Law Commons^™

New Light On Auer/Seminole Rock Deference, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

We have been engaged in an extended exploration of doctrines under which courts may defer to positions and interpretations by state and local tax agencies. The immediately prior installment of this column discusses such deference under state equivalents of what is known as the Auer or Seminole Rock principle, under which courts usually defer to agency interpretations of the agencies’ own ambiguous regulations.

About two weeks after the publication of that installment, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a major new decision on the Auer principle: Talk America, Inc. v. Michigan Bell Telephone Co. Talk America bids fair to be …