Opinion ID: 783808
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Is There a Chevron Problem?

Text: 29 Under familiar principles of administrative law, courts must defer to an agency's permissible construction or reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutory terms. Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Res. Def. Counsel, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843-44, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). The plaintiffs argue that such deference is due here. Plaintiffs' Brief at 21, 25. And the federal government itself has argued that courts must defer to the interpretation of the MSP statute it had urged in the cases discussed in this opinion. But these claims have been uniformly rejected. Thompson v. Goetzmann, 337 F.3d at 502 (court need not defer to statutory interpretation that is nothing more than the litigation position of agency counsel that is wholly unsupported by regulations, rulings, or administrative practice; citation omitted); In re Orthopedic Bone Screw Prods. Liab. Litig., 202 F.R.D. at 164 (same). Because we believe that plaintiffs' interpretation of the MSP statute is essentially the same unsupported interpretation of the MSP statute urged by the federal government, we do not believe this Court need pay it the substantial deference called for by Chevron.