McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp.

(Slip Opinion)              OCTOBER TERM, 2024                                       1

                                       Syllabus

         NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
       being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
       The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
       prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
       See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 

.


SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

                                       Syllabus

 MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC. v.
           MCKESSON CORP. ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
                  THE NINTH CIRCUIT

    No. 23–1226. Argued January 21, 2025—Decided June 20, 2025


The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) protects businesses and
  consumers from intrusive telemarketing by prohibiting unsolicited fax
  advertisements to “telephone facsimile machines” absent an opt-out
  notice informing recipients that they can choose not to receive future
  faxes. 

. The Act provides a private right of action with
  statutory minimum damages of $500 per violation.
     McKesson Corporation, a healthcare company, sent unsolicited fax
  advertisements through a subsidiary in 2009 and 2010 to medical prac-
  tices, including McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates. McLaughlin
  sued McKesson in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of
  California in 2014 for damages and an injunction, alleging TCPA vio-
  lations for faxing unsolicited advertisements without the required opt-
  out notices. McLaughlin also sought to represent a class of fax recipi-
  ents who received the advertisements either on traditional fax ma-
  chines or through online fax services. The District Court certified the
  class without distinguishing between those two methods of receipt.
     While McLaughlin’s lawsuit was pending, a company petitioned the
  Federal Communications Commission for a declaratory ruling about
  whether the TCPA applies to faxes received through online fax ser-
  vices. Months after class certification, the FCC issued the Amerifac-
  tors order, interpreting “telephone facsimile machine” in the TCPA to
  exclude online fax services. Following Ninth Circuit precedent that
  FCC final orders are reviewable exclusively in the courts of appeals
  under the Hobbs Act, the District Court deemed the Amerifactors order
  binding and granted summary judgment to McKesson on claims in-
2         MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                     v. MCKESSON CORP.
                           Syllabus

    volving online fax services. The court then decertified the class, leav-
    ing McLaughlin with claims for only 12 faxes received on a traditional
    machine and damages of $6,000. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.
Held: The Hobbs Act does not bind district courts in civil enforcement
 proceedings to an agency’s interpretation of a statute. District courts
 must independently determine the law’s meaning under ordinary prin-
 ciples of statutory interpretation while affording appropriate respect
 to the agency’s interpretation. Pp. 4–21.
    (a) Pre-enforcement review statutes fall into three categories. First,
 statutes like the Clean Water Act, CERCLA, and the Clean Air Act
 expressly preclude judicial review in enforcement proceedings. Sec-
 ond, statutes like the Toxic Substances Control Act expressly author-
 ize or contemplate review in both pre-enforcement and enforcement
 proceedings. Third, statutes like the Hobbs Act are silent about judi-
 cial review in enforcement proceedings. For this third category, fun-
 damental principles of administrative law establish the proper default
 rule: In enforcement proceedings, district courts must independently
 determine whether an agency’s statutory interpretation is correct, ra-
 ther than being bound by the agency’s interpretation. This presump-
 tion of judicial review is codified in Administrative Procedure Act,
 which provides that agency action is subject to judicial review in en-
 forcement proceedings except where there is prior, adequate, and ex-
 clusive opportunity for review. 

. The availability of pre-
 enforcement review does not ordinarily preclude judicial review in en-
 forcement proceedings. Pp. 4–12.
    (b) Unlike statutes that expressly preclude judicial review in en-
 forcement proceedings, the Hobbs Act does not override the default
 rule. The Hobbs Act’s grant of “exclusive jurisdiction” to courts of ap-
 peals to “determine the validity” of agency orders refers to entering
 declaratory judgments in pre-enforcement proceedings. 

. When a district court disagrees with an agency’s statutory in-
 terpretation in an enforcement proceeding, it determines the defend-
 ant’s liability under the correct interpretation of the statute but does
 not issue a declaratory judgment “determining the validity” of the
 agency order. The phrase “determine the validity” should be read con-
 sistently with the other listed forms of relief—“enjoin,” “set aside,” and
 “suspend”—all of which are forms of relief rather than descriptions of
 decisional processes. Section 2349 of the Hobbs Act confirms this in-
 terpretation by referring to a “judgment determining the validity,” es-
 tablishing that “determine the validity” refers to declaratory relief.
 Pp. 12–14.
    (c) The Emergency Price Control Act precedent in Yakus v. United
 States, 

, does not control because that Act contained two
 key provisions working in tandem: “exclusive jurisdiction to determine
                      Cite as: 

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                                 Syllabus

  the validity” (similar to the Hobbs Act) and an express prohibition stat-
  ing that no other court “shall have jurisdiction or power to consider the
  validity” of covered regulations (not included in the Hobbs Act). 

 (emphasis added). When Congress enacted the Hobbs Act in
  1950, six years after Yakus, it chose not to include the second provision
  that would have clearly precluded judicial review in enforcement pro-
  ceedings. Other Hobbs Act cases like Port of Boston Marine Terminal
  Assn. v. Rederiaktiebolaget Transatlantic, 

, and FCC v.
  ITT World Communications, Inc., 

, involved estoppel and
  preclusion principles where parties lost before the agency and then
  sought to relitigate the same issues, which did not occur here. Pp. 14–
  18.
     (d) Policy concerns about potential disagreement between courts do
  not override statutory text and traditional administrative law princi-
  ples. Circuit splits followed by Supreme Court review are common and
  do not justify denying judicial review in enforcement proceedings. The
  alternative of petitioning agencies for new rulemakings or declaratory
  orders provides largely illusory review that cannot substitute for
  meaningful judicial review, as agencies retain discretion to decline pe-
  titions and any judicial review of denied petitions would be subject to
  deferential standards. Blindsiding all potentially affected parties by
  requiring them to bring pre-enforcement challenges within 60 days or
  lose their right to contest an agency’s interpretation in a later enforce-
  ment proceeding would be impractical and unfair. The Court sees no
  good rationale for reading the Hobbs Act to require the District Court
  to afford absolute deference to the agency. Pp. 18–21.
Reversed and remanded.

   KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. KAGAN,
J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR and JACKSON, JJ.,
joined.
                        Cite as: 

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                             Opinion of the Court

     NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
     United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of
     Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,
     pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.


SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
                                   _________________

                                   No. 23–1226
                                   _________________


 MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.,
 PETITIONER v. MCKESSON CORPORATION, ET AL.
 ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
            APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
                                 [June 20, 2025]

  JUSTICE KAVANAUGH delivered the opinion of the Court.
  In civil enforcement proceedings under the Telephone
Consumer Protection Act, are district courts bound by the
Federal Communications Commission’s interpretation of
the Act? The answer is no.
                               I
  This case involves an FCC order that interprets the
Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, or TCPA. The
TCPA protects businesses and consumers from intrusive
telemarketing communications. Among other restrictions,
the TCPA prohibits a business from sending an “unsolicited
advertisement” by fax to a “telephone facsimile machine”
absent an opt-out notice informing recipients that they can
choose not to receive future faxes. 

, as
amended, 

(b)(1)(C), (2)(D).
  The TCPA provides a private right of action. §227(b)(3).
Private parties may sue the sender of an unlawful fax—an
unsolicited fax that lacks an opt-out notice—for damages or
injunctive relief in federal or state court. Ibid.; 

; see Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, 

 (2012). For monetary damages, the TCPA
2      MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   Opinion of the Court

sets a floor of $500 for each unlawful fax. 

(b)(3)(B). A court may order treble damages if it finds
a violation willful or knowing. §227(b)(3).
  A combination of factors—namely, the private right of
action, the statutory minimum damages for each violation,
the number of violations that a business can quickly rack
up when sending mass fax advertisements, and the class-
action device—has spawned substantial TCPA litigation
over unwanted faxes. Plaintiffs have sought significant
damages against businesses that sent fax advertisements
without opt-out notices.
  McKesson Corporation is, among other things, a
healthcare company. In 2009 and 2010, in an effort to
promote McKesson’s products, a McKesson subsidiary sent
unsolicited fax advertisements to various medical practices.
McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates received some of those
faxes. In 2014, McLaughlin sued McKesson in the U. S.
District Court for the Northern District of California.
McLaughlin alleged that McKesson violated the TCPA by
faxing unsolicited advertisements without the opt-out
notice that the statute requires.
  McLaughlin requested damages and an injunction, and it
also sought to represent a class of other recipients of
McKesson’s faxes. Some recipients (including McLaughlin)
received the faxes on a traditional fax machine—the
standalone device dedicated to receiving and printing faxes.
But others received the faxes through online fax services,
either by email or through an online portal.
  The District Court certified a class of fax recipients,
drawing no distinction between faxes received on
traditional fax machines and faxes received through online
fax services.
  As McLaughlin’s lawsuit progressed, another company
with no connection to the litigation petitioned the FCC for
a declaratory ruling about whether the TCPA applies to
faxes received through online fax services. Months after
                  Cite as: 

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                      Opinion of the Court

the District Court certified the class in McLaughlin’s suit,
the FCC issued an order—known as the Amerifactors
order—interpreting the term “telephone facsimile machine”
in the TCPA. In re Amerifactors Financial Group, LLC, 34
FCC Rcd. 11950 (2019) (declaratory ruling). The FCC ruled
that “an online fax service is not a ‘telephone facsimile
machine.’ ” 

. Under that interpretation,
the TCPA would not prohibit faxes received through online
fax services.
   As the parties here recognized, if the FCC’s Amerifactors
order were binding on the District Court, it would
undermine McLaughlin’s class-action lawsuit because
McLaughlin defined the class to include plaintiffs who
received unsolicited faxes through online fax services.
   After receiving briefing on the issue, the District Court
deemed the Amerifactors order “a final, binding order” that
dictated the court’s interpretation of the TCPA. True
Health Chiropractic, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., No. 13–cv–
2219 (ND Cal., Dec. 24, 2020), App. to Pet. for Cert. 38a. In
line with Ninth Circuit precedent, the court reasoned that
it lacked the authority “to question the validity of FCC final
orders” such as the Amerifactors order. App. to Pet. for
Cert. 37a. Under the judicial review provisions of the
Hobbs Act, according to the District Court, those FCC
orders are “ ‘subject to the exclusive review of the court of
appeals’ ” in pre-enforcement suits. 

 at 36a (quoting
Wilson v. A. H. Belo Corp., 

 (CA9 1996)).
   After the District Court determined that the Amerifactors
order was binding, the court granted summary judgment to
McKesson and against McLaughlin on the claims involving
faxes received through online fax services. The District
Court then decertified the class. That left McLaughlin with
winnowed-down claims based on 12 unsolicited faxes that
McLaughlin received on a traditional fax machine. So
McLaughlin obtained a damages award of only $6,000.
   On appeal, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth
4       MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                   v. MCKESSON CORP.
                    Opinion of the Court

Circuit affirmed, agreeing that the District Court was
“bound” by the Amerifactors order.             True Health
Chiropractic, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., No. 22–15710 etc.
(Oct. 25, 2023), App. to Pet. for Cert. 6a–7a.
  This Court granted certiorari to decide whether the
Hobbs Act required the District Court to follow the FCC’s
legal interpretation of the TCPA. 

 (2024). The
Court previously considered that question but ultimately
did not decide it in PDR Network, LLC v. Carlton & Harris
Chiropractic, Inc., 

 (2019).
                              II
   In 1950, Congress passed and President Truman signed
the Administrative Orders Review Act, commonly known as
the Hobbs Act. 

. The Hobbs Act provides for
pre-enforcement judicial review of FCC orders. To obtain
pre-enforcement review, a party must file a petition in a
federal court of appeals within 60 days of the FCC order.
   In McKesson’s view, which is supported here by the
United States as amicus curiae, the Hobbs Act’s provision
for pre-enforcement review in the courts of appeals bars
district courts in enforcement proceedings from disagreeing
with an agency’s interpretation of a statute. According to
McKesson and the Government, the District Court in this
case was absolutely bound by the FCC’s interpretation of
the TCPA.
   We disagree. The Hobbs Act does not preclude district
courts in enforcement proceedings from independently
assessing whether an agency’s interpretation of the
relevant statute is correct. Here, therefore, the District
Court should interpret the TCPA under ordinary principles
of statutory interpretation, affording appropriate respect to
the agency’s interpretation.
                             A
    The Hobbs Act provides in relevant part: “The court of
                  Cite as: 

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                      Opinion of the Court

appeals . . . has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside,
suspend (in whole or in part), or to determine the validity
of . . . all final orders of the Federal Communication[s]
Commission made reviewable by section 402(a) of title 47.”

(1). Under the Hobbs Act, when the FCC
issues certain orders, any “party aggrieved” has 60 days to
file a petition in a court of appeals seeking review of the
order and declaratory or injunctive relief against the
enforcement of the order. §§2342, 2344, 2349. If more than
one petition for review is filed within that 60-day period,
the petitions are then consolidated in a single court of
appeals. §2112(a). The Hobbs Act also governs review of
certain actions of the Department of Agriculture,
Department of Transportation, Federal Maritime
Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Surface
Transportation Board, and Department of Housing and
Urban Development. See §§2342(2)–(7).
   Pre-enforcement review under the Hobbs Act allows
regulated and affected parties to obtain greater clarity
about their legal rights and obligations—rather than taking
their chances and hoping to prevail in later enforcement
proceedings. The Hobbs Act requires parties who want to
challenge the legality of agency rules or orders in a pre-
enforcement proceeding to do so both promptly and in a
court of appeals. That pre-enforcement review process
avoids the delays and uncertainty that otherwise could
ensue from multiple pre-enforcement suits filed across time
in multiple district courts and from subsequent appeals in
the courts of appeals.
   Suppose, however, that no one files a pre-enforcement
suit challenging an agency rule or order. Or suppose that a
court of appeals upholds the agency’s statutory
interpretation in a pre-enforcement challenge. Either way,
a critical follow-on question is whether the Hobbs Act bars
different parties in subsequent enforcement proceedings
from arguing—and district courts from concluding—that
6       MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                   v. MCKESSON CORP.
                    Opinion of the Court

the agency incorrectly interpreted the statute. The answer
is no.1
   To understand why, we first must distinguish the three
categories of statutes that authorize pre-enforcement
review of agency rules and orders.
   Statutes in the first category authorize pre-enforcement
judicial review and expressly preclude judicial review in
subsequent enforcement proceedings. Examples include
the Clean Water Act, the Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980
(CERCLA), and the Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act
provides for pre-enforcement review of certain agency
actions in a court of appeals and generally requires parties
to seek review within 120 days. See 

(b)(1).
Importantly, the Act also states that those agency actions
“shall not be subject to judicial review in any civil or
criminal proceeding for enforcement.”             §1369(b)(2).
CERCLA likewise allows parties to seek pre-enforcement
review of any covered regulation in the D. C. Circuit within
90 days. See 

(a). Like the Clean Water
Act, CERCLA specifies that those regulations “shall not be
subject to judicial review in any civil or criminal proceeding
for enforcement.” 

 Similarly, the Clean Air Act
generally authorizes parties to file pre-enforcement
petitions for review in the appropriate court of appeals
within 60 days. See §7607(b)(1). The Clean Air Act, too,
states that those agency actions “shall not be subject to
judicial review in civil or criminal proceedings for
enforcement.” §7607(b)(2).
   The second category lies at the opposite pole—it consists
——————
  1 We use the term “enforcement proceedings” in this opinion as

shorthand for what the Administrative Procedure Act calls “civil or
criminal proceedings for judicial enforcement.” 

. As we
use the term here, it includes both (i) enforcement actions brought by the
Government and (ii) civil suits brought by private parties alleging a
defendant’s violation of a statute, regulation, or order.
                     Cite as: 

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                          Opinion of the Court

of pre-enforcement judicial review statutes that also
expressly authorize (or at least expressly contemplate)
judicial review in subsequent enforcement proceedings. For
instance, the Toxic Substances Control Act states that
courts of appeals “shall have exclusive jurisdiction of any
action to obtain judicial review (other than in an
enforcement proceeding).”       

(a)(1)(A),
(a)(1)(B) (emphasis added). A similar provision authorizes
review of certain Federal Trade Commission rules.
§57a(e)(5)(B). Those statutes recognize judicial review in
pre-enforcement suits and enforcement proceedings alike.
   Statutes in the third category fall between the first two
categories. Those statutes provide for pre-enforcement
review but are silent on the question of whether a party
may contest the agency’s legal interpretation in subsequent
enforcement proceedings. The Hobbs Act is one example.
Others include statutes that authorize review of certain
Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of
Labor rules and orders. See §§77i(a), 80a–42(a), 80b–13(a);

(f ).
   That third category raises the key question here: What
is the default rule for pre-enforcement review statutes that
neither expressly preclude nor expressly authorize judicial
review in subsequent enforcement proceedings?              As
relevant here, is the proper default rule in enforcement
proceedings (i) to preclude district courts from reviewing an
agency’s statutory interpretation or (ii) to allow district
courts to review an agency’s statutory interpretation?2
   Fundamental principles of administrative law establish
the proper default rule: In an enforcement proceeding, a
district court must independently determine for itself
whether the agency’s interpretation of a statute is correct.
——————
  2 Judicial review in enforcement proceedings of course may also include

review of whether the rule or order was arbitrary and capricious under
the APA or otherwise was unlawful. Because this case involves
interpretation of a statute, we focus here on that scenario.
8       MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                   v. MCKESSON CORP.
                    Opinion of the Court

District courts are not bound by the agency’s interpretation,
but instead must determine the meaning of the law under
ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, affording
appropriate respect to the agency’s interpretation. See
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 

(2024).3
  That is the proper default rule for a variety of reasons.
To begin, this Court has long recognized a “ ‘basic
presumption of judicial review’ ” of agency action.
Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Serv.,

 (2018) (quoting Abbott Laboratories v.
Gardner, 

 (1967)). As a general matter,
“unless there is persuasive reason to believe” that Congress
intended to preclude judicial review, this Court will not
preclude review. Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family
Physicians, 

 (1986) (quotation marks
omitted); see Bouarfa v. Mayorkas, 

 (2024);
Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 

(2016).
  In     this    enforcement-proceeding      context,   that
presumption is codified in the Administrative Procedure
Act, 

. Section 703 provides: “Except to the
extent that prior, adequate, and exclusive opportunity for
judicial review is provided by law, agency action is subject
to judicial review in civil or criminal proceedings for
judicial enforcement.” (Emphasis added.) Therefore, §703
——————
  3 To be clear, if a party challenges an agency action in a pre-

enforcement suit in a court of appeals and loses, that specific party may
be barred by ordinary estoppel or preclusion principles from relitigating
the same question in a future enforcement proceeding. See Abbott
Laboratories v. Gardner, 

 (1967). Moreover, if the
district court in the enforcement proceeding sits in the same circuit as
the court of appeals that decided a pre-enforcement suit, the district
court may be bound under principles of vertical stare decisis to adhere to
the court of appeals holding. Neither of those scenarios is present here
because neither McLaughlin nor any other party brought a pre-
enforcement suit regarding the Amerifactors order.
                     Cite as: 

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                          Opinion of the Court

itself articulates the default principle that parties in
enforcement proceedings can challenge an agency’s
interpretation of a statute. Indeed, in 1947, the year after
the APA was enacted, the Attorney General’s Manual on
the Administrative Procedure Act explained that in “many
situations,” “an appropriate method of attacking the
validity of agency action is to set up the alleged invalidity
as a defense in a civil or criminal enforcement proceeding.”
Dept. of Justice, Attorney General’s Manual on the
Administrative Procedure Act 99 (1947).
   Consistent with the background presumption of judicial
review and §703, this Court’s precedents have held that a
party usually may seek judicial review of an agency’s rule
or order in an enforcement proceeding. Courts presume
that “parties may always assail a regulation as exceeding
the agency’s statutory authority in enforcement
proceedings against them.” Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of
Governors, 

 (2024) (quotation marks
omitted).4
   To be sure, in 1967, this Court’s decision in Abbott
——————
   4 The dissent, relying on Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, objects that

the presumption of judicial review does not apply unless a statute would
preclude all judicial review. Post, at 11 (citing 

(1994)). That objection is misplaced for two reasons. First, the
presumption of judicial review applies to “statutes that may limit or
preclude review.” Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 

 (2016) (emphasis added). The presumption can apply with varying
degrees of strength. Compare Thunder Basin, 

 (not
applying “the strong presumption that Congress did not mean to prohibit
all judicial review” because “court of appeals review is available”
(quotation marks omitted)), with 

 (nonetheless applying a
presumption of judicial review and determining that it was overcome by
“fairly discernible” intent (quotation marks omitted)); see also Elgin v.
Department of Treasury, 

, 9–10 (2012). Second, this case
raises a different issue than Thunder Basin. This case concerns the
availability of judicial review in enforcement proceedings, and as we
have explained, the relevant presumption for purposes of judicial review
in enforcement proceedings is codified in §703 of the APA.
10     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   Opinion of the Court

Laboratories v. Gardner revolutionized administrative law
by more regularly allowing pre-enforcement challenges to
agency rules and orders under the APA, at least absent
statutory preclusion of such pre-enforcement review. 387
U. S., at 139–141. But Abbott Laboratories did not purport
to eliminate judicial review in enforcement proceedings.
Indeed, eliminating such review would have thwarted a key
aim of the Abbott Laboratories decision, which was to
expand the opportunities for judicial review by allowing
challenges to agency action in either pre-enforcement suits
or enforcement proceedings. See id., at 140–141.
  In short, the background presumption of judicial review,
the text of §703 of the APA, and the tradition and
precedents allowing parties in enforcement proceedings to
contest an agency’s interpretation combine to establish a
clear default rule: In enforcement proceedings, district
courts independently determine whether an agency’s
interpretation of a statute is correct.
  To be clear, the default rule is only a default, meaning
that it applies only absent congressional indication
otherwise. When Congress wants to preclude judicial
review in enforcement proceedings, it can easily say so. The
Clean Water Act, CERCLA, and the Clean Air Act all
expressly preclude judicial review in enforcement
proceedings. But absent such congressional preclusion,
judicial review should be available.
  The default rule also avoids unnecessary litigation and
unfairness. It would be impractical—and an enormous
waste of resources—to demand that every potentially
affected party bring or join pre-enforcement Hobbs Act
challenges against every agency rule or order that might
possibly affect them at some point in the future. As Justice
Powell spelled out in a similar context, it “is totally
unrealistic to assume that more than a fraction of the
persons and entities affected by a regulation—especially
small contractors scattered across the country—would have
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                          Opinion of the Court

knowledge of its promulgation or familiarity with or access
to the Federal Register.” Adamo Wrecking Co. v. United
States, 

 (1978) (concurring opinion).
  On some occasions, moreover, the entities in an
enforcement proceeding may not have existed when the
relevant agency rule or order was first issued. Or at that
time, they may have had no reason to suspect that they
could be ensnared in future enforcement proceedings
involving that agency action.
  Requiring all those potentially affected parties to
somehow predict the future and bring a pre-enforcement
challenge within 60 days or otherwise lose their right to
challenge an agency’s interpretation of a statute down the
road in an enforcement proceeding would be highly
unusual—and would rightly strike many affected parties as
grossly unfair. That no doubt explains why Congress rarely
enacts such statutes.5
  All of those considerations taken together lead to a very
straightforward principle: When Congress wants to bar a
district court in an enforcement proceeding from reviewing
an agency’s interpretation of a statute, Congress can and
must say so. We do not presume that Congress silently
intended to preclude judicial review in enforcement
——————
   5 Indeed, the unfairness that would otherwise ensue could potentially

rise to the level of a constitutional due process problem. Barring
defendants in enforcement actions from raising arguments about the
legality of agency rules or orders enforced against them raises significant
questions under the Due Process Clause—especially for parties that did
not exist or had no good or reasonably foreseeable reason to sue when
the agency rule or order was first issued. In Adamo Wrecking Co. v.
United States, Justice Powell warned that the preclusion-of-review
provision of the Clean Air Act raised constitutional issues that “merited
serious consideration.” 

 (1978) (concurring opinion).
The D. C. Circuit likewise has cautioned that provisions of that sort raise
a “substantial due process question.” Chrysler Corp. v. EPA, 

, 913 (1979). We avoid those due process concerns in Hobbs Act cases
by adhering to the default rule of allowing judicial review of agency legal
interpretations in enforcement proceedings.
12     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   Opinion of the Court

proceedings. Rather, the default rule is that district courts
in enforcement proceedings may conclude that an agency’s
interpretation of a statute is incorrect.
                                B
   Unlike the Clean Water Act, CERCLA, and the Clean Air
Act, the Hobbs Act does not expressly preclude review in
enforcement proceedings. So the default rule applies,
meaning that judicial review of the FCC’s statutory
interpretation is available in this enforcement proceeding
unless the Hobbs Act provides otherwise. McKesson and
the Government advance several arguments that the Hobbs
Act should be interpreted to preclude judicial review of an
agency’s interpretation in an enforcement proceeding.
None is persuasive.
   First, McKesson and the Government say that the text of
the Hobbs Act overrides the default rule. They point to the
language in the Hobbs Act stating that the court of appeals
in a pre-enforcement challenge possesses “exclusive
jurisdiction” to “enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in
part), or to determine the validity” of the agency order. 

. They seize on the language “exclusive
jurisdiction . . . to determine the validity.” They argue that
if the district court in an enforcement proceeding could
disagree with an agency’s statutory interpretation, the
district court would in essence “determine the validity” of
the order—thereby contravening the Hobbs Act’s grant of
exclusive jurisdiction to the court of appeals to do so in a
pre-enforcement suit.
   That argument is mistaken. In this context, a court of
appeals determines the validity of the agency order by
entering a declaratory judgment that declares the order
valid or invalid. Critically, if a district court in an
enforcement proceeding disagrees with the agency’s
interpretation of a statute, the district court does not issue
such a declaratory judgment. Rather, the district court
                 Cite as: 

 (2025)           13

                     Opinion of the Court

simply determines the liability of the defendant under the
correct interpretation of the statute. In other words, when
exercising judicial review in an enforcement proceeding, a
district court may consider the validity of the agency order,
but the court does not “determine the validity” of that order
in the sense of entering a declaratory judgment, which is
how that phrase is used in §2342. Therefore, district court
review does not conflict with the Hobbs Act.
  Notably, moreover, the statutory phrase “determine the
validity” is preceded by the terms “enjoin,” “set aside,” and
“suspend.” Here, McKesson claims that “determine the
validity” goes beyond a form of relief (that is, beyond a
declaratory judgment) and extends to “a court’s decisional
process in evaluating an order’s merits.”           Brief for
Respondents 9. But the noscitur a sociis canon counsels
against reading the term “determine the validity” to be
different in kind and broader than the other three terms,
which are all forms of relief. See, e.g., Fischer v. United
States, 

, 487–488 (2024); Freeman v. Quicken
Loans, Inc., 

, 634–635 (2012).
  In addition, a variation of the phrase “determine the
validity” appears in another provision of the Hobbs Act,
§2349. That provision states that the court of appeals in a
pre-enforcement proceeding “has exclusive jurisdiction” to
enter “a judgment determining the validity of, and
enjoining, setting aside, or suspending, in whole or in part,
the order of the agency.” §2349(a).
  The phrase “judgment determining the validity” in §2349
further confirms that the phrase “determine the validity” in
§2342 refers to a declaratory judgment. The two provisions
work in tandem, not at odds, and they have a consistent
meaning. The main point of §2342 is to identify the
relevant courts that may hear pre-enforcement
challenges—namely, the courts of appeals—and to list the
agency actions that the Hobbs Act covers. Section 2349
specifies in more procedural detail that a court of appeals
14      MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                   v. MCKESSON CORP.
                    Opinion of the Court

exercises jurisdiction upon “the filing and service of a
petition,” and it authorizes the court of appeals to enter a
judgment upon review of “the petition, evidence, and
proceedings set forth” in the administrative record. Ibid.
So the language in §2349 further supports our conclusion
about the meaning of §2342: In an enforcement proceeding,
a district court is not bound by an agency’s statutory
interpretation.6
   As the dissent notes, the Hobbs Act provides “exclusive
jurisdiction” to the courts of appeals. §2342. But the
question is: “exclusive jurisdiction” to do what? Under the
Hobbs Act, the courts of appeals have exclusive jurisdiction
to hear pre-enforcement challenges, meaning that district
courts may not entertain those pre-enforcement suits. That
language does not bar district courts in enforcement
proceedings from independently interpreting the meaning
of the statute at issue.
   In short, the Hobbs Act does not bar McLaughlin from
arguing in the district court enforcement proceeding that
the FCC’s interpretation of the TCPA is incorrect. The
Hobbs Act dictates how, when, and in what court a party
can challenge a new agency order before enforcement. The
Act does not purport to address, much less preclude, district
court review in enforcement proceedings. So the District
Court in this enforcement proceeding can decide what the
statute means under ordinary principles of statutory
interpretation, affording appropriate respect to the FCC’s
interpretation. By doing so, the District Court will not
“determine the validity” of the FCC’s Amerifactors order
——————
  6 The dissent says that we have erred in our analysis of the Hobbs Act’s

text by “adding words”—specifically, by reading the phrase “determine
the validity” in the Hobbs Act to mean “issue a declaratory judgment
determining the validity.” Post, at 4. We are not adding words; we are
simply interpreting the phrases “judgment determining the validity” and
“determine the validity” in this statute to refer to a declaratory
judgment.
                  Cite as: 

 (2025)           15

                      Opinion of the Court

and thus will not contravene the Hobbs Act.
  One additional note: Even if the text of the Hobbs Act
were ambiguous as to whether it precludes judicial review
of an agency interpretation in enforcement proceedings,
ambiguity does not suffice to deprive a party of that judicial
review. See, e.g., Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, 

 (2020); Cuozzo Speed Technologies, 

.
To deny a party like McLaughlin the opportunity to contest
the agency’s interpretation in an enforcement proceeding,
Congress must clearly preclude such review. The Hobbs
Act does not do so.
  Second, McKesson and the Government turn to precedent
and say that one of this Court’s cases—Yakus v. United
States, 

 (1944)—already construed a statute
similar to the Hobbs Act to bar judicial review in
enforcement proceedings.          That argument, too, is
misplaced.
  In Yakus, the Court considered pre-enforcement suits
authorized by the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942.
The question was whether the Act’s authorization of pre-
enforcement suits for adjudicating the validity of World
War II pricing regulations and orders precluded judicial
review in subsequent enforcement proceedings. See 

.
  The Emergency Price Control Act contained two key
sentences governing judicial review. The first sentence said
that a specially created federal court possessed “exclusive
jurisdiction to determine the validity of any regulation or
order” covered by the Act. 

 (emphasis added).
That first sentence is similar to §2342 of the Hobbs Act. The
second sentence said: “Except as provided in this section,
no court, Federal, State, or Territorial, shall have
jurisdiction or power to consider the validity of any such
regulation, order, or price schedule.” Ibid. (emphasis
added). That second sentence is not replicated in the Hobbs
Act, but is similar to the preclusion-of-review provisions in
16     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   Opinion of the Court

the Clean Water Act, CERCLA, and the Clean Air Act.
   According to the Court in Yakus, the first sentence of the
Emergency Price Control Act, which gave a specific court
the exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of
certain regulations, “coupled with the provision” that
explicitly provided that no other court had jurisdiction to
“consider” the validity of those same regulations, deprived
the District Court in the later enforcement proceeding of
authority to consider the legality of the relevant price
regulation. 321 U. S., at 429–430 (emphasis added).
   By using the phrase “coupled with,” the Yakus Court
reasoned that those two sentences of the Emergency Price
Control Act together barred district court review. The first
sentence alone did not suffice. Importantly, moreover,
Yakus did not treat the second sentence of the Emergency
Price Control Act—which barred all other courts from even
considering the validity of the regulations—as redundant
or a restatement of the first. On the contrary, the Court
recognized that the two provisions achieved separate
objectives. The first sentence afforded a particular court
“exclusive” jurisdiction “to determine the validity” of a
pricing regulation in a pre-enforcement challenge. Id., at
443. The second sentence, in turn, foreclosed “any further
or other consideration of the validity of a regulation” in
enforcement proceedings. Ibid. The word “exclusive” in the
first sentence did not itself bar any subsequent review in
enforcement proceedings. If it had, then the second
sentence of the Emergency Price Control Act—barring any
other consideration of the validity of the regulations—
would have been unnecessary. Yet the Act included the
second sentence and, importantly, the Yakus Court then
expressly relied on that second sentence in deciding that
review was precluded in subsequent enforcement
proceedings.
   In 1950, six years after Yakus, Congress enacted the
Hobbs Act. According to McKesson and the Government,
                 Cite as: 

 (2025)          17

                     Opinion of the Court

Congress replicated relevant provisions of the Emergency
Price Control Act in the Hobbs Act. Not so. In enacting
§2342 of the Hobbs Act, Congress incorporated language
resembling the first sentence of the Emergency Price
Control Act that granted the courts of appeals exclusive
jurisdiction to entertain pre-enforcement challenges to
determine the validity of agency rules and orders. But
Congress did not carry forward the second sentence of the
Emergency Price Control Act, which provided that no other
court had jurisdiction even to “consider the validity” of
those same agency rules and orders. In the Hobbs Act, in
other words, Congress did not include the language from
the Emergency Price Control Act that, as interpreted in
Yakus, would have expressly communicated Congress’s
decision to preclude district courts from considering the
validity of certain rules and orders.
  In relying on Yakus, McKesson and the Government also
disregard a critical contextual difference between the
Emergency Price Control Act and the Hobbs Act. Congress
designed the Emergency Price Control Act for the wartime
context, where the need for quick and definitive judicial
rulings was at its zenith. By contrast, the Hobbs Act is an
omnibus administrative review statute that covers a
variety of agency rules and orders, without an exigency of
that kind.
  Because the Emergency Price Control Act differs in
important textual and contextual ways from the Hobbs Act,
Yakus does not control here.
  McKesson and the Government also rely on two Hobbs
Act cases, Port of Boston Marine Terminal Assn. v.
Rederiaktiebolaget Transatlantic, 

 (1970), and
FCC v. ITT World Communications, Inc., 

(1984). But those cases likewise do not advance their cause.
In Port of Boston, two private parties had been opposed to
one another in an agency’s adjudicative proceeding. 400
U. S., at 65–66. Then, the losing party in the adjudicative
18      MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                   v. MCKESSON CORP.
                    Opinion of the Court

proceeding intervened in an ongoing District Court suit
against the other party, seeking to relitigate the agency’s
decision. 

 at 64–67. ITT World similarly involved a
party who lost before the agency and then turned around
and sued the agency in District Court. 466 U. S., at 465–
466, 468. In both cases, this Court held that the Hobbs Act
barred the suit. See Port of Boston, 

; ITT
World, 

. Those decisions mean only that a
form of estoppel or preclusion applies when two parties are
opposed in an agency’s adjudicative proceeding—and the
losing party then seeks to upset the result of that
adjudicative proceeding in an ordinary district court suit
rather than in the court of appeals venue provided by
statute. See also n. 3, supra. The litigation between
McLaughlin and McKesson at issue in this case does not
implicate those concerns about “collateral redetermination
of the same issue” involving the same parties “in a different
and inappropriate forum.” Port of Boston, 

.
   To be sure, as McKesson and the Government note, one
paragraph near the end of the Port of Boston opinion could
be read more broadly than simply relying on estoppel or
preclusion principles. See 

 But that paragraph was
styled as alternative reasoning and, if read broadly, would
be inconsistent with fundamental principles of
administrative law and judicial review that this Court has
emphasized in the years since. So we decline to adopt that
broader reading and instead confine Port of Boston to the
estoppel and preclusion principles that formed the primary
basis for the decision.7
——————
  7 On a related tack, McKesson and the Government point to century-

old precedents interpreting the Urgent Deficiencies Act of 1913, a
predecessor to the Hobbs Act. 

; see Venner v. Michigan
Central R. Co., 

 (1926); Lambert Run Coal Co. v. Baltimore
& Ohio R. Co., 

 (1922). In those cases, the plaintiffs sued
private defendants and challenged agency decisions that had specifically
                     Cite as: 

 (2025)                  19

                         Opinion of the Court

   Third, McKesson and the Government argue that
practical problems could ensue if the Hobbs Act did not bar
judicial review of agency legal interpretations in
enforcement proceedings.
   They raise concern about the potential disagreement and
inefficiency that could crop up if courts in enforcement
proceedings independently interpret statutes instead of
following an agency’s interpretation. That policy-laden
argument does not overcome the text of the statute and
traditional administrative law principles. Moreover, the
argument is unpersuasive even on its own terms. If an
agency order is upheld in a pre-enforcement challenge by a
court of appeals, it is true that a different court of appeals
(upon review of a district court’s decision) might disagree
with the agency’s interpretation in an appeal from a
subsequent enforcement proceeding. But that inter-circuit
disagreement would simply create a circuit split on the
interpretation of the law and likely trigger review in this
Court. Circuit splits followed by this Court’s review are
commonplace. There is no reason to think that Congress
wanted to short-circuit that ordinary system of judicial
review for the multiplicity of agency rules and orders
encompassed by the Hobbs Act.
   The Government separately suggests that judicial review
——————
authorized those defendants to engage in the disputed conduct—by
granting what in essence was a license or waiver to the defendants. In
the District Courts, the plaintiffs sought injunctions that would negate
the agency’s license or waiver and prevent the defendants “from doing
what the order specifically authorizes.” Venner, 

; see
Lambert, 258 U. S., at 379–382. This Court held that the proper avenue
for that kind of challenge was pre-enforcement review in the court
designated by the Urgent Deficiencies Act. In the Court’s view, the
plaintiffs’ requested relief was “equivalent to asking that the order be
adjudged invalid and set aside.” Venner, 

; see Lambert,
258 U. S., at 381–382. Those cases therefore do not shed light on the
broader issue in this case—namely, the general availability of judicial
review in enforcement proceedings.
20     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   Opinion of the Court

is not necessary in any event because an affected party who
did not bring a pre-enforcement challenge can always
petition the agency for a new rulemaking or declaratory
order. That is a largely empty promise. To begin, if the
Government actually supports judicial review after the
initial 60-day Hobbs Act period, it makes little sense to
squeeze review into that convoluted route rather than
recognizing judicial review in enforcement proceedings.
More fundamentally, judicial review may not always be
available under that route, or it may take many years for
the agency to act on a petition for a new rulemaking or
declaratory order. And even if judicial review of a denied
petition is available, “the ability to petition” an agency for
a new rulemaking or declaratory order is not “a sufficient
substitute for de novo judicial review of its lawfulness”
because the “agency’s discretionary decision to decline to
take new action would be subject only to deferential judicial
review.” Corner Post, 

 (quotation
marks omitted). In short, the Government’s suggestion of
an alternative path of judicial review is largely illusory in
practice and does not supply a basis for denying judicial
review in district court enforcement proceedings.
   The dissent expresses concern about how our decision
will affect the incentives of regulated parties. See post, at
1, 15–16. Invoking plutonium shippers and nuclear reactor
operators, the dissent says that regulated parties like those
will be emboldened to violate agency rules and orders, all
because those regulated parties may challenge the validity
of agency rules and orders in subsequent enforcement
proceedings. But the APA itself makes judicial review
available in both pre-enforcement proceedings and
enforcement proceedings, so our decision today does not
create some unusual procedure. See Abbott Laboratories,
387 U. S., at 140–141. Indeed, as is true under the APA,
many regulated parties will prefer to challenge a rule or
order in a pre-enforcement proceeding—that is, before
                  Cite as: 

 (2025)           21

                      Opinion of the Court

running the risk of ruinous liability in an enforcement
proceeding.      Avoiding exposure to liability in an
enforcement proceeding is a core purpose of pre-
enforcement review. See 

 at 153–154. We do not think
that the availability of judicial review in district court
enforcement proceedings will create the negative incentives
that the dissent is concerned about.
   As it has done with the Clean Water Act, CERCLA, and
the Clean Air Act, Congress can choose to expressly
preclude judicial review in enforcement proceedings
(subject to constitutional constraints). But we should not
lightly conclude that Congress wants to simultaneously
deny judicial review in enforcement proceedings whenever
it grants particular courts “exclusive jurisdiction” over pre-
enforcement challenges. That would blindside parties who
would not necessarily have anticipated that they should
have filed a pre-enforcement challenge, insulate agencies
from circuit splits, and thereby render this Court’s review
of significant agency rules and orders less likely. Such an
interpretation would read far too much into a few oblique
words in the Hobbs Act.
   To the extent we consider real-world effects, moreover,
they cut against McKesson and the Government. As
McKesson and the Government see things, when the initial
window for pre-enforcement review closes, no one can argue
in court that the agency’s interpretation of a statute is
incorrect—no      matter    how     wrong     the     agency’s
interpretation might be. In other words, their argument
would require the District Court to afford absolute deference
to the agency. We see no good rationale for reading the
Hobbs Act to embody such an absolute-deference rule.
                       *  *    *
  The District Court is not bound by the FCC’s
interpretation of the TCPA. The District Court should
interpret the statute as courts traditionally do under
22     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   Opinion of the Court

ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, affording
appropriate respect to the agency’s interpretation.
  McKesson separately contends that we should affirm
anyway because, in its view, the FCC’s interpretation of the
TCPA is correct. Consistent with our usual practice, we
leave that issue for remand. We reverse the judgment of
the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.

                                            It is so ordered.
                  Cite as: 

 (2025)            1

                      KAGAN, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
                          _________________

                          No. 23–1226
                          _________________


 MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.,
 PETITIONER v. MCKESSON CORPORATION, ET AL.
 ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
            APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
                         [June 20, 2025]

   JUSTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
   Imagine the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is-
sues a rule to ensure the safe handling of nuclear mate-
rial—for example, by prohibiting the shipment of (radioac-
tive) plutonium by air. See 

 (2024). And
imagine, too, that a regulated party thinks the rule exceeds
the NRC’s statutory authority. Must the party challenge
the rule right away—before putting plutonium on a plane—
by bringing its arguments to a court of appeals? Or can the
party send plutonium through the skies without regard to
the rule, and contest its validity only when (really, if ) the
NRC initiates an enforcement action?
   Today, the Court picks the second option: ship first, liti-
gate later. The Hobbs Act provides for prompt pre-enforce-
ment judicial review of much agency action, including most
of the NRC’s rules and orders. See 

(4).
But as the majority sees things, the Act “does not preclude
district courts” from declaring a rule or order invalid years
after it issued, at the behest of a party who declined to seek
judicial review in the first instance. Ante, at 4. So a regu-
lated party, as in my plutonium example, can violate an
agency’s rule, wait for the agency to discover the offense
and bring an enforcement action, and only then challenge
the rule as going beyond statutory authority. And the same
2      MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   KAGAN, J., dissenting

is true in private litigation (as here), for either a plaintiff or
a defendant. If, for example, a defendant raises an agency’s
rule or order in a civil suit (as McKesson did to defeat
McLaughlin’s class action), the plaintiff can always respond
by challenging the agency action’s validity. And that is so,
in both the administrative and the private contexts, even if
appellate courts have previously approved the agency rule
or order, so long as those judicial decisions are not somehow
binding (which they often will not be).
   But the Court’s conclusion is wrong, as a matter of ordi-
nary statutory interpretation. The text of the Hobbs Act
makes clear that litigants who have declined to seek pre-
enforcement judicial review may not contest the statutory
validity of agency action in later district-court enforcement
proceedings. And this Court’s prior decisions have said just
that. Today’s majority evades the Hobbs Act’s most natural
meaning by relying on a novel “default rule,” which de-
mands that Congress use a certain form of words—really,
that Congress create statutory redundancy—to preclude
parties from bringing down-the-road challenges to agency
action. That rule has no foundation in our law; it emerges
fully formed today from the majority’s head. And it pre-
vents the Hobbs Act from functioning as Congress
wanted—by allowing regulated parties to end-run the Act’s
pre-enforcement judicial review scheme, and thereby un-
dermine the stability and efficacy of administrative pro-
grams.
                              I
   Under the Hobbs Act, the federal courts of appeals have
“exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in
whole or in part), or to determine the validity of ” specified
agency rules and orders. §2342. The question here is
whether the Act—despite vesting that “exclusive jurisdic-
tion” in the courts of appeals—still allows a litigant to at-
tack the validity of a covered agency action in a district-
                     Cite as: 

 (2025)                    3

                         KAGAN, J., dissenting

court enforcement proceeding. Or otherwise asked: May a
party in a district-court suit challenge a covered agency ac-
tion, many years after the action issued and underwent ju-
dicial review, as part of his claim or defense?
   The Hobbs Act’s text provides the answer. By its terms,
the Hobbs Act gives courts of appeals exclusive authority to
“determine the validity” of specified agency actions. “Ex-
clusive,” of course, means courts of appeals alone, not dis-
trict courts. And there lies the problem for a party chal-
lenging agency action in a district court, not a court of
appeals. When he objects to an order because it miscon-
strues a statute, he asks the district court to “determine the
[order’s] validity.” The court, to address the claim, has to
settle or decide (“determine”) whether the challenged
agency action is lawful (“valid”). See, e.g., Black’s Law Dic-
tionary 536, 1719 (4th ed. 1951) (defining “determine” to
mean “settle” or “decide,” and “validity” to mean “[l]egal suf-
ficiency”); see also 

 (defining “valid” to mean “le-
gally sufficient” or “authorized by law”). So the party’s re-
quest is for the district court to do exactly what the Hobbs
Act says it cannot. This case could be Exhibit A. McLaugh-
lin wants a district court to disregard the Federal Commu-
nications Commission’s (FCC’s) Amerifactors order, 34 FCC
Rcd. 11950 (2019), on the ground that it conflicts with the
Telephone Consumer Protection Act. See ante, at 3–4. But
to do that, the district court would need to decide (or “deter-
mine”) that Amerifactors is legally wrong (or “invalid”).
And the Hobbs Act reserves such determinations for the
federal courts of appeals. As the statute says, their juris-
diction is “exclusive.”1

——————
  1 One exception bears mention: Under §703 of the Administrative Pro-

cedure Act (APA), a litigant may challenge agency action in a district
court when he lacked an “adequate . . . opportunity” to obtain pre-en-
forcement review of the action in a court of appeals by way of the Hobbs
Act. See 

 (“Except to the extent that prior, adequate, and
4        MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                    v. MCKESSON CORP.
                     KAGAN, J., dissenting

   The majority’s contrary reading of “determine the valid-
ity” has nothing to recommend it. In the majority’s view, a
court determines the validity of an agency order only when
it “enter[s] a declaratory judgment” holding the order valid
or invalid. See ante, at 12. And because (the majority con-
tinues) a district court in an enforcement proceeding does
not enter a declaratory judgment, its ruling on validity does
not collide with the Hobbs Act. But why read “determine
the validity” to mean “issue a declaratory judgment deter-
mining the validity”? By adding words to the phrase—usu-
ally considered bad practice in statutory interpretation—
the majority narrows its meaning. See, e.g., Lomax v. Ortiz-
Marquez, 

 (2020) (“[T]his Court may not
narrow a provision’s reach by inserting words Congress
chose to omit”). As Congress drafted the phrase, it refers to
any method of, or mechanism for, determining an order’s
validity; as the majority reads the phrase, it reduces to only
one. Had Congress meant to refer to only that one, it had a
perfectly easy way to do so—just insert language, along the
lines of the italics above, mentioning declaratory judg-
ments. Congress of course knows how to do that when it
wants to. See, e.g., 

 (referring to “actions for
declaratory judgments”). It did not want to here. It gave
exclusive jurisdiction to the courts of appeals to “determine


——————
exclusive opportunity for judicial review is provided by law, agency ac-
tion is subject to judicial review in civil or criminal proceedings for judi-
cial enforcement” (emphasis added)). So if a specific litigant did not have
a practical way to seek pre-enforcement review under the Hobbs Act—
as, for example, a new business would not—then that litigant can use an
enforcement proceeding to challenge an agency action. Contra, ante, at
11. But that benefit does not extend to a party that has intentionally or
negligently forgone Hobbs Act review. That kind of party had, but passed
up, an “adequate opportunity.” And there is no dispute here that
McLaughlin is such a party: It knew about, but decided not to participate
in, consideration of the Amerifactors order. See Pet. for Cert. 20.
                      Cite as: 

 (2025)                       5

                           KAGAN, J., dissenting

the validity of ” specified agency orders and rules—by what-
ever means, not just by entering declaratory judgments.2
   History and precedent confirm that view. At the time
Congress drafted the Hobbs Act, this Court had held that
two statutes like it applied whenever a litigant’s claim or
defense called agency action into question. See Venner v.
Michigan Central R. Co., 

 (1926); Yakus v.
United States, 

 (1944). Congress enacted the
Hobbs Act against the backdrop of those decisions, presum-
ably intending to replicate their results. See, e.g., Parker
Drilling Management Services, Ltd. v. Newton, 

 (2019) (“It is a commonplace of statutory interpre-
tation that ‘Congress legislates against the backdrop of ex-
isting law’ ”). And this Court has previously read the Hobbs
Act as doing exactly that—as preventing later, collateral at-
tacks on agency orders that could have been challenged at
the time they issued.

——————
   2 The noscitur a sociis canon does not come to the majority’s aid. Ac-

cording to the majority, the phrase preceding “to determine the valid-
ity”—“to enjoin, set aside, suspend”—refers to awarding “forms of relief.”
Ante, at 13. And because a declaratory judgment is also a form of relief,
the majority claims that the general language of the “validity” phrase
should be narrowed to that particular. See 

 But there are at least
three things wrong with that idea. First, there is just not enough ambi-
guity in the words “determine the validity” to resort to the highly nu-
anced and often unreliable noscitur canon. See, e.g., United States v.
Stevens, 

 (2010). Second, a careful reader will note
that Congress did not, as the majority does, run the two phrases together
as one. Congress’s language goes: A court of appeals has exclusive juris-
diction “to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in part), or to determine
the validity of ” an agency order. §2342. The addition of the second “to”
in that provision marks the “validity” phrase as slightly different from
what precedes it, thus making use of the canon still more inappropriate.
And third, the majority’s argument fails even on its own terms, because
a court awards relief as much when it dismisses a suit based on an order’s
invalidity as when it issues a declaratory judgment announcing the in-
validity. Nothing in the Hobbs Act suggests that Congress saw a differ-
ence in those alternative ways of providing relief from an illegal order.
6        MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                    v. MCKESSON CORP.
                     KAGAN, J., dissenting

   Begin with Venner, which involved a Hobbs Act predeces-
sor called the Urgent Deficiencies Act. The case arose from
an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) order permit-
ting a railroad to participate in a joint venture with two
others. See 271 U. S., at 128–129. A minority shareholder
of the railroad sued to enjoin the venture, arguing that the
ICC had no statutory authority to approve it. But we de-
cided the District Court lacked jurisdiction. The suit, we
explained, “assail[ed] the validity” of an ICC order by ask-
ing that the railroad “be enjoined from doing what the order
specifically authorize[d].” Id., at 130. And such an attack
on an agency order’s validity had to be brought in the court,
and according to the procedures, the Urgent Deficiencies
Act directed. See ibid.; see also Lambert Run Coal Co. v.
Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 

, 381–382 (1922)
(similarly dismissing a civil suit because it was “in effect”
an attack on an agency rule). So Venner precluded, under
an earlier Hobbs-Act-type statute, just what today’s major-
ity allows: a collateral attack on agency action brought as a
claim or defense in a later civil suit. If the majority were to
apply the Venner rule today, it would hold that McLaughlin
could not “assail the validity” of the FCC’s Amerifactors or-
der except in the way the Hobbs Act specifies.3
——————
   3 The majority’s response, relegated to a footnote, is hard to make out.

It appears to limit the Venner holding to cases where the agency has is-
sued a party-specific order—there, a “license or waiver”—which a later
legal action seeks to undo. See ante, at 18, n. 7. But to begin with, an-
other decision taking the Venner line—which the majority also cites—
involved a general ICC rule, rather than a party-specific license or
waiver. See Lambert Run Coal Co., 258 U. S., at 381–382. And anyway,
the majority offers neither authority nor reason for treating the two
kinds of agency action differently—for varying judicial review based on
whether an agency regulates in gross or instead party-by-party. Why,
for example, reach a different result in this case because the FCC, in-
stead of licensing a particular company to transmit faxes to an online fax
service, created a regulatory safe-harbor for any entity to do so? The idea
is, at a minimum, in tension with usual administrative law principles.
See, e.g., NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 

, 291–294 (1974)
                     Cite as: 

 (2025)                   7

                         KAGAN, J., dissenting

   And Venner is no one-off: Yakus understood another
Hobbs Act precursor—the jurisdictional provision of the
Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 (EPCA)—in the iden-
tical way. That Act created an agency to issue regulations
and orders involving wartime prices. Relevant here, it also
gave a special court “exclusive jurisdiction to determine the
validity” of those orders, and barred other courts from “con-
sider[ing]” their “validity.” See 

 (quoting
§204(d), 

). The Court understood that lan-
guage—some ending up verbatim in the Hobbs Act—to pre-
clude a district court from ruling on the “validity” of the
agency’s orders in a later enforcement proceeding (includ-
ing, as there, a criminal prosecution for violating the Act).

. That holding follows straightforwardly
from Venner—and likewise points to a different result to-
day.
   The majority thinks Yakus is different because the EPCA
included a surfeit of exclusivity language. See ante, at 15–
17. In one sentence (as in the Hobbs Act), the statute made
clear that the special court had “exclusive jurisdiction” to
“determine the validity” of the agency’s orders; in the next,
the law provided that no other court had jurisdiction to con-
sider such an order’s validity. See 

. Be-
cause the Yakus Court noted both, the majority argues, it
must have thought the first sentence insufficient alone. See
ante, at 16. But the majority’s conclusion hardly follows
from its observation. Sure, the Yakus Court mentioned
both sentences, because both were there. (I would have
too.) But if only the first were there, would the Court have
reached a different conclusion? No, because the second sen-
tence is just the negative of the first: If Court X has “exclu-
sive jurisdiction” over a matter (here, “determining the va-
lidity” of agency action), Courts Y and Z have no authority
——————
(leaving to agency discretion the choice between general rules and indi-
vidualized proceedings).
8      MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   KAGAN, J., dissenting

over that matter—just by dint of what “exclusive” means.
And indeed, in a later case involving the EPCA (decided just
two years before Congress enacted the Hobbs Act), we relied
only on the language in the first sentence to hold that the
special court’s “exclusive jurisdiction” to “determin[e an or-
der’s] validity” precluded a district court from entertaining
a collateral attack on the order. See Woods v. Hills, 

, 213–214 (1948). The second sentence, we recog-
nized then, was just the opposite side of the coin, not worth
mentioning. Or, to switch to a more common statutory in-
terpretation metaphor, the second sentence was the “lam-
entably common” suspenders on top of the already suffi-
cient belt. A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law 177 (2012).
   It is thus not surprising that when this Court previously
encountered the Hobbs Act, it reached the same result—
once again foreclosing a district court’s “collateral redeter-
mination” of the validity of an agency order. Port of Boston
Marine Terminal Assn. v. Rederiaktiebolaget Transatlantic,

 (1970). And make no mistake: That is Port
of Boston’s holding, however much the majority tries to veil
it. See ante, at 17–18. The case got its start when the Fed-
eral Maritime Commission (FMC) issued an order in a rate-
making proceeding authorizing a port operator to impose
certain fees on shipowners using the port. Later, a ship-
owner intervened in an ongoing district-court suit to collect
the fees, and sought to argue that the FMC order allowing
them was in error. This Court held that the Hobbs Act
barred consideration of that issue. The Act, we explained,
was “explicit” in giving the courts of appeals “exclusive ju-
risdiction” to “determine the validity” of the FMC’s orders.

. And that meant the district court could
not entertain a “collateral attack” on what the FMC had
done. 

. In the last part of the opinion, the Court
responded to the shipowner’s contention that such an at-
tack was “justif[ied]” because it had not participated in the
                     Cite as: 

 (2025)                   9

                         KAGAN, J., dissenting

FMC’s ratemaking. The Court began by noting—in the sin-
gle paragraph the majority pretends is the crux of the deci-
sion—that the shipowner really had taken part through an
agent. See 

 And then the hammer came down: The
shipowner’s participation—or lack thereof—simply did not
matter. See 

. Even if the shipowner had not taken
part in the ratemaking, “it had every opportunity” to do so
and “then to seek timely review in the Court of Appeals.”

 As long as that was true, the shipowner was stuck.
Echoing its earlier holding about the Act’s “explicit” com-
mand, the Court again made clear: The shipowner “cannot
force collateral redetermination” of the FMC’s decision “in
a different and inappropriate forum.” 

   So the majority today is wrong as a matter of text: The
Hobbs Act gives the courts of appeals exclusive jurisdiction
to determine the validity of agency action, meaning that
district courts have no jurisdiction to do so. The majority
today is wrong as a matter of history: Congress knew about
that judicial review regime when it enacted the Hobbs Act,
and would have expected the language it used (cribbed as it
was from the EPCA) to produce the same result. And the
majority today is wrong as a matter of precedent: This
Court has held that the Hobbs Act, like its precursors, sets
up a single judicial review mechanism for agency rules and
orders, and prevents later collateral attacks on them in
other courts. Small wonder, then, that every court of ap-
peals to address the question before us has rejected the po-
sition the majority takes.4 There is simply nothing in the

——————
  4 See, e.g., CE Design, Ltd. v. Prism Bus. Media, Inc., 

,

447–448 (CA7 2010) (suit between private parties); Nack v. Walburg, 

, 686–687 (CA8 2013) (same); Mais v. Gulf Coast Collection Bu-
reau, Inc., 

, 1119–1121 (CA11 2014) (same); Daniels v.
Union Pac. R. Co., 

, 940–941 (CADC 2008) (same); United
States v. Any & All Radio Station Transmission Equip., 

,
463 (CA8 2000) (agency enforcement action in district court); United
States v. Dunifer, 

 (CA9 2000) (same).
10     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   KAGAN, J., dissenting

law to support today’s result.
                               II
   How, then, does the majority justify its position? All of
the work is done through the creation of a so-called “default
rule.” Ante, at 7. According to the majority, Congress’s de-
cision to give the courts of appeals “exclusive” jurisdiction
to “determine the validity” of agency action is not enough to
prevent district courts in later proceedings from doing the
same thing. That is because, the majority says, Congress
did not “expressly preclude” those district-court determina-
tions. 

 And what Congress did not “expressly pre-
clude,” we should understand it to have permitted. The
idea is closely related to the majority’s view of Yakus. See
supra, at 7–8; ante, at 15–17. Recall that the EPCA’s first
sentence gave exclusive jurisdiction to the special appellate
court to review an agency action’s “validity,” and its second
sentence affirmed that other courts had no jurisdiction over
the identical matters. See 414 U. S., at 429. The majority
insists on Congress always taking that double-barreled,
belt-and-suspenders approach. Where Congress has not,
courts cannot ask, as a matter of ordinary statutory inter-
pretation, whether an exclusivity provision alone expresses
Congress’s intent to have court-of-appeals review be, well,
exclusive. Congress always has to add a second, “we mean
it too” sentence.
   But why? The majority offers only two reasons—the pre-
sumption of judicial review of agency action and the APA.
See ante, at 8–10. Neither provides support for the major-
ity’s novel default rule.
   The presumption of judicial review of agency action is in-
deed “basic,” ante, at 8, but it does not stretch as wide as
the majority claims. The principal case the majority cites
puts it this way: We presume that “Congress did not mean
to prohibit all judicial review” of an agency’s decision.
Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476
                      Cite as: 

 (2025)                      11

                           KAGAN, J., dissenting

U. S. 667, 672 (1986) (quoting Dunlop v. Bachowski, 

 (1975); emphasis added); see Thunder Basin
Coal Co. v. Reich, 

 (1994). “All” is a
small word, but it means something. The presumption does
not operate when Congress, rather than eliminating judi-
cial review, has channeled it in one direction or another. So,
for example, this Court has approved many congressional
schemes lodging pre-enforcement review of agency action in
the courts of appeals alone, even though parties may wish
to proceed, in the ordinary way, first to district court. See

 at 207–208, 218; Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC, 

, 185–186 (2023). “Because court of appeals review is
available,” we have explained, those schemes “do[] not im-
plicate” the presumption favoring judicial review of agency
action. Thunder Basin, 

.5 Similarly
here. The Hobbs Act simply favors a centralized way of
providing judicial review of covered actions—at a particular
time, in a particular court. And as noted earlier, it does not
apply when a person lacks an adequate opportunity to avail
himself of that mechanism; in that event, he can obtain ju-
dicial review in a later proceeding. See supra, at 3, n. 1. So
the Hobbs Act does not implicate the presumption in favor
of judicial review.
   Neither does the APA support the majority’s default rule.
——————
  5 The majority’s allegedly contrary authorities, see ante, at 9, n. 4, do

not say otherwise: None applies the presumption of judicial review to a
statute that merely channels review to one court rather than another.
The “limits” the Court spoke of in Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee,

 (2016), operated to cut off all judicial review of partic-
ular issues, rather than to place that review in a single court; hence, the
presumption kicked in (although it was there overcome). And in both
Thunder Basin, 

, and Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 

 (2012)—which did involve channeling—no presumption operated.
The Court did ordinary statutory interpretation to figure out what Con-
gress wanted. See Thunder Basin, 

 (counseling an
inquiry into “language,” “structure,” “purpose,” and “legislative history”);
Elgin, 

 (similar).
12     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   KAGAN, J., dissenting

The majority relies on Section 703, which it presents as fol-
lows:
     “Except to the extent that prior, adequate, and exclu-
     sive opportunity for judicial review is provided by law,
     agency action is subject to judicial review in civil or
     criminal proceedings for judicial enforcement.” Ante, at
     8 (emphasis supplied by majority).
But what if we instead present Section 703 like this:
     “Except to the extent that prior, adequate, and exclusive
     opportunity for judicial review is provided by law,
     agency action is subject to judicial review in civil or
     criminal proceedings for judicial enforcement.”
The point, of course, is that under Section 703 the majority’s
preferred kind of judicial review is subject to an exception:
Congress may replace it with a “prior, adequate, and exclu-
sive opportunity for judicial review.” To me, that phrase
reads like a description of the Hobbs Act. I imagine to the
majority it does not (though, if not the Hobbs Act, what?).
But on neither view can one find in Section 703 the demand
for an interpretive fist on the scales, of the sort the majority
devises. To the contrary, a court treats Section 703 respect-
fully when it addresses straight up the issue that the pref-
atory clause makes decisive: Does some statute provide for
a “prior, adequate, and exclusive opportunity for judicial re-
view”?
   The Attorney General’s Manual on the Administrative
Procedure Act, which the majority also cites, in fact en-
dorses that straight-up (not pre-jiggered) interpretive ap-
proach. The majority quotes the following from the Man-
ual: “[I]n many situations” “an appropriate method of
attacking the validity of agency action is to set up the al-
leged invalidity as a defense in a civil or criminal enforce-
ment proceeding.” Ante, at 9; Dept. of Justice, Attorney
General’s Manual on the Administrative Procedure Act 99
                 Cite as: 

 (2025)           13

                     KAGAN, J., dissenting

(1947). True enough. But the Manual also makes clear that
sometimes that will not be an appropriate method—be-
cause Congress has decided otherwise. A statute, the Man-
ual explains, may “expressly provide for an exclusive
method of judicial review which precludes challenge of
agency action in enforcement proceedings.” Ibid., and n. 13
(citing the EPCA). Or, the Manual continues, “a court may
conclude from the statutory context that such was the leg-
islative intention.” 

 So the directive the Manual gives
is to do ordinary statutory interpretation—not to avoid it,
as the majority does. “In brief,” the Manual summarizes,
“courts must determine in each case” whether Congress “in-
tended to preclude or to permit judicial review of agency ac-
tion in enforcement proceedings.” 

 at 100–101. Quite
right—someone should tell the majority.
   Finally, note what the majority does not have to support
its interpretive method—any on-point precedent. No Ven-
ner or Yakus or Port of Boston. See supra, at 5–9. No Lam-
bert or Woods. See supra, at 6, 8. There is a lone quotation
from Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors, 

 (2024). See ante, at 9. But that statement merely notes
the general rule that a person can attack a regulation in
enforcement proceedings; it does not say anything about
how to determine whether a statute like the Hobbs Act pro-
vides an exception to that rule. On that question, as shown
above, all the Court’s precedent goes against the majority’s
view.
                             III
  The majority’s misreading of the Hobbs Act prevents the
statute from serving its intended function. Today’s holding
undermines the certainty and finality Congress sought in
designing a mechanism for judicial review; it subjects all
administrative schemes, and the many businesses and in-
dividuals relying on them, to the ever-present risk of dis-
ruption. On a more technical—but still quite important—
14     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   KAGAN, J., dissenting

level, the holding allows parties to put agency action in
jeopardy without suing, or even notifying, the Government.
And the holding makes more likely that regulated parties
will put off submitting to lawful agency action, including in
areas where Congress would have most valued sure and im-
mediate compliance. In all, the majority’s misreading frus-
trates the point of the Act, which is to prevent collateral
attacks, possibly years down the line, on even the most set-
tled administrative frameworks.
   First and foremost, the majority’s position guts Con-
gress’s scheme—centered on a 60-day time limit—for en-
suring quick resolution of challenges to agency action, and
repose after that. See Corner Post, 

 (de-
scribing the Hobbs Act’s time limit as a “repose provi-
sio[n ]”). Under the Act, a single circuit court is to resolve
all challenges to a covered action’s validity that are brought
within 60 days. See §§ 2344, 2112(a). On the 61st day, a
challenge is untimely. The idea is to rule on the legal dis-
putes at the beginning, often with the full range of stake-
holders present. Once the court of appeals resolves the
challenges—up or down, valid or invalid—the rules of the
road are set. Regulated parties know what they have to
comply with, and also what they can rely on. Except that
the majority’s decision today blows all that up. The finality
and certainty of the Hobbs Act system will largely evapo-
rate under the constant pressure of later enforcement ac-
tions. Any party at any time in the future—ad infinitum,
so to speak—will now be able to disrupt even the most solid-
seeming regulatory regimes. Those who complied with the
old rules (for example, who took advantage of the FCC’s safe
harbor for certain faxes) may become in a moment exposed
to liability. No one will know what they can rely on. And
so the majority today subverts Congress’s object. A strict
60-day time limit, meant to give stability to the administra-
tive sphere, now becomes a forever-provision, putting eve-
rything always up for grabs.
                  Cite as: 

 (2025)           15

                      KAGAN, J., dissenting

  The majority’s holding also will deprive the Government
of the opportunity to defend agency action. Under the
Hobbs Act, a person challenging an agency order must sue
the United States and serve its petition on both the agency
and the Attorney General. §2344. Those requirements
have an obvious purpose: They enable the Government to
protect its interests by standing up for the order under at-
tack. See Port of Boston, 

; cf. 

(a) (similarly requiring notice and an opportunity to
intervene for the United States in any action challenging a
statute’s constitutionality). But under the majority’s re-
gime, a district court may declare an order invalid in a pri-
vate suit (or a suit involving a State) that the Government
has no role in—maybe does not even know about. Here, for
example, McLaughlin’s challenge to the Amerifactors order
arose in a class action not involving the Government. After
today—and contra the Hobbs Act—a court could sustain
such a challenge without the FCC having so much as a
chance to object.
  Finally, I return to where I started, with a party—let’s
say again, a plutonium shipper—who would prefer to ignore
an agency order and contest it later (if the Government
brings an enforcement action). The Hobbs Act, read rightly,
checks that kind of conduct, by providing for a definitive
ruling on the order’s legality soon after it issues. And it is
not hard to see why Congress favored that approach.
Among the agency actions covered are rules governing the
NRC’s licensees—like plutonium shippers or nuclear reac-
tor operators. See 

. And similarly, orders
issued by the Secretary of Transportation to address rail-
way safety emergencies. 

(a), 20114(c).
In other words, agency actions that (assuming they clear
judicial review) Congress would have wanted regulated
parties to comply with now. But the majority decides today
that prompt compliance is really just an option. The pluto-
nium shipper can disobey an agency order, knowing that,
16     MCLAUGHLIN CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATES, INC.
                  v. MCKESSON CORP.
                   KAGAN, J., dissenting

even in the face of a court of appeals decision upholding it,
he can later seek a different result. The majority responds:
No worries, because many or most regulated parties will
prefer pre-enforcement review anyway. See ante, at 20–21.
And that is right—many or most will. But Congress was
entitled to decide that even a few parties out of compliance
with an NRC order (until a later enforcement proceeding)
were a few too many—so that parties should not be given
that choice. In allowing parties to end-run early judicial
review, the majority thus flouts the Hobbs Act’s design.
                          *    *    *
   The Hobbs Act gives the courts of appeals “exclusive ju-
risdiction” to “determine the validity” of covered agency ac-
tion. Those words mean what they say, or anyway should.
They mean that, because the appellate courts’ jurisdiction
is exclusive, district courts have no power to make the de-
termination anew. Once an agency action has gone through
the Act’s judicial review scheme, the question of the action’s
validity is over. Because the majority today rejects that
straightforward reading and thereby subverts the Act’s op-
eration, I respectfully dissent.