Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451 (slip op., June 28, 2024) — Majority (Roberts, C. J.), chunk 11

23 Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024)
Opinion of the Court
tral Ltd. v. United States, 585 U. S. 274, 284 (2018) (emphasis deleted). So instead of declaring a particular party’s
reading “permissible” in such a case, courts use every tool
at their disposal to determine the best reading of the statute and resolve the ambiguity.
In an agency case as in any other, though, even if some
judges might (or might not) consider the statute ambiguous,
there is a best reading all the same—“the reading the court
would have reached” if no agency were involved. Chevron ,
467 U. S., at 843, n. 11. It therefore makes no sense to
speak of a “permissible” interpretation that is not the one
the court, after applying all relevant interpretive tools, concludes is best. In the business of statutory interpretation,
if it is not the best, it is not permissible.
Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is
misguided because agencies have no special competence in
resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The Framers,
as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve
them by exercising independent legal judgment. And even
Chevron itself reaffirmed that “[t]he judiciary is the final
authority on issues of statutory construction” and recognized that “in the absence of an administrative interpretation,” it is “necessary” for a court to “impose its own con -
struction on the statute.” Id., at 843, and n. 9. Chevron
gravely erred, though, in concluding that the inquiry is fundamentally different just because an administrative interpretation is in play. The very point of the traditional tools
of statutory construction—the tools courts use every day—
is to resolve statutory ambigu ities. That is no less true
when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own
power—perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor
of the agency is least appropriate.
2
The Government responds that Congress must generally

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Opinion of the Court
intend for agencies to resolve statutory ambiguities because
agencies have subject matter expertise regarding the statutes they administer; because deferring to agencies purportedly promotes the uniform construction of federal law;
and because resolving statutory ambiguities can involve
policymaking best left to political actors, rather than courts.
See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 16–19. The
dissent offers more of the same. See post, at 9–14. But none
of these considerations justifies Chevron’s sweeping presumption of congressional intent.
Beginning with expertise, we recently noted that inter -
pretive issues arising in connection with a regulatory
scheme often “may fall more naturally into a judge’s bailiwick” than an agency’s. Kisor, 588 U. S., at 578 (opinion of
the Court). We thus observed that “[w]hen the agency has
no comparative expertise in resolving a regulatory ambiguity, Congress presumably would not grant it that author -
ity.” Ibid. Chevron’s broad rule of deference, though, demands that courts presume just the opposite. Under that
rule, ambiguities of all stripes trigger deference. Indeed,
the Government and, seemingly, the dissent continue to defend the proposition that Chevron applies even in cases having little to do with an agency’s technical subject matter expertise. See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, p. 17;
post, at 10.
But even when an ambiguity happens to implicate a technical matter, it does not follow that Congress has taken the
power to authoritatively interpret the statute from the
courts and given it to the ag ency. Congress expects courts
to handle technical statutory questions. “[M]any statutory
cases” call upon “courts [to] interpret the mass of technical
detail that is the ordinary diet of the law,” Egelhoff v.
Egelhoff, 532 U. S. 141, 161 (2001) (Breyer, J., dissenting),
and courts did so without issue in agency cases before Chevron, see post, at 30 (G
ORSUCH, J., concurring). Courts, after
all, do not decide such questions blindly. The parties and

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Opinion of the Court
amici in such cases are steeped in the subject matter, and
reviewing courts have the benefi t of their perspectives. In
an agency case in particular, the court will go about its task
with the agency’s “body of experience and informed judgment,” among other information, at its disposal. Skidmore,
323 U. S., at 140. And although an agency’s interpretation
of a statute “cannot bind a court,” it may be especially informative “to the extent it rests on factual premises within
[the agency’s] expertise.” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U. S. 89, 98, n. 8 (1983). Such expertise has always been one of the factors which may give
an Executive Branch interpretation particular “power to
persuade, if lacking power to control.” Skidmore, 323 U. S.,
at 140; see, e.g., County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund ,
590 U. S. 165, 180 (2020); Moore, 95 U. S., at 763.
For those reasons, delegating ultimate interpretive authority to agencies is simply not necessary to ensure that
the resolution of statutory ambiguities is well informed by
subject matter expertise. The better presumption is therefore that Congress expects courts to do their ordinary job of
interpreting statutes, with due respect for the views of the
Executive Branch. And to the extent that Congress and the
Executive Branch may disagree with how the courts have
performed that job in a particu lar case, they are of course
always free to act by revising the statute.
Nor does a desire for the uni form construction of federal
law justify Chevron. Given inconsistencies in how judges
apply Chevron, see infra, at 30–33, it is unclear how much
the doctrine as a whole (as opposed to its highly deferential
second step) actually promotes such uniformity. In any
event, there is little value in imposing a uniform interpre -
tation of a statute if that interpretation is wrong. We see
no reason to presume that Congress prefers uniformity for
uniformity’s sake over the correct interpretation of the laws
it enacts.