Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-1545
Timestamp: 2020-02-24 00:17:00
Document Index: 750827052

Matched Legal Cases: ['§332', '§201', '§332', '§201', '§332', '§201', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§3', '§18', '§12', '§201', '§332', '§332', '§151', '§201', '§332', '§332', '§706', '§1854', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332']

ARLINGTON v. FCC | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Opinion, Breyer [Breyer Opinion] [PDF]
No. 11–1545. Argued January 16, 2013—Decided May 20, 20131
The Communications Act of 1934, as amended, requires state or local governments to act on siting applications for wireless facilities “within a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed.” 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B)(ii). Relying on its broad authority to implement the Communications Act, see 47 U. S. C. §201(b), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Declaratory Ruling concluding that the phrase “reasonable period of time” is presumptively (but rebuttably) 90 days to process an application to place a new antenna on an existing tower and 150 days to process all other applications. The cities of Arlington and San Antonio, Texas, sought review of the Declaratory Ruling in the Fifth Circuit. They argued that the Commission lacked authority to interpret §332(c)(7)(B)’s limitations. The Court of Appeals, relying on Circuit precedent holding that Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, applies to an agency’s interpretation of its own statutory jurisdiction, applied Chevron to that question. Finding the statute ambiguous, it upheld as a permissible construction of the statute the FCC’s view that §201(b)’s broad grant of regulatory authority empowered it to administer §332(c)(7)(B).
(b) When a court reviews an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers, the question is always, simply, whether the agency has stayed within the bounds of its statutory authority. There is no distinction between an agency’s “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional” interpretations. The “jurisdictional-nonjurisdictional” line is meaningful in the judicial context because Congress has the power to tell the courts what classes of cases they may decide—that is, to define their jurisdiction—but not to prescribe how they decide those cases. But for agencies charged with administering congressional statutes, both their power to act and how they are to act is authoritatively prescribed by Congress, so that when they act improperly, no less than when they act beyond their jurisdiction, what they do is ultra vires. Because the question is always whether the agency has gone beyond what Congress has permitted it to do, there is no principled basis for carving out an arbitrary subset of “jurisdictional” questions from the Chevron framework. See, e.g., National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., Inc. v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U. S. 327, 333, 339. Pp. 5–10.
(c) This Court has consistently afforded Chevron deference to agencies’ constructions of the scope of their own jurisdiction. See, e.g., Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833; United States v. Eurodif S. A., 555 U. S. 305, 316. Chevron applies to statutes designed to curtail the scope of agency discretion, see Chemical Mfrs. Assn. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 470 U. S. 116, 123, and even where concerns about agency self-aggrandizement are at their apogee—i.e., where an agency’s expansive construction of the extent of its own power would have wrought a fundamental change in the regulatory scheme, see FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 132. Pp. 10–14.
(e) United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, requires that, for Chevron deference to apply, the agency must have received congressional authority to determine the particular matter at issue in the particular manner adopted. But Mead denied Chevron deference to action, by an agency with rulemaking authority, that was not rulemaking. There is no case in which a general conferral of rulemaking or adjudicative authority has been held insufficient to support Chevron deference for an exercise of that authority within the agency’s substantive field. A general conferral of rulemaking authority validates rules for all the matters the agency is charged with administering. It suffices to decide this case that the preconditions to deference under Chevron are satisfied because Congress has unambiguously vested the FCC with general authority to administer the Communications Act through rulemaking and adjudication, and the agency interpretation at issue was promulgated in the exercise of that authority. Pp. 14–16.
11–1545 v.
11–1547 v.
We consider whether an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of its regulatory authority (that is, its jurisdiction) is entitled to deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984).
Wireless telecommunications networks require towers and antennas; proposed sites for those towers and anten nas must be approved by local zoning authorities. In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress “impose[d] specific limitations on the traditional authority of state and local governments to regulate the location, construction, and modification of such facilities,” Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U. S. 113, 115 (2005), and incorporated those limitations into the Communications Act of 1934, see 110 Stat. 56, 151. Section 201(b) of that Act empowers the Federal Communications Commission to “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out [its] provisions.” Ch. 296, 52 Stat. 588, codified at 47 U. S. C. §201(b). Of course, that rulemaking authority extends to the subsequently added portions of the Act. See AT&T Corp. v. Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U. S. 366, 377–378 (1999).
In theory, §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) requires state and local zoning authorities to take prompt action on siting applications for wireless facilities. But in practice, wireless providers often faced long delays. In July 2008, CTIA—The Wireless Association,1 which represents wireless service providers, petitioned the FCC to clarify the meaning of §332(c)(7)(B)(ii)’s requirement that zoning authorities act on siting requests “within a reasonable period of time.” In November 2009, the Commission, relying on its broad statutory authority to implement the provisions of the Communications Act, issued a declaratory ruling responding to CTIA’s petition. In re Petition for Declaratory Ruling, 24 FCC Rcd. 13994, 14001. The Commission found that the “record evidence demonstrates that unreasonable delays in the personal wireless service facility siting process have obstructed the provision of wireless services” and that such delays “impede the promotion of ad- vanced services and competition that Congress deemed critical in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” Id., at 14006, 14008. A “reasonable period of time” under §332(c)(7)(B)(ii), the Commission determined, is presumptively (but rebuttably) 90 days to process a collocation application (that is, an application to place a new antenna on an existing tower) and 150 days to process all other applications. Id., at 14005.
Chevron is rooted in a background presumption of congressional intent: namely, “that Congress, when it left ambiguity in a statute” administered by an agency, “understood that the ambiguity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess whatever degree of discretion the ambiguity allows.” Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740–741 (1996). Chevron thus provides a stable background rule against which Congress can legislate: Statutory ambiguities will be resolved, within the bounds of reasonable interpretation, not by the courts but by the administering agency. See Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U. S., at 397. Congress knows to speak in plain terms when it wishes to circumscribe, and in capacious terms when it wishes to enlarge, agency discretion.
The misconception that there are, for Chevron purposes, separate “jurisdictional” questions on which no deference is due derives, perhaps, from a reflexive extension to agen- cies of the very real division between the jurisdictional and nonjurisdictional that is applicable to courts. In the judicial context, there is a meaningful line: Whether the court decided correctly is a question that has different consequences from the question whether it had the power to decide at all. Congress has the power (within limits) to tell the courts what classes of cases they may decide, see Trainmen v. Toledo, P. & W. R. Co., 321 U. S. 50, 63–64 (1944); Lauf v. E. G. Shinner & Co., 303 U. S. 323, 330 (1938), but not to prescribe or superintend how they decide those cases, see Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995). A court’s power to decide a case is independent of whether its decision is correct, which is why even an erroneous judgment is entitled to res judicata effect. Put differently, a jurisdictionally proper but substantively incorrect judicial decision is not ultra vires.
Section 1. The Agency shall have jurisdiction to prohibit any common carrier from imposing an unreason able condition upon access to its facilities.
In the first case, by contrast, petitioners’ theory would accord the agency no deference. The trouble with this is that in both cases, the underlying question is exactly the same: Does the statute give the agency authority to regulate Internet Service Providers and cap prices, or not?2 The reality, laid bare, is that there is no difference, insofar as the validity of agency action is concerned, between an agency’s exceeding the scope of its authority (its “jurisdiction”) and its exceeding authorized application of authority that it unquestionably has. “To exceed authorized application is to exceed authority. Virtually any administrative action can be characterized as either the one or the other, depending on how generally one wishes to describe the ‘authority.’ ” Mississippi Power & Light Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Moore, 487 U. S. 354, 381 (1988) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); see also Monaghan, Marbury and the Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 29 (1983) (“Administrative application of law is administrative formulation of law whenever it involves elaboration of the statutory norm.”).
This point is nicely illustrated by our decision in National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., Inc. v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U. S. 327 (2002). That case considered whether the FCC’s “jurisdiction” to regulate the rents utility-pole owners charge for “pole attachments” (defined as attachments by a cable television system or provider of telecommunications service) extended to attachments that provided both cable television and high-speed Internet access (attachments for so-called “commingled services”). Id., at 331–336. We held, sensibly, that Chevron applied. 534 U. S., at 333, 339. Whether framed as going to the scope of the FCC’s delegated authority or the FCC’s application of its delegated authority, the underlying question was the same: Did the FCC exceed the bounds of its statutory authority to regulate rents for “pole attachments” when it sought to regulate rents for pole attachments providing commingled services?
The label is an empty distraction because every new application of a broad statutory term can be reframed as a questionable extension of the agency’s jurisdiction. One of the briefs in support of petitioners explains, helpfully, that “[j]urisdictional questions concern the who, what, where, and when of regulatory power: which subject matters may an agency regulate and under what conditions.” Brief for IMLA Respondents 18–19. But an agency’s application of its authority pursuant to statutory text answers the same questions. Who is an “outside salesman”? What is a “pole attachment”? Where do the “waters of the United States” end? When must a Medicare provider challenge a reimbursement determination in order to be entitled to an administrative appeal? These can all be reframed as questions about the scope of agencies’ regulatory jurisdiction— and they are all questions to which the Chevron framework applies. See Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 2, 8); National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., supra, at 331, 333; United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., 474 U. S. 121, 123, 131 (1985); Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 1, 11).
Fortunately, then, we have consistently held “that Chevron applies to cases in which an agency adopts a con- struction of a jurisdictional provision of a statute it administers.” 1 R. Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise §3.5, p. 187 (2010). One of our opinions explicitly says that no “exception exists to the normal [deferential] standard of review” for “ ‘jurisdictional or legal question[s] concerning the coverage’ ” of an Act. NLRB v. City Disposal Systems, Inc., 465 U. S. 822, 830, n. 7 (1984). A prime example of deferential review for questions of jurisdiction is Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986). That case involved a CFTC interpretation of 7 U. S. C. §18(c), which provides that before the Commission takes action on a complaint, the complainant must file a bond to cover “any reparation award that may be issued by the Commission against the complainant on any counterclaim by respondent.” (Emphasis added.) The CFTC, pursuant to its broad rulemaking authority, see §12a(5), interpreted that oblique reference to counterclaims as granting it “the power to take jurisdiction over” not just federal-law counterclaims, but state-law counterclaims as well. Schor, supra, at 844. We not only deferred under Chevron to the Commission’s “eminently reasonable . . . interpretation of the statute it is entrusted to administer,” but also chided the Court of Appeals for declining to afford def- erence because of the putatively “ ‘statutory interpretation-jurisdictional’ nature of the question at issue.” 478 U. S., at 844–845.
Similar examples abound. We have afforded Chevron deference to the Commerce Department’s determination that its authority to seek antidumping duties extended to uranium imported under contracts for enrichment services, United States v. Eurodif S. A., 555 U. S. 305, 316 (2009); to the Interstate Commerce Commission’s view that courts, not the Commission, possessed “initial jurisdiction with respect to the award of reparations” for unreasonable shipping charges, Reiter v. Cooper, 507 U. S. 258, 269 (1993) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted); and to the Army Corps of Engineers’ assertion that its permitting authority over discharges into “waters of the United States” extended to “freshwater wetlands” adjacent to covered waters, Riverside Bayview Homes, supra, at 123–124, 131. We have even deferred to the FCC’s assertion that its broad regulatory authority extends to pre-empting conflicting state rules. City of New York v. FCC, 486 U. S. 57, 64 (1988); Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp, 467 U. S. 691, 700 (1984).3
Our cases hold that Chevron applies equally to statutes designed to curtail the scope of agency discretion. For instance, in Chemical Mfrs. Assn. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 470 U. S. 116, 123 (1985), we considered a statute prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from “modify[ing] any requirement of this section as it applies to any specific pollutant which is on the toxic pollutant list.” The EPA construed the statute as not precluding it from granting variances with respect to certain toxic pollutants. Finding no “clear congressional intent to forbid EPA’s sensible variance mechanism,” id., at 134, we deferred to the EPA’s construction of this express limitation on its own regulatory authority, id., at 125 (citing Chevron, 467 U. S. 837); see also, e.g., Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Soc., 478 U. S. 221, 226, 232–234 (1986).
The U. S. Reports are shot through with applications of Chevron to agencies’ constructions of the scope of their own jurisdiction. And we have applied Chevron where concerns about agency self-aggrandizement are at their apogee: in cases where an agency’s expansive construction of the extent of its own power would have wrought a fundamental change in the regulatory scheme. In FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120 (2000), the threshold question was the “appropriate framework for analyzing” the FDA’s assertion of “jurisdiction to regulate tobacco products,” id., at 126, 132—a question of vast “economic and political magnitude,” id., at 133. “Because this case involves an administrative agency’s construction of a statute that it administers,” we held, Chevron applied. 529 U. S., at 132. Similarly, in MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U. S. 218, 224, 229, 231 (1994), we applied the Chevron framework to the FCC’s assertion that the statutory phrase “modify any requirement” gave it authority to eliminate rate-filing requirements, “the essential characteristic of a rate-regulated industry,” for long-distance telephone carriers.
The false dichotomy between “jurisdictional” and “non- jurisdictional” agency interpretations may be no more than a bogeyman, but it is dangerous all the same. Like the Hound of the Baskervilles, it is conjured by those with greater quarry in sight: Make no mistake—the ultimate target here is Chevron itself. Savvy challengers of agency action would play the “jurisdictional” card in every case. See, e.g., Cellco Partnership v. FCC, 700 F. 3d 534, 541 (CADC 2012). Some judges would be deceived by the specious, but scary-sounding, “jurisdictional”-“nonjurisdictional” line; others tempted by the prospect of making public policy by prescribing the meaning of ambiguous statutory commands. The effect would be to transfer any number of interpretive decisions—archetypal Chevron questions, about how best to construe an ambiguous term in light of competing policy interests—from the agencies that administer the statutes to federal courts.4 We have cautioned that “judges ought to refrain from substituting their own interstitial lawmaking” for that of an agency. Ford Motor Credit Co. v. Milhollin, 444 U. S. 555, 568 (1980). That is precisely what Chevron prevents.
A few words in response to the dissent. The question on which we granted certiorari was whether “a court should apply Chevron to review an agency’s determination of its own jurisdiction.” Pet. for Cert. i.5 Perhaps sensing the incoherence of the “jurisdictional-nonjurisdictional” line, the dissent does not even attempt to defend it, see post, at 5, but proposes a much broader scope for de novo judicial review: Jurisdictional or not, and even where a rule is at issue and the statute contains a broad grant of rulemaking authority, the dissent would have a court search provision-by-provision to determine “whether [that] delegation covers the ‘specific provision’ and ‘particular question’ before the court.” Post, at 11–12.
3 The dissent’s reliance on dicta in Adams Fruit Co. v. Barrett, 494 U. S. 638 (1990), see post, at 8–9, is misplaced. In that case, the Department of Labor had interpreted a statute creating a private right of action for migrant or seasonal farmworkers as providing no remedy where a state workers’-compensation law covered the worker. 494 U. S., at 649. We held that we had no need to “defer to the Secretary of Labor’s view of the scope of” that private right of action “because Congress has expressly established the Judiciary and not the Department of Labor as the adjudicator of private rights of action arising under the statute.” Ibid. Adams Fruit stands for the modest proposition that the Judiciary, not any executive agency, determines “the scope”—including the available remedies—“of judicial power vested by” statutes establishing private rights of action. Id., at 650. Adams Fruit explicitly affirmed the Department’s authority to promulgate the substantive standards enforced through that private right of action. See ibid. The dissent’s invocation of Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U. S. 243 (2006), see post, at 10–11, is simply perplexing: The majority opinion in that case expressly lists the Communications Act as an example of a statute under which an agency’s “authority is clear because the statute gives an agency broad power to enforce all provisions of the statute.” 546 U. S., at 258–259 (citing 47 U. S. C. §201(b); emphasis added). That statement cannot be squared with the dissent’s proposed remand for the Fifth Circuit to determine “whether Congress delegated interpretive authority over §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) to the FCC.” Post, at 18.
Deciding just what those statutory bounds are, however, is not always an easy matter, and the Court’s case law abounds with discussion of the subject. A reviewing judge, for example, will have to decide independently whether Congress delegated authority to the agency to provide interpretations of, or to enact rules pursuant to, the statute at issue—interpretations or rules that carry with them “the force of law.” United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 229 (2001). If so, the reviewing court must give special leeway or “deference” to the agency’s interpretation. See id., at 227–228.
We have added that, if “[e]mploying traditional tools of statutory construction,” INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 446 (1987), the court determines that Congress has spoken clearly on the disputed question, then “that is the end of the matter,” Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842 (1984). The agency is due no deference, for Congress has left no gap for the agency to fill. Id., at 842–844. If, on the other hand, Congress has not spoken clearly, if, for example it has written ambiguously, then that ambiguity is a sign—but not always a conclusive sign—that Congress intends a reviewing court to pay particular attention to (i.e., to give a degree of deference to) the agency’s interpretation. See Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U. S. 243, 258–269 (2006); Mead, supra, at 229.
I say that the existence of statutory ambiguity is sometimes not enough to warrant the conclusion that Congress has left a deference-warranting gap for the agency to fill be- cause our cases make clear that other, sometimes context-specific, factors will on occasion prove relevant. (And, given the vast number of government statutes, regulatory programs, and underlying circumstances, that variety is hardly surprising.) In Mead, for example, we looked to several factors other than simple ambiguity to help determine whether Congress left a statutory gap, thus delegating to the agency the authority to fill that gap with an interpretation that would carry “the force of law.” 533 U. S., at 229–231. Elsewhere, we have assessed
“the interstitial nature of the legal question, the re- lated expertise of the Agency, the importance of the question to administration of the statute, the complexity of that administration, and the careful consideration the Agency has given the question over a long period of time.” Barnhart v. Walton, 535 U. S. 212, 222 (2002).
Moreover, the statute’s text, its context, the structure of the statutory scheme, and canons of textual construction are relevant in determining whether the statute is ambiguous and can be equally helpful in determining whether such ambiguity comes accompanied with agency authority to fill a gap with an interpretation that carries the force of law. See Household Credit Services, Inc. v. Pfennig, 541 U. S. 232, 239–242 (2004); Zuni Public School Dist. No. 89 v. Department of Education, 550 U. S. 81, 98–99 (2007); FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 133 (2000); Dole v. Steelworkers, 494 U. S. 26, 36 (1990). Statutory purposes, including those revealed in part by legislative and regulatory history, can be similarly relevant. See Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., supra, at 143–147; Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation v. LTV Corp., 496 U. S. 633, 649 (1990); Global Crossing Telecommunications, Inc. v. Metrophones Telecommunications, Inc., 550 U. S. 45, 48–49 (2007). See also AT&T Corp. v. Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U. S. 366, 412–413 (1999) (Breyer, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
Although seemingly complex in abstract description, in practice this framework has proved a workable way to approximate how Congress would likely have meant to allocate interpretive law-determining authority between reviewing court and agency. The question whether Congress has delegated to an agency the authority to provide an interpretation that carries the force of law is for the judge to answer independently. The judge, considering “traditional tools of statutory construction,” Cardoza-Fonseca, supra, at 446, will ask whether Congress has spoken unambiguously. If so, the text controls. If not, the judge will ask whether Congress would have intended the agency to resolve the resulting ambiguity. If so, deference is warranted. See Mead, supra, at 229. Even if not, however, sometimes an agency interpretation, in light of the agency’s special expertise, will still have the “power to persuade, if lacking power to control,” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 140 (1944).
The case before us offers an example. The relevant statutory provision requires state or local governments to act on wireless siting applications “within a reasonable period of time after” a wireless service provider files such a request. 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B)(ii). The Federal Com- munications Commission (FCC) argued that this pro- vision granted it a degree of leeway in determining the amount of time that is reasonable. Many factors favor the agency’s view: (1) the language of the Telecommunications Act grants the FCC broad authority (including rulemaking authority) to administer the Act; (2) the words are open-ended—i.e. “ambiguous”; (3) the provision concerns an interstitial administrative matter, in respect to which the agency’s expertise could have an important role to play; and (4) the matter, in context, is complex, likely making the agency’s expertise useful in helping to answer the “rea- sonableness” question that the statute poses. See §151 (creating the FCC); §201(b) (providing rulemaking auth- ority); National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 980–981 (2005) (acknowledging the FCC’s authority to administer the Act).
In my view, however, these two provisions cannot provide good reason for reaching the conclusion advocated by petitioners. The first provision begins with an exception, stating that it does not apply to (among other things) the “reasonableness” provision here at issue. The second sim- ply sets forth a procedure for judicial review, a review that applies to most government actions. Both are consistent with a statutory scheme that gives States, localities, the FCC, and reviewing courts each some role to play in the location of wireless service facilities. And neither “expressly describ[es] an exception” to the FCC’s plenary authority to interpret the Act. American Hospital Assn. v. NLRB, 499 U. S. 606, 613 (1991).
For these reasons, I would reject petitioners’ argument and conclude that §332(c)(7)(B)(ii)—the “reasonableness” statute—leaves a gap for the FCC to fill. I would hold that the FCC’s lawful efforts to do so carry “the force of law.” Mead, 533 U. S., at 229. The Court of Appeals ultimately reached the same conclusion (though for somewhat dif- ferent reasons), and the majority affirms the lower court. I consequently join the majority’s judgment and such por- tions of its opinion as are consistent with what I have written here.
The administrative state “wields vast power and touches almost every aspect of daily life.” Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 18). The Framers could hardly have envisioned today’s “vast and varied federal bureaucracy” and the authority administrative agencies now hold over our economic, social, and political activities. Ibid. “[T]he administrative state with its reams of regulations would leave them rubbing their eyes.” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 807 (1999) (Souter, J., dissenting), quoted in Federal Maritime Comm’n v. South Carolina Ports Authority, 535 U. S. 743, 755 (2002). And the federal bureaucracy continues to grow; in the last 15 years, Congress has launched more than 50 new agencies. Compare Office of the Federal Register, United States Government Manual 1997/1998, with Office of the Federal Register, United States Government Manual 2012. And more are on the way. See, e.g., Congressional Research Service, C. Copeland, New Entities Created Pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 1 (2010) (The PPACA “creates, re quires others to create, or authorizes dozens of new entities to implement the legislation”).
As for judicial oversight, agencies enjoy broad power to construe statutory provisions over which they have been given interpretive authority. In Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., we established a test for reviewing “an agency’s construction of the statute which it administers.” 467 U. S. 837, 842 (1984). If Congress has “directly spoken to the precise question at issue,” we said, “that is the end of the matter.” Ibid. A contrary agency interpretation must give way. But if Congress has not expressed a specific intent, a court is bound to defer to any “permissible construction of the statute,” even if that is not “the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding.” Id., at 843, and n. 11.
When it applies, Chevron is a powerful weapon in an agency’s regulatory arsenal. Congressional delegations to agencies are often ambiguous—expressing “a mood rather than a message.” Friendly, The Federal Administrative Agencies: The Need for Better Definition of Standards, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 1263, 1311 (1962). By design or default, Congress often fails to speak to “the precise question” before an agency. In the absence of such an answer, an agency’s interpretation has the full force and effect of law, unless it “exceeds the bounds of the permissible.” Barnhart v. Walton, 535 U. S. 212, 218 (2002).
It would be a bit much to describe the result as “the very definition of tyranny,” but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed. See, e.g., Talk America, Inc. v. Michigan Bell Telephone Co., 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (Scalia, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (noting that the FCC “has repeatedly been rebuked in its attempts to expand the statute beyond its text, and has repeatedly sought new means to the same ends”); Sackett v. EPA, 566 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2012) (slip op., at 9–10) (rejecting agency argument that would “enable the strong-arming of regulated parties into ‘voluntary compliance’ without the opportunity for judicial review”).
What the Court says in footnote 4 of its opinion is good, and true (except of course for the “dissent overstates” part). Ante, at 13–14, n. 4. The Framers did divide governmental power in the manner the Court describes, for the purpose of safeguarding liberty. And yet . . . the citizen confronting thousands of pages of regulations—promulgated by an agency directed by Congress to regulate, say, “in the public interest”—can perhaps be excused for thinking that it is the agency really doing the legislat ing. And with hundreds of federal agencies poking into every nook and cranny of daily life, that citizen might also understandably question whether Presidential oversight—a critical part of the Constitutional plan—is always an effective safeguard against agency overreaching.
Before proceeding to answer that question, however, it is necessary to sort through some confusion over what this litigation is about. The source of the confusion is a familiar culprit: the concept of “jurisdiction,” which we have repeatedly described as a word with “ ‘many, too many, meanings.’ ” Union Pacific R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 558 U. S. 67, 81 (2009).
You can call that “jurisdiction” if you’d like, as petitioners do in the question presented. But given that the term is ambiguous, more is required to understand its use in that question than simply “having read it.” Ante, at 15, n. 5. It is important to keep in mind that the term, in the present context, has the more precise meaning noted above, encompassing congressionally delegated authority to issue interpretations with the force and effect of law. See 668 F. 3d 229, 248 (CA5 2012) (case below) (“The issue in the instant case is whether the FCC possessed statutory authority to administer §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) and (v) by adopting the 90- and 150-day time frames”). And that has nothing do with whether the statutory provisions at issue are “big” or “small.”
We do not ignore that command when we afford an agency’s statutory interpretation Chevron deference; we respect it. We give binding deference to permissible agency interpretations of statutory ambiguities because Con- gress has delegated to the agency the authority to interpret those ambiguities “with the force of law.” United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 229 (2001); see also Monaghan, Marbury and the Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 27–28 (1983) (“the court is not abdicating its constitutional duty to ‘say what the law is’ by deferring to agency interpretations of law: it is simply applying the law as ‘made’ by the authorized law-making entity”).
But before a court may grant such deference, it must on its own decide whether Congress—the branch vested with lawmaking authority under the Constitution—has in fact delegated to the agency lawmaking power over the ambiguity at issue. See ante, at 4 (Breyer, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“The question whether Congress has delegated to an agency the authority to provide an interpretation that carries the force of law is for the judge to answer independently.”). Agencies are creatures of Congress; “an agency literally has no power to act . . . unless and until Congress confers power upon it.” Louisiana Pub. Serv. Comm’n v. FCC, 476 U. S. 355, 374 (1986). Whether Congress has conferred such power is the “relevant question[ ] of law” that must be answered before affording Chevron deference. 5 U. S. C. §706.
In our view, the challenge to the agency’s interpretation “center[ed] on the wisdom of the agency’s policy, rather than whether it is a reasonable choice within a gap left open by Congress.” Id., at 866. Judges, we said, “are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of the Government.” Id., at 865. Thus, because Congress had not answered the specific question at issue, judges had no business providing their own resolution on the basis of their “personal policy preferences.” Ibid. Instead, the “agency to which Congress ha[d] delegated policymaking responsibilities” was the appropriate politi cal actor to resolve the competing interests at stake, “within the limits of that delegation.” Ibid.
We made the point perhaps most clearly in Adams Fruit Co. v. Barrett, 494 U. S. 638 (1990). In that case, the Department of Labor contended the Court should defer to its interpretation of the scope of the private right of action provided by the Migrant and Seasonal Agriculture Worker Protection Act (AWPA), 29 U. S. C. §1854, against employers who intentionally violated the Act’s motor vehicle safety provisions. We refused to do so. Although “as an initial matter” we rejected the idea that Congress left a “statutory ‘gap’ ” for the agency to fill, we reasoned that if the “AWPA’s language establishing a private right of action is ambiguous,” the Secretary of Labor’s interpretation of its scope did not warrant Chevron deference. 494 U. S., at 649.
In language directly applicable to the question before us, we explained that “[a] precondition to deference under Chevron is a congressional delegation of administrative authority.” Ibid. Although “Congress clearly envisioned, indeed expressly mandated, a role for the Department of Labor in administering the statute by requiring the Secretary to promulgate standards implementing AWPA’s motor vehicle provisions,” we found “[n]o such delegation regarding AWPA’s enforcement provisions.” Id., at 650 (emphasis added). It would therefore be “inappropriate,” we said, “to consult executive interpretations” of the enforcement provisions to resolve ambiguities “surrounding the scope of AWPA’s judicially enforceable remedy.” Ibid. Without questioning the principle that agency determinations “within the scope of delegated authority are entitled to deference,” we explained that “it is fundamental ‘that an agency may not bootstrap itself into an area in which it has no jurisdiction.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Federal Maritime Comm’n v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U. S. 726, 745 (1973)).
Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U. S. 243 (2006), is in the same line of precedent. In that case, as here, deference turned on whether a congressional delegation of interpretive authority reached a particular statutory ambiguity. The Attorney General claimed Chevron deference for his interpretation of the phrase “legitimate medical purpose” in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to exclude the prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances for the purpose of assisting suicide. Id., at 254, 258. No one disputed that “legitimate medical purpose” was “ambiguous in the relevant sense.” Id., at 258. Nor did any Justice dispute that the Attorney General had been granted the power in the CSA to promulgate rules with the force of law. Ibid.; see id., at 281 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Nevertheless, the Court explained, “Chevron deference . . . is not accorded merely because the statute is ambiguous and an administrative official is involved.” Id., at 258. The regulation advancing the interpretation, we said, “must be promulgated pursuant to authority Congress has delegated to the official.” Ibid. (citing Mead, supra, at 226–227).
Despite these precedents, the FCC argues that a court need only locate an agency and a grant of general rulemaking authority over a statute. Chevron deference then applies, it contends, to the agency’s interpretation of any ambiguity in the Act, including ambiguity in a provision said to carve out specific provisions from the agency’s general rulemaking authority. If Congress intends to exempt part of the statute from the agency’s interpretive authority, the FCC says, Congress “can ordinarily be expected to state that intent explicitly.” Brief for Federal Respondents 30 (citing American Hospital Assn. v. NLRB, 499 U. S. 606 (1991)).
An example that might highlight the point concerns statutes that parcel out authority to multiple agencies, which “may be the norm, rather than an exception.” Gersen, Overlapping and Underlapping Jurisdiction in Administrative Law, 2006 S. Ct. Rev. 201, 208; see, e.g., Gonzales, 546 U. S, at 250–251 (describing shared author- ity over the CSA between the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services); Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U. S. 471, 478 (1999) (authority to issue regulations implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act “is split primarily among three Government agencies”). The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, for example, authorizes rulemaking by at least eight different agencies. See Con-gressional Research Service, C. Copeland, Rulemaking Requirements and Authorities in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 7 (2010). When presented with an agency’s interpretation of such a statute, a court cannot simply ask whether the statute is one that the agency administers; the question is whether authority over the particular ambiguity at issue has been delegated to the particular agency.
As the preceding analysis makes clear, I do not understand petitioners to ask the Court—nor do I think it necessary—to draw a “specious, but scary-sounding” line between “big, important” interpretations on the one hand and “humdrum, run-of-the-mill” ones on the other. Ante, at 5, 12. Drawing such a line may well be difficult. Distinguishing between whether an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous term is reasonable and whether that term is for the agency to interpret is not nearly so difficult. It certainly did not confuse the FCC in this proceeding. Compare In re Petition for Declaratory Ruling, 24 FCC Rcd. 13994, 14000–14003 (2009) (addressing the latter question), with id., at 14003–14015 (addressing the former). Nor did it confound the Fifth Circuit. Compare 668 F. 3d, at 247–254 (deciding “whether the FCC possessed statutory authority to administer §332(c)(7)(B)(ii)”), with id., at 254–260 (considering “whether the 90- and 150-day time frames themselves also pass muster under Chevron”). More importantly, if the legitimacy of Chevron deference is based on a congressional delegation of interpretive author ity, then the line is one the Court must draw.
For the second Common Carrier Act, the answer is easy. The majority’s hypothetical Congress has spoken clearly and specifically in Section 2 of the Act about its delegation of authority to interpret Section 1. As for the first Act, it is harder to analyze the question, given only one section of a presumably much larger statute. But if the first Common Carrier Act is like most agencies’ organic statutes, I have no reason to doubt that the agency would likewise have interpretive authority over the same ambiguous terms, and therefore be entitled to deference in con-struing them, just as with the second Common Carrier Act. There is no new “test” to worry about, cf. ante, at 16; courts would simply apply the normal rules of statutory construction.
In these cases, the FCC issued a declaratory ruling interpreting the term “reasonable period of time” in 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B)(ii). The Fifth Circuit correctly rec ognized that it could not apply Chevron deference to the FCC’s interpretation unless the agency “possessed statutory authority to administer §332(c)(7)(B)(ii),” but it erred by granting Chevron deference to the FCC’s view on that antecedent question. See 668 F. 3d, at 248. Because the court should have determined on its own whether Congress delegated interpretive authority over §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) to the FCC before affording Chevron deference, I would vacate the decision below and remand the cases to the Fifth Circuit to perform the proper inquiry in the first instance.