Chevron Deference and Agency Self-Interest

Abstract

Judicial review of a federal administrative agency's statutory or regulatory interpretation ordinarily proceeds under the highly deferential framework announced in the landmark case of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984). Withholding an independent judicial interpretation of a statute or regulation in deference to an agency's views, however, poses unique problems when the agency has a self-interested stake in its interpretation - as, for example, when the agency's interpretation affects its regulatory jurisdiction or yields a financial benefit to the agency. A review of several cases in which courts have deferred, or refused to defer, to interpretations of law that implicated the self-interest of the issuing agency shows that the courts have not enunciated a consistent rationale to explain their divergent results. The article concludes that extending the Chevron deference principle to self-interested agency interpretations of law conflicts with settled norms of due process, and proposes an alternative analytical framework for judicial review of such interpretations.