420
Souter, J., dissenting
namely, the proportion of part-time workers and proximity to urban centers. It is, in all but name, a challenge to the validity of the methods—albeit in an individual case—including the cost limits, the exceptions and the exemptions, and to their adequacy as gauges of reasonable costs. The Secretary has construed the statute to allow such attacks, not via clause (ii), but rather, in keeping with the broad authority with which she is possessed, by way of the arbitrary and capricious provision of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 706.16
IV
The issue is not without its difficulties whichever way we turn. Though not the sole permissible one, the agency's interpretation of clause (ii), manifested in regulations promulgated soon after enactment and expressed today, "give[s] reasonable content to the statute's textual ambiguities." Department of Treasury, IRS v. FLRA, 494 U. S., at 933. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Scalia join, dissenting.
In the Court's view, the contrasting interpretations of clause (ii) proffered by the petitioners and the Secretary are in such equipoise that even slight deference to the Secretary is enough to tip the balance her way. As I read it, however, the language of clause (ii) plainly favors the petitioners.
The Court focuses on two portions of clause (ii). First, it says, the phrase "aggregate reimbursement produced by the methods of determining costs" may be understood, not only as the petitioners would read it, but as the Secretary does: "the total of the interim payments . . . derived from application of the methods [of determining costs] to rough, incom-16 In fact, petitioners invoked this provision below, see App. 13-14, but the Court of Appeals rejected their APA claims, and they were not renewed in this Court.
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