Justices Discuss Limited Ambiguity Role for Lenity and by Analogy Chevron Deference (3/11/22)

Ambiguity in statutory text can invoke two interpretive regimes.  Ambiguity in a criminal statute invokes the rule of lenity that says that if a criminal statute is ambiguous (or, sometimes, grievously ambiguous) the statutory ambiguity must be interpreted in the criminal defendant’s favor.  Ambiguity in a statute potentially subject to Chevron deference to an agency interpretation is interpreted consistent with the Chevron-entitled agency interpretation if it is reasonable (permissible).  Both interpretive regimes turn on ambiguous statutory text.

The question I address in this blog is what ambiguity means for both lenity and Chevron deference.  The only thing that I am sure of is that ambiguity in either context has no litmus test, thus is itself ambiguous.  As I note in The Report of the Death of the Interpretive Regulation Is an Exaggeration 75 n. 296 (SSRN December 14, 2021), here.

   n. 296 The word ambiguous in deference jurisprudence may be ambiguous. E.g., Aditya Bamzai, Delegation and Interpretive Discretion: Gundy, Kisor and the  Formation of Future Administrative Law, 133 Harvard L. Rev. 164, 187 n. 140 (2019) (“The question of how to identify ‘ambiguity’ is a long-running one in both administrative law and elsewhere,” citing scholarly discussions); Brett M. Kavanaugh, Book Review: Fixing Statutory Interpretation, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 2118, 2118-2119 (2016) (“judges often cannot make that initial clarity versus ambiguity decision in a settled, principled, or evenhanded way”); and Ryan D. Doerfler, The “Ambiguity” Fallacy, 88 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1110 (2020) (“‘ambiguity,’ is critically ambiguous.”)

Ambiguity in the ambiguity concept also infects lenity.  In Wooden v. United States, 595 U. S. ____ 2022 U.S. LEXIS 1421 (3/7/22), S.Ct. here and GS here, Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, in concurring opinions, weighed in on the issue in ways that evoke the ambiguity discussion for Chevron deference and may offer some guidance in Chevron deference.

I start with Justice Gorsuch’s discussion on p. 9 of his concurring opinion which starts here.  Justice Gorsuch starts with a complaint about the gloss sometimes added to the lenity discussion that the ambiguity must not only be ambiguous but also must be “grievously ambiguous.”  I think he does a pretty good job in demolishing the spurious notion that there are two categories of ambiguity for lenity purpose – grievous in which lenity applies and non-grievous in which lenity does not apply.  Lenity applies where there is ambiguity, period.

This still does not help in determining what ambiguity is.  Is it just that the judge knows it when he or she sees it.  Justice Kavanaugh discusses that issue in his concurring opinion starting here.  Basically, Justice Kavanaugh argues that ambiguity in statutory interpretation for lenity purposes is a rare phenomenon.  Evoking the Chevron / Auer concepts hinging on ambiguity, Justice Kavanaugh says (p. 2 of concurring opinion):

Lenity and Chevron Deference - Some Thoughts in a Tax Context (2/7/21)

 I am now working on a larger article that incorporates a discussion of the interface of lenity and Chevron deference, both of which supply rules of interpretation to ambiguous statutory text at least where Chevron can apply (i.e., where the agency has adopted a Chevron-entitled reasonable interpretation that is different than the interpretation the court thinks is the best interpretation).  Basically, I think the law is as of now ambiguous as to how Chevron interfaces with lenity where both may be truly applicable.  I emphasize truly applicable for Chevron because I think much of the commotion about Chevron really does not involve situations where Chevron is truly applicable.  In my analysis earlier in the paper I say Chevron is truly applicable only in what I call Category 5 – where the court believes its own interpretation (after perhaps giving Skidmore deference to the agency interpretation) is still better than the agency reasonable interpretation.

I post below the text (but not the footnotes) to my discussion in the hope that readers may (i) be interested and (ii) can offer constructive comment.  Thanks in advance.

I discussed above the claim that an interpretation which affects penalties is transformed into a legislative rule.  The underlying concern is that Congress alone can enact criminal penalties and the text of criminal statutes (at least as interpreted by the courts) must clearly set the standard of conduct being penalized.  Further, there is the rule of lenity, often described as a canon of construction, that requires that courts interpret ambiguity in criminal statutes in favor of the defendant. The rule of lenity and true Chevron deference (the Category 5 deference) would thus conflict if both were to apply to a criminal statute.  One author has described the conflict as between a “government always loses” standard (lenity) and a “government always wins” standard (Chevron deference).  The answer is less than clear (at least to me) because of the distractive rhetoric that attends discussion of the issue.

Rather than trying to resolve all that rhetoric to some form of black letter law (I think an impossible task on the state of the discussion), I will just try to analyze how the discussion might play out in my area of expertise–tax with a subspecialty in criminal tax. 

Many criminal statutes impose an express element that the defendant have acted “willfully.”  The criminal statutes do not define “willfully,” As authoritatively interpreted by courts, willfully can mean different things in different criminal statutes.  In Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184, 191 (1998), the Court famously noted that noting that the word is a chameleon, “a word of many meanings whose construction is often dependent on the context in which it appears.”  I think that, in Chevron analysis, this is simply to say that when, in a criminal statute, Congress makes willfully an element, there is interpretive space that must be filled to give meaning to the statute as to which of the possible meanings of willfully applies.  Traditionally, that interpretive space in a criminal statute is filled by the courts.  Key Title 26 tax crimes have the requirement that the defendant act “willfully,” interpreted as the highest level of mens rea–that the defendant intended to violate a known legal duty, a standard that is not met just by reckless conduct.  Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 196 (1991).  In other criminal contexts where the statute imposes a willfully element, the courts impose, through interpretation, a lesser mens rea standard.  The lower level of mens rea is said to be the general rule for interpreting a statutory willfully element.  The higher level of mens rea applies only to a small subset of crimes where willfully is a statutory element and is said to be an exception to that general rule.  Determining whether the general rule or the exception applies can be a bit esoteric but that need not concern us here.  Suffice it to say for present purposes, Treasury could not, by regulation, authoritatively and binding on the courts interpret the term “willfully” in the elements of tax crimes such as tax evasion to include, for example, a general intent to do some unlawful or reckless conduct without specific intent to violate a known legal duty. I think that is a fair statement of the law.

Chevron and Lenity (8/11/20)

Today, I discuss the related topics of Chevron deference and the rule of lenity.  Both topics deal with ambiguity in statutory text.  Chevron deference means that a court may apply some reasonable agency interpretation of statutory text even if the court is convinced that there is a better interpretation.  In other words, within the zone of ambiguity the interpretive tilt goes to the agency's interpretation.  In lenity, a criminal law concept, however, within the zone of ambiguity, the tilt goes to the defendant.

 I was drawn to this topic by a decision I read today, Gallardo v. Barr, 968 F.3d 1053 (9th Cir. 8/6/20), CA9 Slip Op. here; GS here.  The case involved the BIA’s interpretation of the term “aggravated felony” (and its subset, “obstruction of justice”) was subject to the rule of lenity.  The panel took the traditional view that the rule of lenity was not consistent with Chevron deference.  As thus formulated, the lenity issue would be a so-called Chevron Step Zero question (does the Chevron framework apply at all?) that could pre-empt the Chevron framework at the outset.  The panel sidestepped the question by applying the Chevron framework because a prior panel in an earlier appeal in the case had applied the Chevron framework.  (See Slip Op. 11-17.)  The Court offered this general discussion in a footnote (Slip Op. 14 n. 3, here)

   n3 Statutory ambiguity is a trigger for applying both the rule of lenity and Chevron deference. However, we apply the rule of lenity when a criminal statute is ambiguous so that "legislatures, not courts" define the scope of the statute. Crandon v. United States, 494 U.S. 152, 158 (1990). By contrast, we apply Chevron deference in construing ambiguity in other statutes because the lack of textual clarity is a signal that Congress expected an "agency to be able to speak with the force of law when it addresses [the textual] ambiguity." United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 229 (2001). In other words, because lenity is a rule we apply to ensure that the legislature has the final say, and Chevron is a rule we apply to permit agencies to fill in the details of a statute, we do not typically apply both principles at the same time. See Whitman, 135 S. Ct. at 354 (Scalia, J., respecting the denial of certiorari) ("[O]nly the legislature may define crimes and fix punishments. Congress cannot, through ambiguity, effectively leave that function . . . to the administrative bureaucracy." (emphasis omitted)); see also Transcript of Oral Argument at 12, Esquivel-Quintana v. Lynch, 137 S. Ct. 1562 (2017) (Chief Justice Roberts stating that the rule of lenity and Chevron cannot "coexist" because, at least in that case, "[t]hey each point in the opposite direction based on the same predicate, which is a degree of ambiguity in the statutory provision"); William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Lauren E. Baer, The Continuum of Deference: Supreme Court Treatment of Agency Statutory Interpretations From Chevron to Hamdan, 96 Geo. L.J. 1083, 1115 (2008) (regarding "anti-deference" in the context of a criminal statute). However, some have discussed ways that the two rules may be harmonized. See Note, William T. Gillis, An Unstable Equilibrium: Evaluating the "Third Way" Between Chevron Deference and the Rule of Lenity, 12 N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 352 (2019).

 I offer the following (text only) (Those wanting the footnotes can get them with the text in pdf format here).