Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 60.0

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

13 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

officials, too, may change their minds about the law’s mean-
ing at any time, even when Congress has not amended the 
relevant statutory language in any way.  National Cable & 
Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 
U. S. 967, 982–983 (2005).  And those officials may even dis-
agree with and effectively overrule not only their own past
interpretations of a law but a court’s past interpretation as 
well.  Ibid.  None of that is consistent with the APA’s clear 
mandate. 

The hard fact is Chevron “did not even bother to cite” the 
APA,  let  alone  seek  to  apply  its  terms.    United  States  v. 
Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 241 (2001) (Scalia, J., dissent-
ing).  Instead, as even its most ardent defenders have con-
ceded, Chevron deference rests upon a “fictionalized state-
ment  of  legislative  desire,”  namely,  a  judicial  supposition
that Congress implicitly wishes judges to defer to executive
agencies’ interpretations of the law even when it has said 
nothing of the kind.  D. Barron & E. Kagan, Chevron’s Non-
delegation Doctrine, 2001 S. Ct. Rev. 201, 212 (Kagan) (em-
phasis added).  As proponents see it, that fiction represents 
a “policy judgmen[t] about what . . . make[s] for good gov-
ernment.”  Ibid.2    But  in  our  democracy  unelected  judges
possess no authority to elevate their own fictions over the
laws adopted by the Nation’s elected representatives.  Some 
might  think  the  legal  directive  Congress  provided  in  the 
APA  unwise;  some  might  think  a  different  arrangement
preferable.  See, e.g., post, at 9–11 (KAGAN, J., dissenting).
But  it  is  Congress’s  view  of  “good  government,”  not  ours,
that controls. 

—————— 

2 See also A. Scalia, Judicial Deference to Administrative Interpreta-
tions of Law, 1989 Duke L. J. 511, 516–517 (1989) (describing Chevron’s 
theory that Congress “delegat[ed]” interpretive authority to agencies as 
“fictional”); S. Breyer, Judicial Review of Questions of Law and Policy, 
38 Admin. L. Rev. 363, 370 (1986) (describing the notion that there exists 
a “ ‘legislative intent to delegate the law-interpreting function’ as a kind
of legal fiction”).