CHEVRON U.S.A. INC. v. NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, INC., ET AL., 467 U.S. 837

Summary

Petitioner argued that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation, implementing permit requirements for nonattainment states pursuant to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 (Act), 42 U.S.C.S. § 7502(b)(6), permitting states to treat all of the pollution-emitting devices within the same industrial groupings as though they were encased within a single bubble, was a reasonable construction of the statutory term stationary source. On appeal, the judgment below was reversed. In support of its ruling, the Supreme Court held that if a statute was silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for a court was whether the agency's action was based on a permissible construction of the statute. Further, considerable weight was to be accorded to an agency's construction of a statutory scheme. The Court noted that while the legislative history of the statute was silent on the instant issue, it did reveal that the EPA's interpretation was fully consistent with one of...