Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451 (slip op., June 28, 2024) — Majority (Roberts, C. J.), chunk 8

14 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO
Opinion of the Court
the extent necessary to decision and when presented, the
reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law,
interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an
agency action.” 5 U. S. C. §706. It further requires courts
to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and
conclusions found to be . . . not in accordance with law.”
§706(2)(A).
The APA thus codifies for agency cases the unremarkable, yet elemental proposition re flected by judicial practice
dating back to Marbury: that courts decide legal questions
by applying their own judgment. It specifies that courts,
not agencies, will decide “all relevant questions of law” arising on review of agency action, §706 (emphasis added)—
even those involving ambiguous laws—and set aside any
such action inconsistent with the law as they interpret it.
And it prescribes no deferential standard for courts to em -
ploy in answering those legal questions. That omission is
telling, because Section 706 does mandate that judicial review of agency policymaking and factfinding be deferential.
See §706(2)(A) (agency action to be set aside if “arbitrary,
capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion”); §706(2)(E) (agency
factfinding in formal proceedings to be set aside if “unsupported by substantial evidence”).
In a statute designed to “serve as the fundamental charter of the administrative state,” Kisor v. Wilkie , 588 U. S.
558, 580 (2019) (plurality opinion) (internal quotation
marks omitted), Congress surely would have articulated a
similarly deferential standard applicable to questions of
law had it intended to depart from the settled pre-APA understanding that deciding such questions was “exclusively
a judicial function,” American Trucking Assns. , 310 U. S.,
at 544. But nothing in the APA hints at such a dramatic
departure. On the contrary, by directing courts to “interpret constitutional and statutory provisions” without differentiating between the two, Section 706 makes clear that

15 Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024)
Opinion of the Court
agency interpretations of statutes—like agency interpretations of the Constitution—are not entitled to deference. Under the APA, it thus “remains the responsibility of the court
to decide whether the law means what the agency says.”
Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn. , 575 U. S. 92, 109 (2015)
(Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).4
The text of the APA means what it says. And a look at
its history if anything only underscores that plain meaning.
According to both the House and Senate Reports on the legislation, Section 706 “provide[d] that questions of law are
for courts rather than agencies to decide in the last analysis.” H. R. Rep. No. 1980, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 44 (1946)
(emphasis added); accord, S. Rep. No. 752, 79th Cong., 1st
Sess., 28 (1945). Some of the legislation’s most prominent
supporters articulated the same view. See 92 Cong. Rec.
5654 (1946) (statement of Rep. Walter); P. McCarran, Improving “Administrative Justice”: Hearings and Evidence;
Scope of Judicial Review, 32 A. B. A. J. 827, 831 (1946).
Even the Department of Justice—an agency with every in -
centive to endorse a view of the APA favorable to the Executive Branch—opined after its enactment that Section 706
merely “restate[d] the present law as to the scope of judicial
review.” Dept. of Justice, Attorney General’s Manual on the
——————
4 The dissent observes that Section 706 does not say expressly that
courts are to decide legal questions using “a de novo standard of review.”
Post, at 16. That much is true. But statutes can be sensibly understood
only “by reviewing text in context.” Pulsifer v. United States, 601 U. S.
124, 133 (2024). Since the start of our Republic, courts have “decide[d]
. . . questions of law” and “interpret[ed] constitutional and statutory provisions” by applying their own legal judgment. §706. Setting aside its
misplaced reliance on Gray and Hearst, the dissent does not and could
not deny that tradition. But it none theless insists that to codify that
tradition, Congress needed to expre ssly reject a sort of deference the
courts had never before applied—and would not apply for several decades to come. It did not. “The notion that some things ‘go without saying’
applies to legislation just as it does to everyday life.” Bond v. United
States, 572 U. S. 844, 857 (2014).

16 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO
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Administrative Procedure Act 108 (1947); see also Kisor,
588 U. S., at 582 (plurality opinion) (same). That “present
law,” as we have described, adhered to the traditional conception of the judicial function. See supra, at 9–13.
Various respected commentators contemporaneously
maintained that the APA required reviewing courts to exercise independent judgment on questions of law. Professor
John Dickinson, for example, read the APA to “impose a
clear mandate that all [questions of law] shall be decided by
the reviewing Court itself, and in the exercise of its own independent judgment.” Administrative Procedure Act:
Scope and Grounds of Broadened Judicial Review, 33
A. B. A. J. 434, 516 (1947). Professor Bernard Schwartz
noted that §706 “would seem . . . to be merely a legislative
restatement of the familiar review principle that questions
of law are for the reviewing court, at the same time leaving
to the courts the task of determining in each case what are
questions of law.” Mixed Questions of Law and Fact and
the Administrative Procedure Act, 19 Ford. L. Rev. 73, 84–
85 (1950). And Professor Louis Jaffe, who had served in
several agencies at the advent of the New Deal, thought
that §706 leaves it up to the reviewing “court” to “decide as
a ‘question of law’ whether there is ‘discretion’ in the premises”—that is, whether the statute at issue delegates particular discretionary authority to an agency. Judicial Control of Administrative Action 570 (1965).
The APA, in short, incorporates the traditional understanding of the judicial function, under which courts must
exercise independent judgment in determining the meaning of statutory provisions. In exercising such judgment,
though, courts may—as they have from the start—seek aid
from the interpretations of those responsible for implementing particular statutes. Such interpretations “constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which
courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance” consistent with the APA. Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140. And