Kisor v. Wilkie

QUESTION PRESENTED:

Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452 (1997), and Bowles Seminole Rock & Sand Co., 325 U.S. 410 (1945), direct courts to defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation. Separately, in Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115, 118 (1994), the Court held that "interpretive doubt is to be resolved in the veteran's favor.”

Petitioner, a Marine veteran, seeks disability benefits for his service-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) agrees that petitioner suffers from service-related PTSD, it has refused to award him retroactive benefits. The VA's decision turns on the meaning of the term "relevant" as used in 38 C.F.R. § 3.156(c)(l).

Below, the Federal Circuit found that petitioner and the VA both offered reasonable constructions of that term. On that basis alone, the court held that the regulation is ambiguous, and-invoking Auer- deferred to the VA's interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Court should overrule Auer and Seminole Rock.

2. Alternatively, whether Auer deference should yield to a substantive canon of construction.

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