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Page Number: 42

34 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

Opinion of the Court 

Bay  Mills  Indian  Community,  572  U. S.  782,  798  (2014).
And it cannot be constrained by admonishing courts to be 
extra  careful,  or  by  tacking  on  a  new  batch  of  conditions. 
We would need to once again “revis[e] its theoretical basis 
. . .  in  order  to  cure  its  practical  deficiencies.”  Montejo  v. 
Louisiana, 556 U. S. 778, 792 (2009).  Stare decisis does not 
require us to do so, especially because any refinements we 
might make would only point courts back to their duties un-
der  the  APA  to  “decide  all  relevant  questions  of  law”  and 
“interpret . . . statutory provisions.”  §706.  Nor is there any 
reason  to  wait  helplessly  for  Congress  to  correct  our  mis-
take.  The Court has jettisoned many precedents that Con-
gress likewise could have legislatively overruled.  See, e.g., 
Patterson  v.  McLean  Credit  Union,  485  U. S.  617,  618 
(1988) (per curiam) (collecting cases).  And part of “judicial 
humility,” post, at 3, 25 (opinion of KAGAN, J.,), is admitting 
and in certain cases correcting our own mistakes, especially
when those mistakes are serious, see post, at 8–9 (opinion
of GORSUCH, J.).

This is one of those cases.  Chevron was a judicial inven-
tion  that  required  judges  to  disregard  their  statutory  du-
ties.  And  the  only  way  to  “ensure  that  the  law  will  not 
merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled 
and intelligible fashion,” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 
265 (1986), is for us to leave Chevron behind. 

By doing so, however, we do not call into question prior 
cases that relied on the Chevron framework.  The holdings
of  those  cases  that  specific  agency  actions  are  lawful—in-
cluding  the  Clean  Air  Act  holding  of  Chevron  itself—are 
still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in
interpretive methodology.  See CBOCS West, Inc. v. Hum-
phries, 553 U. S. 442, 457 (2008).  Mere reliance on Chevron 
cannot  constitute  a  “ ‘special  justification’ ”  for  overruling
such a holding, because to say a precedent relied on Chev-
ron  is,  at  best,  “just  an  argument  that  the  precedent  was 
wrongly decided.”  Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund,