The majority opinion and the dissenting opinions are both good, because the justices weren’t addressing the same issue.
Dan’s summary of today’s decision in Bondi v. VanDerStok is excellent. I’d just add — or, perhaps, flesh out — a couple of points.
First, while I agree with Clarence Thomas’s dissent, I’ll concede that the majority opinion from Justice Gorsuch is pretty good. Why do I think this, despite my disagreement? Because the justices who dissented and the justices who joined the majority are not in agreement about what was at stake in the case. As Dan notes, Justice Gorsuch focused his majority opinion “more on the kits and their capacity to become weapons than on the frame-or-receiver definition,” and, having done so, he came to a defensible conclusion on those terms. Moreover, while Gorsuch treats the case as a “facial challenge,” Alito and Thomas do not. (In his separate dissent, Alito goes so far as to say that “if I were satisfied that the Salerno test should control here, I would join the opinion of the Court.”) This matters enormously. If, indeed, the case is facial, and if, indeed, the key question is whether the kits at stake are able to become weapons, then Gorsuch’s opinion makes a lot of sense. If the case is not facial, and if the key question is instead the proper definition of “frames or receivers,” it does not.
Second, because the majority treated this as a facial challenge — and thus resolved only whether there was a plausible manner in which the rule could be held to be consistent with the statute — the holding is actually quite narrow. Justice Gorsuch acknowledges this, writing that:
Because at least some weapon parts kits satisfy both of subsection (A)’s tests, §478.11 is not facially invalid. Future cases may present other and more difficult questions about ATF’s regulations. But we take cases as they come and today resolve only the question posed to us.
In his dissent, Justice Thomas also makes this point:
So long as lower courts do not equate an APA challenge with a “facial” one, they are free to disregard the majority’s analysis and hold that the Rule exceeds ATF’s statutory authority.
In effect, the Court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the rule is ultra vires per se, and left the details to be worked out by the lower courts at a later date. This wasn’t the outcome I thought was warranted, but it could have been far worse.