Court Opinion

ID: 9500674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 18:24:48.494774+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:00:02.689514
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I do not understand us to be finding that decisions of the State Department’s Director, Office of Policy Review and Inter-agency Liaison Bureau of Consular Affairs, interpreting ambiguous provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1481(a) in order to decide whether an applicant for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality is entitled to such a certificate, can never qualify for Chevron deference (in academic parlance the “Chevron Step Zero” issue). It is enough that the explanation offered here does not qualify as reasoned decisionmaking. Thus a remand is essential. See, e.g., Northern Air Cargo v. U.S. Postal Service, 674 F.3d 852, 860 (D.C.Cir.2012) (where the agency has made “no attempt ... to parse or reconcile the ambiguous statutory language,” the “proper course is ... to remand ... to gain authoritative and careful *84interpretations of the disputed provisions”).