In a much-anticipated opinion, on June 26, 2019, the United
States Supreme Court held that, in appropriate circumstances,
federal courts should continue to defer to the reasonable
interpretations that administrative agencies give to their own
ambiguous regulations.1
In doing so, the Court declined to overrule so-called
Auer deference, a doctrine rooted in the 1997 decision
Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452 (1997) and a World War
II-era predecessor, Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand
Co., 325 U.S. 410 (1945).
The decision is notable for at least two different reasons.
First, it is clear that the effect of the decision will
be to narrow significantly the circumstances in which agency
interpretations will be entitled to deference to those which relate
to the agency's own expertise (rather than general legal
principles), are within the zone of the ambiguity, are reasonable,
and were officially adopted in circumstances that make it reliable
evidence of the agency's original
