D

The majority also accepts petitioner’s contention that OCC’s construction of “visitorial powers” is unreasonable because it conflicts with several of this Court’s decisions. See ante, at 4–7. But petitioner cannot prevail by simply showing that this Court previously adopted a construction of §484 that differs from the interpretation later chosen by the agency. “A court’s prior judicial construction of a statute trumps an agency construction otherwise entitled to Chevron deference only if the prior court decision holds that its construction follows from the unambiguous terms of the statute and thus leaves no room for agency discretion.” Brand X, 545 U. S., at 982. These decisions do not construe §484 in a manner that trumps OCC’s regulation:clubjuris

This Court’s only decision directly addressing the meaning of “visitorial powers” is Guthrie, which held that the NBA did not prohibit a suit brought by a private shareholder seeking to inspect the books of a national bank, 199 U. S., at 157. In so holding, the Court contrasted “the private right of the shareholder to have an examination of the business in which he is interested” with a visitor’s “public right” to examine “the conduct of the corporation with a view to keeping it within its legal powers.” Id., at 158–159. Guthrie thus draws a line between enforcement of private rights and the public act of visitation that is consistent with the definition of visitation embraced by OCC. See id., at 158 (“In no case or authority that we have been able to find has there been a definition of this right, which would include the private right of the shareholder to have an examination of the business in which he is interested …”). The agency has never taken the position that the “visitorial powers” prohibition extends to private action:clubjuris

Nor does this Court’s decision in First Nat. Bank in St. Louis v. Missouri, 263 U. S. 640 (1924) (St. Louis), foreclose OCC’s construction of the statute. In that case, the State of Missouri brought a quo warranto proceeding in state court “to determine [the national bank’s] authority to establish and conduct a branch bank in the City of St. Louis.” Id., at 655. The Court first held that federal law did not authorize national banks to engage in branch banking. See id., at 656–659. “Having determined that the power sought to be exercised by the bank finds no justification in any law or authority of the United States,” the Court then concluded that “the way is open for the enforcement of the state statute.” Id., at 660:clubjuris

Petitioner contends, and the majority agrees, see ante, at 5–6, and n. 2, that St. Louis stands for the proposition that a State retains the right to enforce any state law that is not substantively pre-empted with respect to national banks, see 263 U. S., at 660 (“To demonstrate the binding quality of a statute but deny the power of enforcement involves a fallacy made apparent by the mere statement of the proposition, for such power is essentially inherent in the very conception of law… . What the state is seeking to do is to vindicate and enforce its own law …”). Under this view, then, because the New York fair lending laws are not substantively pre-empted, he is not exercising “visitorial powers” by enforcing them:clubjuris

Respondents counter that the holding of St. Louis is not so broad. In their view, the Court held only that a State may enforce its laws against a national bank when federal law grants the bank no authority to engage in the underlying activity at issue. See Brief for Respondent Clearing House Association 33–34. Here, federal law expressly authorizes national banks to make mortgage loans. See 12 U. S. C. §371(a). Thus, unlike in St. Louis—in which the relevant state-law-proscribed conduct in a category that was wholly beyond the powers granted to national banks—petitioner seeks to superintend the manner in which the national banks engage in activity expressly authorized by federal law. According to respondents, then, §484(a)’s ban on unauthorized visitation provides the “controlling reason” forbidding state enforcement that was absent from St. Louis, see 263 U. S., at 660:clubjuris

There is no need to decide which party has the better argument. The St. Louis decision nowhere references §484(a) or addresses “visitorial powers.” Thus, as noted above, even if the decision is best read to support petitioner’s view of the statute, that conclusion is insufficient to deny Chevron deference to OCC’s construction of §484(a). “Since Chevron teaches that a court’s opinion as to the best reading of an ambiguous statute an agency is charged with administering is not authoritative, the agency’s decision to construe that statute differently from a court does not say that the court’s holding was legally wrong. Instead, the agency may, consistent with the court’s holding, choose a different construction, since the agency remains the authoritative interpreter (within the limits of reason) of such statutes.” Brand X, 545 U. S., at 983. A judicial decision that fails to directly confront the provision at issue cannot be deemed to have adopted the “authoritative” construction of the statute.[Footnote 3] Petitioner’s reliance on other decisions of this Court is misplaced for this very same reason. See First Nat. Bank in Plant City v. Dickinson, 396 U. S. 122 (1969); Anderson Nat. Bank v. Luckett, 321 U. S. 233 (1944); First Nat. Bank of Bay City v. Fellows, 244 U. S. 416 (1917); Easton v. Iowa, 188 U. S. 220 (1903); Waite v. Dowley, 94 U. S. 527 (1877); National Bank v. Commonwealth, 9 Wall. 353 (1870). None of these decisions addressed the meaning of “visitorial powers” for purposes of §484(a), let alone provided a definitive construction of the statute:clubjuris

Finally, this Court’s decision in Watters v. Wachovia Bank, N. A., 550 U. S. 1 (2007), supports OCC’s construction of the statute. Watters addressed whether the NBA pre-empted the application of certain Michigan laws to the mortgage-lending activities of an operating subsidiary of a national bank. See id., at 7–8. In deciding that issue, the Court did not reach the question presented here. But the Court was fully aware that the Michigan statutes granted state banking commissioners the very enforcement authority that petitioner seeks to exert over the national banks in this case. See id., at 9–10 (citing Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §§445.1661 (West 2002), 493.56b (West Supp. 2005)); see also 550 U. S., at 34 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (describing §§445.1661 and 493.56b as “state visitorial oversight”).[Footnote 4]

As the Court explained, although “the Michigan provisions at issue exempt[ed] national banks from coverage … [t]his [was] not simply a matter of the Michigan Legislature’s grace. For, as the parties recognize, the NBA would have preemptive force, i.e., it would spare a national bank from state controls of the kind here involved.” 550 U. S., at 13 (citations omitted); see ibid. (explaining that “real estate lending, when conducted by a national bank, is immune from state visitorial control”). The Court’s conclusion in Watters that §484(a) deprives the States of inspection and enforcement authority over the mortgage-lending practices of national banks lends weight to the agency’s construction of the statute:clubjuris

II

Petitioner also argues that three different background principles trigger a clear-statement rule that overcomes any Chevron deference to which OCC’s construction of §484 otherwise might be entitled. I disagree. None of petitioner’s arguments provide a doctrinal basis for refusing to defer to the agency’s reasonable construction of this statute:clubjuris

First, petitioner contends that OCC’s regulation, which interprets §484(a) to pre-empt state enforcement of state law but not the substantive state law itself, undermines important federalism principles and therefore triggers a requirement that Congress clearly state its pre-emptive intentions, see Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 460 (1991) (“[I]f Congress intends to alter the usual constitutional balance between the States and the Federal Government, it must make its intention to do so unmistakably clear in the language of the statute” (internal quotation marks omitted; alteration in original)). Petitioner is incorrect because OCC’s construction of the statute does not alter the balance of power established by the Constitution:clubjuris

National banks are created by federal statute and therefore are subject to full congressional control. The States “can exercise no control over them, nor in any wise affect their operation, except in so far as Congress may see proper to permit.” Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Nat. Bank v. Dearing, 91 U. S. 29, 34 (1875); see also Watters, 550 U. S., at 10 (“Nearly 200 years ago, in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), this Court held federal law supreme over state law with respect to national banking”). As a result, the only question presented by this case is whether Congress has seen it “proper to permit” the States to enforce state fair lending laws against national banks. OCC’s reasonable conclusion that §484(a) answers that question in the negative does not alter the federal-state balance; it simply preserves for OCC the oversight responsibilities assigned to it by Congress. See id., at 22 (“Regulation of national bank operations is a prerogative of Congress under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses. The Tenth Amendment, therefore, is not implicated here” (citation omitted)):clubjuris

Second, petitioner argues that a clear statement is required because “the historic police powers of the States [are] not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress,” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947). There should be no presumption against pre-emption because Congress has expressly pre-empted state law in this case. See Altria Group, Inc. v. Good, 555 U. S. ___, ___ (2008) (Thomas, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 9) (“[T]he presumption against pre-emption ‘dissolves once there is conclusive evidence of intent to pre-empt in the express words of the statute itself’ ” (quoting Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 545 (1992) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part)); see, e.g., Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 552 U. S. ___, ___ (2008) (slip op., at 2) (construing the express pre-emption provision of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, 21 U. S. C. §360c et seq., without any reliance on the presumption against pre-emption):clubjuris

In any event, this presumption is “not triggered when the State regulates in an area where there has been a history of significant federal presence.” United States v. Locke, 529 U. S. 89, 108 (2000). National banking is the paradigmatic example “In defining the pre-emptive scope of statutes and regulations granting a power to national banks,” this Court has taken the firm view that “normally Congress would not want States to forbid, or to impair significantly, the exercise of a power that Congress explicitly granted.” Barnett Bank of Marion Cty., N. A. v. Nelson, 517 U. S. 25, 33 (1996). As a result, federal legislation concerning national banks is “not normally limited by, but rather ordinarily pre-empt[s], contrary state law.” Id., at 32. As with general maritime law, Congress’ “legislat[ion] in th[is] field from the earliest days of the Republic” and its creation of an “extensive federal statutory and regulatory scheme” means that an “ ‘assumption’ of nonpre-emption is not triggered.” Locke, supra, at 108. That the States may also have legislated alongside Congress in this area, see ante, at 12–13, does not alter this conclusion, see, e.g., Franklin Nat. Bank of Franklin Square v. New York, 347 U. S. 373 (1954):clubjuris

Last, petitioner argues that Chevron deference is inapplicable because OCC’s regulation declares the pre-emptive scope of the NBA. And, the majority flatly asserts that “[i]f that is not pre-emption, nothing is.” Ante, at 13. But OCC did not declare the pre-emptive scope of the statute; rather, it interpreted the term “visitorial powers” to encompass state enforcement of state fair lending laws. The pre-emption of state enforcement authority to which petitioner objects thus follows from the statute itself—not agency action. See Smiley, 517 U. S., at 744 (“This argument confuses the question of the substantive (as opposed to pre-emptive) meaning of a statute with the question of whether a statute is pre-emptive. We may assume (without deciding) that the latter question must always be decided de novo by the courts. That is not the question at issue here; there is no doubt that §85 pre-empts state law” (emphasis in original)):clubjuris

Here, Congress—not the agency—has decided that “[n]o national bank shall be subject to any visitorial powers except as authorized by Federal law.” 12 U. S. C. §484(a). Indeed, the majority agrees that it is the “statutory term”—and not OCC’s regulation—that “define[s] and thereby limit[s] the category of action reserved to the Federal Government and forbidden to the States.” Ante, at 13. As a result, OCC has simply interpreted that term to encompass petitioner’s decision to demand national bank records and threaten judicial enforcement of New York fair lending laws as a means of obtaining them. As Smiley showed, a federal agency’s construction of an ambiguous statutory term may clarify the pre-emptive scope of enacted federal law, but that fact alone does not mean that it is the agency, rather than Congress, that has effected the pre-emption:clubjuris

Petitioner’s federalism-based objections to Chevron deference ultimately turn on a single proposition: It is doubtful that Congress pre-empted state enforcement of state laws but not the underlying state laws themselves. But it is not this Court’s task to decide whether the statutory scheme established by Congress is unusual or even “[b]izarre.” See ante, at 7. The Court must decide only whether the construction adopted by the agency is unambiguously foreclosed by the statute’s text. Here, the text, structure, and history of “visitorial powers” support the agency’s reasonable interpretation of §484. Petitioner has not identified any constitutional principle that would require Congress to take the greater step of pre-empting all enforcement of state lending laws (including private enforcement) even though its central concern was the allocation of the right to exercise public visitation over national bank activities:clubjuris

*  *  *

For all these reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

Footnote 1

By looking to Justice Story’s concurrence in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518 (1819), for authoritative guidance, see ante, at 4–5, the majority seemingly rejects the distinction between the visitor’s role in supervising civil corporations and the visitor’s far more limited role in supervising private institutions such as churches, universities, and charitable organizations. See ante, at 5, n. 1. In Woodward, the Court addressed the scope of the visitor’s authority over a private college—not a civil corporation. See 4 Wheat., at 562–563 (“The corporation in question is not a civil, although it is a lay corporation. It is an eleemosynary corporation… . Eleemosynary corporations are for the management of private property, according to the will of the donors. They are private corporations” (emphasis in original)). Visitors historically did not have “law enforcement power” over churches, universities, and charitable organizations. See supra, at 5–6. But there is strong evidence that visitors of civil corporations—i.e., sovereigns—were so empowered. See supra, at 6–7. The distinction between these species of visitation is crucial because it yields divergent understandings as to the scope of the visitor’s power to enforce generally applicable laws in court. Moreover, the majority’s failure to confront this important difference leaves a gap in its historical analysis that, in turn, undermines its conclusion that OCC’s interpretation of §484(a) was unreasonable.

Footnote 2

Contrary to the majority’s conclusion, see ante, at 8–9, n. 3, petitioner’s structural argument is also undermined by the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 (Riegle-Neal), 108 Stat. 2338, which authorized national banks to operate interstate branches. The statute provides that “[t]he laws of the host State regarding community reinvestment, consumer protection, fair lending, and establishment of intrastate branches shall apply to any branch in the host State of an out-of-State national bank to the same extent as such State laws apply to a branch of a bank chartered by that State” unless federal law separately pre-empts their application or the Comptroller determines that application of the state law would have a “discriminatory effect” on the national bank branch. See id., at 2349–2350, 12 U. S. C. §36(f)(1)(A). Riegle-Neal further provides that “[t]he provisions of any State law to which a branch of a national bank is subject under this paragraph shall be enforced, with respect to such branch, by the Comptroller of the Currency.” See id., at 2350, 12 U. S. C. §36(f)(1)(B). The United States has interpreted the “shall be enforced” language to provide OCC with exclusive enforcement authority. See Brief for Federal Respondent 46–48. This construction reinforces OCC’s interpretation of §484(a). If OCC has exclusive authority to enforce state law with respect to interstate branches of national banks, it would be reasonable to interpret the statute to operate similarly with respect to the national banks themselves.

Footnote 3

The majority’s suggestion that the Court’s decision in First Nat. Bank in St. Louis v. Missouri, 263 U. S. 640 (1924), is not “authoritative” falls short of the mark. See ante, at 6, n. 2; see, e.g., ante, at 7–8 (“[R]eading ‘visitorial powers’ as limiting only sovereign oversight and supervision would produce an entirely commonplace result—the precise result contemplated by our opinion in St. Louis”). According to the majority, irrespective of which party has the better reading of that case, it “would still stand for the proposition that the exclusive federal power of visitation does not prevent States from enforcing their law.” Ante, at 6, n. 2. But that conclusion rests on the assumption that the St. Louis Court shared the majority’s conception of law enforcement and visitation as categorically distinct for purposes of §484(a). It is impossible to verify that assumption, however, because the bank never raised the “visitorial powers” defense in that case. See Reply Brief for Petitioner 6. If the Chevron doctrine is to have any interpretative value, an agency’s construction of a statute cannot be foreclosed by a prior judicial decision in which the provision in question was neither raised by the parties nor passed upon by the court.

Footnote 4

The majority contends that Watters is “fully in accord with the well established distinction between supervision and law enforcement.” Ante, at 6. But this argument ignores the reach of the statutes that the Court assumed were visitorial in Watters. The Michigan laws at issue in Watters allowed for much more than “ ‘general supervision and control’ ” of the operating subsidiaries of national banks. Ante, at 6. They also included provisions permitting the state attorney general to “take any appropriate legal action to enjoin the operation of the business” and allowing the commissioner “[t]o bring an action in … circuit court in the name and on behalf of this state” to enjoin “any unsafe or injurious practice or act in violation of this act or a rule promulgated under this act.” Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §§445.1661(e) (West 2002); 493.56b (West Supp. 2005).