i425.pdf
Page Number: 29.0

12 

UNITED STATES v. TEXAS 

 GORSUCH, J., concurring
GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

expected, we find an instruction about the decisional pro-
cess—one requiring the court to apply “de novo review on 
questions of law” as it considers the parties’ arguments in 
the  course  of  reaching  its  judgment.  Kisor  v.  Wilkie,  588 
U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment) 
(slip op., at 15) (internal quotation marks omitted).  Noth-
ing here speaks to remedies.

The  remaining  statutory  language  is  more  of  the  same. 
Section 706 goes on to instruct that “[t]he reviewing court
shall  . . .  hold  unlawful  and  set  aside  agency  action,  find-
ings, and conclusions found to be,” among other things, “ar-
bitrary,” “capricious,” “contrary to constitutional right,” “in
excess of ” statutory authority, or “unsupported by substan-
tial evidence.”  §706(2).  Looking at the provision as a whole,
rather than focusing on two words in isolation, we see fur-
ther  evidence  that  it  governs  a  court’s  scope  of  review  or 
decisional process.  The statute tells judges to resolve the 
cases that come to them without regard to deficient agency
action,  findings,  or  conclusions—an  instruction  entirely
consistent with the usual “negative power” of courts “to dis-
regard” that which is unlawful.  Mellon, 262 U. S., at 488. 
Other details are telling too.  Consider the latter part of
§706(2)’s directive to “set aside agency action, findings, and 
conclusions.”  The  APA  defines  “agency  action”  to  include
“the whole or a part of an agency rule, order, license, sanc-
tion, relief, or the equivalent or denial thereof, or failure to 
act.”  5 U. S. C. §551(13).  A court can disregard any of those 
things.  But what would it even mean to say a court must
render null and void an agency’s failure to act?  Notice, too, 
the language about “findings.”  Often, judges disregard fac-
tual  findings  unsupported  by  record  evidence  and  resolve 
the  case  at  hand  without  respect  to  them.    See  Fed.  Rule 
Civ.  Proc.  52(a)(6)  (“Findings  of  fact  . . .  must  not  be  set 
aside unless clearly erroneous.”).  None of that means we 
may pretend to rewrite history and scrub any trace of faulty 
findings from the record.