Page:Ohio Adjutant General's Department v. FLRA.pdf/23

Rh quotes the Assistant Secretary’s remark that the Adjutant General is “ ‘an agent of the Secretaries of the Army and the Air Force,’ ”, that observation was made in the course of rejecting the Adjutant General’s argument that Mississippi law did not permit him to bargain with a labor organization. Thompson Field, at 7. The Assistant Secretary was not addressing the question whether being an “agent” of those Secretaries rendered the Adjutant General sufficiently “like an agency” to be subject to federal remedial jurisdiction.

A single administrative decision, like a single or even “a smattering of lower court opinions,” is ordinarily not especially probative of statutory meaning. BP p.l.c. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 11); see also George v. McDonough, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 5) (explaining that a “robust regulatory backdrop” may “fil[l] in the details” of a statutory scheme (emphasis added)). The saving clause does not render this case an exception. Consequently, a single administrative decision by an Assistant Secretary that does not even address the particular argument petitioners raise in this case offers no reason to resist the conclusion that the Ohio Adjutant General’s Department is plainly not a federal agency.

Because no petitioner is an “agency” within the meaning of §7105(g)(3), I would reverse the judgment of the Sixth Circuit and hold that petitioners fall outside the remedial jurisdiction of the FLRA. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s contrary conclusion.