Paula N. Allen v. United States

NOTE: This order is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
PAULA N. ALLEN, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellants
v.
UNITED STATES,
Defendant-Appellee
______________________
2024-1117
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims
in No. 1:22-cv-00400-EDK, Chief Judge Elaine Kaplan.
______________________
Before LOURIE, CUNNINGHAM, and STARK , Circuit Judges.
LOURIE, Circuit Judge.
O R D E R
In light of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Loper
Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451, and Relent-
less, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, No. 22-1219, the par-
ties “agree that the Court should remand this case to the
[United States] Court of Federal Claims but do not agree
on whether this Court should vacate the judgment of the
Court of Federal Claims.” ECF No. 15 at 2.
In granting the government’s motion for summary
judgment, the Court of Federal Claims determined that,
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ALLEN v. US 2
because the statutory phrase “officially ordered or ap-
proved” was ambiguous and the agency’s rule interpreting
that phrase was reasonable, it was entitled to deference
under Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. National Resources Defense
Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), thereby “supersed[ing]”
this court’s prior construction in Mercier v. United States,
786 F.3d 971 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Dkt. No. 170 at 14.
But Chevron has been overruled. The Supreme Court
has now instructed that courts must “exercise their inde-
pendent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted
within its statutory authority” and “may not defer to an
agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute
is ambiguous.” Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 144 S.
Ct. 2244, 2273 (2024). And the Court made clear that the
law does not demand that courts “mechanically afford
binding deference to agency interpretations” “when a pre-
existing judicial precedent holds that the statute means
something else.” Id. at 2265.
Because the Court of Federal Claims’s decision was
predicated on since overruled precedent, we vacate the
judgment and remand for further proceedings. See Utah v.
Su, 109 F.4th 313, 319 n.10 (5th Cir. 2024) (vacating and
remanding under the same circumstances and collecting
cases supporting vacatur as the general approach).
Accordingly,
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ALLEN v. US 3
IT IS O RDERED THAT:
(1) The United States Court of Federal Claims’s Au-
gust 17, 2023 order and August 18, 2023 judgment are va-
cated, and the matter is remanded to the Court of Federal
Claims for proceedings consistent with the Supreme
Court’s decision in Loper.
(2) Each side to bear its own costs.
August 30, 2024
Date
FOR THE C OURT
Case: 24-1117 Document: 16 Page: 3 Filed: 08/30/2024

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