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PEREZ v. MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSN. 

Opinion of the Court 

rules  from  the  notice-and-comment  requirements  that
apply  to  legislative  rules.  So,  the  D. C.  Circuit  correctly
read §1 of the APA to mandate that agencies use the same
procedures when they amend or repeal a rule as they used
to  issue  the  rule  in  the  first  instance.  See  FCC  v.  Fox 
Television  Stations,  Inc.,  556  U. S.  502,  515  (2009)  (the
APA  “make[s]  no  distinction  . . .  between  initial  agency
action  and  subsequent  agency  action  undoing  or  revising
that action”).  Where the court went wrong was in failing 
to  apply  that  accurate  understanding  of  §1  to  the  exemp-
tion  for  interpretive  rules  contained  in  §4:  Because  an
agency  is  not  required  to  use  notice-and-comment  proce-
dures  to  issue  an  initial  interpretive  rule,  it  is  also  not 
required  to  use  those  procedures  when  it  amends  or  re-
peals that interpretive rule. 

B 
The  straightforward  reading  of  the  APA  we  now  adopt
harmonizes  with  longstanding  principles  of  our  adminis-
trative law jurisprudence.  Time and again, we have reit-
erated  that  the  APA  “sets  forth  the  full  extent  of  judicial
authority to review executive agency action for procedural 
correctness.”  Fox  Television  Stations,  Inc.,  556  U.  S.,  at 
513.  Beyond  the  APA’s  minimum  requirements,  courts
lack authority “to impose upon [an] agency its own notion
of  which  procedures  are  ‘best’  or  most  likely  to  further
some vague, undefined public good.”  Vermont Yankee, 435 
U. S.,  at  549.    To  do  otherwise  would  violate  “the  very
basic  tenet  of  administrative  law  that  agencies  should  be 
free to fashion their own rules of procedure.”  Id., at 544. 

These foundational principles apply with equal force to
the  APA’s  procedures  for  rulemaking.    We  explained  in 
Vermont Yankee that §4 of the Act “established the maxi-
mum procedural requirements which Congress was willing 
to  have  the  courts  impose  upon  agencies  in  conducting
rulemaking procedures.”  Id., at 524.  “Agencies are free to