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22 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

Opinion of the Court 

Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 13, 37–38; post, 
at  4–15  (opinion  of  KAGAN,  J.).  Presumptions  have  their
place in statutory interpretation, but only to the extent that
they approximate reality.  Chevron’s presumption does not, 
because “[a]n ambiguity is simply not a delegation of law-
interpreting  power.  Chevron  confuses  the  two.”    C.  Sun-
stein,  Interpreting  Statutes  in  the  Regulatory  State,  103
Harv. L. Rev. 405, 445 (1989).  As Chevron itself noted, am-
biguities may result from an inability on the part of Con-
gress  to  squarely  answer  the  question  at  hand,  or  from  a 
failure  to  even  “consider  the  question”  with  the  requisite
precision.  467 U. S., at 865.  In neither case does an ambi-
guity  necessarily  reflect  a  congressional  intent  that  an
agency,  as  opposed  to a  court,  resolve  the  resulting  inter-
pretive question.  And many or perhaps most statutory am-
biguities may be unintentional.  As the Framers recognized,
ambiguities  will  inevitably  follow  from  “the  complexity  of
objects,  . . .  the  imperfection  of  the  human  faculties,”  and
the simple fact that “no language is so copious as to supply 
words and phrases for every complex idea.”  The Federalist 
No. 37, at 236. 

Courts, after all, routinely confront statutory ambiguities 
in cases having nothing to do with Chevron—cases that do 
not involve agency interpretations or delegations of author-
ity.  Of  course,  when  faced  with  a  statutory  ambiguity  in
such a case, the ambiguity is not a delegation to anybody,
and a court is not somehow relieved of its obligation to in-
dependently interpret the statute.  Courts in that situation 
do  not  throw  up  their  hands  because  “Congress’s  instruc-
tions have” supposedly “run out,” leaving a statutory “gap.” 
Post,  at  2  (opinion  of  KAGAN,  J.).   Courts  instead  under-
stand that such statutes, no matter how impenetrable, do—
in  fact,  must—have  a  single,  best  meaning.  That  is  the 
whole  point  of  having  written  statutes;  “every  statute’s 
meaning is fixed at the time of enactment.”  Wisconsin Cen-