Imagine arriving to a cookout on a hot summer day, only to discover your ex is the host. The grill is glowing, and the smell of barbecue permeates the backyard. Your ex asks what you want to eat, and you politely request a "barbecue sandwich." But to your surprise, the host returns with a melting ice cube between two graham crackers: an "ice-cube sandwich." "Technically," your ex says, "a sandwich is two or more slices of bread with a filling in between." Your ex posits that the soggy graham cracker serves the same purpose as a slice of bread, and the quickly evaporating ice cube is the filling. Ideally, a court would easily dismiss this farfetched "ice-cube sandwich" interpretation. Yet courts do not always strike down unreasonable agency interpretations. In ABA's lawsuit challenging NGUA's 2016 field of membership final rule, the D.C. Circuit upheld NCUA's jarring interpretations of "local community" and "rural district" under the routinely abused Chevron doctrine. After decades of uncontrolled growth, ABA is asking the Supreme Court to rein in the unruly Chevron beast.
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