Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 100

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

19 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Nor, evidently, did the Supreme Court.  In the years after
the APA was enacted, the Court “never indicated that sec-
tion 706 rejected the idea that courts might defer to agency
interpretations of law.”  Sunstein 1654.  Indeed, not a single
Justice  so  much  as  floated  that  view  of  the  APA.    To  the 
contrary, the Court issued a number of decisions in those 
years  deferring  to  an  agency’s  statutory  interpretation.
See, e.g., Unemployment Compensation Comm’n of Alaska 
v.  Aragon,  329  U. S.  143,  153–154  (1946);  NLRB  v.  E.  C. 
Atkins & Co., 331 U. S. 398, 403 (1947); Cardillo v. Liberty 
Mut. Ins. Co., 330 U. S. 469, 478–479 (1947).  And that con-
tinued right up until Chevron.  See, e.g., Mitchell v. Budd, 
350  U. S.  473,  480  (1956);  Zenith  Radio  Corp.  v.  United 
States, 437 U. S. 443, 450 (1978).  To be clear: Deference in 
those  years  was  not  always  given  to  interpretations  that
would  receive  it  under  Chevron.  The  practice  then  was 
more inconsistent and less fully elaborated than it later be-
came.  The point here is only that the Court came nowhere 
close to accepting the majority’s view of the APA.  Take the 
language from Section 706 that the majority most relies on:
“decide all relevant questions of law.”  See ante, at 14.  In 
the  decade  after  the  APA’s  enactment,  those  words  were 
used only four times in Supreme Court opinions (all in foot-
notes)—and never to suggest that courts could not defer to 
agency interpretations.  See Sunstein 1656. 

The majority’s view of Section 706 likewise gets no sup-
port from how judicial review operated in the years leading 
up to the APA.  That prior history matters: As the majority
recognizes,  Section  706  was  generally  understood  to  “re-
state[ ] the present law as to the scope of judicial review.” 

—————— 
(Dickinson); ante, at 16.  But unlike the majority, he viewed that bar as
“a change” to, not a restatement of, pre-APA law.  Compare Dickinson 
516 with ante, at 15–16.  So if the majority really wants to rely on Pro-
fessor Dickinson, it will have to give up the claim, which I address below, 
that the law before the APA forbade deference.  See infra, at 19–23.