Page:Azar v. Allina Health Services, 587 U.S. (2019) (slip opinion).pdf/15

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AZAR v. ALLINA HEALTH SERVICES

Opinion of the Court

regulations at issue are . . . interpretative”).^[1]

In the end, all of the available evidence persuades us that the phrase “substantive legal standard,” which appears in §13955hh(a)(2) and apparently nowhere else in the U. S. Code, cannot bear the same construction as the term “substantive rule” in the APA. We need not, however, go so far as to say that the hospitals’ interpretation, adopted by the court of appeals, is correct in every particular. To affirm the judgment before us, it is enough to say the government’s arguments for reversal fail to withstand scrutiny. Other questions about the statute’s meaning can await other cases. The dissent would like us to provide more guidance, post, at 13–14, but the briefing before us focused on the issue whether the Medicare Act borrows the APA’s interpretive-rule exception, and we limit our holding accordingly. In doing so, we follow the well-worn path of declining “to issue a sweeping ruling when a narrow one will do.” McWilliams v. Dunn, 582 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 14).^[2]

↑ Nor does §1395hh(e)(1) imply that the statute is using “regulations” and “interpretative rules” to mean different things. Post, at 4–5. True, that provision refers to “regulations, manual instructions, interpretative rules, statements of policy, or guidelines of general applicability.” But contrary to the dissent’s suggestion that each item in the list “refers to something different,” post, at 5, the items appear to have substantial overlap. For example, many manual instructions surely qualify as guidelines of general applicability; and, as explained above, the statute explicitly requires some statements of policy to be issued as regulations.
↑ Nor is it obvious that the dissent’s approach would provide significantly clearer guidance. Lower courts have often observed “that it is quite difficult to distinguish between substantive and interpretative rules,” Syncor Int’l Corp. v. Shalala, 127 F. 3d 90, 93 (CADC 1997), and precisely where to draw the boundary has been a subject “of much scholarly and judicial debate,” Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. 92, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 3).

[1] Nor does §1395hh(e)(1) imply that the statute is using “regulations” and “interpretative rules” to mean different things. Post, at 4–5. True, that provision refers to “regulations, manual instructions, interpretative rules, statements of policy, or guidelines of general applicability.” But contrary to the dissent’s suggestion that each item in the list “refers to something different,” post, at 5, the items appear to have substantial overlap. For example, many manual instructions surely qualify as guidelines of general applicability; and, as explained above, the statute explicitly requires some statements of policy to be issued as regulations.

[2] Nor is it obvious that the dissent’s approach would provide significantly clearer guidance. Lower courts have often observed “that it is quite difficult to distinguish between substantive and interpretative rules,” Syncor Int’l Corp. v. Shalala, 127 F. 3d 90, 93 (CADC 1997), and precisely where to draw the boundary has been a subject “of much scholarly and judicial debate,” Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. 92, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 3).

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