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22 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

law.”  Id., at 131.6  Recall here that even the majority ac-
cepts that Section 706 was meant to “restate[ ] the present 
law” as to judicial review.  See ante, at 15–16; supra, at 19– 
20.  Well then?  It sure would seem that the provision allows 
a deference regime.

The  majority  has  no  way  around  those  two  noteworthy
decisions.  It first appears to distinguish between “pure le-
gal question[s]” and the so-called mixed questions in Gray 
and Hearst, involving the application of a legal standard to
a set of facts.  Ante, at 11.  If in drawing that distinction,
the majority intends to confine its holding to the pure type
of legal issue—thus enabling courts to defer when law and
facts are entwined—I’d be glad.  But I suspect the majority 
has no such intent, because that approach would preserve 
Chevron  in  a  substantial  part  of  its  current  domain.    Cf. 
Wilkinson v. Garland, 601 U. S. 209, 230 (2024) (ALITO, J., 
dissenting)  (noting,  in  the  immigration  context,  that  the
universe  of  mixed  questions  swamps  that  of  pure  legal 
ones).  It is frequently in the consideration of mixed ques-
tions  that  the  scope  of  statutory  terms  is  established  and
their meaning defined.  See H. Monaghan, Marbury and the 

—————— 

6 The majority says that I have “pluck[ed] out” Gray and Hearst, im-
pliedly from a vast number of not-so-helpful cases.  Ante, at 13, n. 3.  It 
would make as much sense to say that a judge “plucked out” Universal 
Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U. S. 474 (1951), to discuss substantial-evi-
dence review or “plucked out” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, 
Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29 (1983), to dis-
cuss arbitrary-and-capricious review.  Gray and Hearst, as noted above, 
were the leading cases about agency interpretations in the years before
the APA’s enactment.  But just to gild the lily, here are a number of other 
Supreme  Court  decisions  from  the  five years  prior  to  the  APA’s  enact-
ment  that  were  of  a  piece:  United  States  v.  Pierce  Auto  Freight  Lines, 
Inc., 327 U. S. 515, 536 (1946); ICC v. Parker, 326 U. S. 60, 65 (1945); 
Federal Security Administrator v. Quaker Oats Co., 318 U. S. 218, 227– 
228 (1943).  The real “pluck[ing]” offense is the majority’s—for taking a 
stray sentence from Hearst (ante, at 13, n. 3) to suggest that both Hearst 
and Gray stand for the opposite of what they actually do.