Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-472_0pm1.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

invoking  Chevron.”  Brief  for  Federal  Respondent  46–47.
We  therefore  decline  to  consider  whether  any  deference
might be due its regulation.

Against  the  petitioners’  evidence  of  statutory  meaning,
the respondents ask us to consider one of their own.  They
point to the fact that subparagraph (A) is titled “temporary 
exemption,”  that  it  was  permitted  to  expire  in  2013,  and 
that  subparagraph  (B)(i)  speaks  of  extending “the  exemp-
tion under subparagraph (A).”  Together, respondents say,
these statutory features suggest that the whole scheme of 
exemptions was meant to end rapidly, that subparagraph
(B)(i) was designed as a narrow exception to a 2013 sunset
rule,  and  that  any  further  exemptions  it  allows  should 
therefore be construed narrowly to end as quickly as possi-
ble. 

But this much we do not see.  In the first place, we do not
construe subparagraph (B) as part of some sunset scheme.
To be sure, subparagraph (A)’s exemptions were permitted 
to expire in 2013, but did not have to do so.  In theory, EPA 
could have granted a small refinery exemption under sub-
paragraph  (A)(ii)  that  lasted  many  years  or  indefinitely.
See 42 U. S. C. 7545(o)(9)(A)(ii)(II).  In any case, subpara-
graph  (B)(i)  expressly  contemplates  exemptions  beyond
2013—“at  any  time”  hardship  conditions  are  satisfied.    If 
Congress really had wanted all exemptions to cease after a 
temporary period, that was surely an odd way to achieve it.
Odder still in light of the fact that Congress had before it 
(but eschewed) many readymade models for a sunset stat-
ute  if  that’s  what  it  wished  here.  See,  e.g.,  §247d–7f(b) 
(providing that statutory provisions authorizing a “limited 
antitrust exemption” “shall expire at the end of [a] 17-year
period”  after  the  Act  was  passed).    And  maybe  odder  yet
given that subparagraph (B)(i) exemptions are hardly des-
tined  to  sunset  quickly  even  on  the  respondents’  account, 
for they do not dispute that small refineries with an unbro-
ken record of failing to comply with the RFP may continue