Opinion of the Court
ment seemed to tell the public that the failure to file a report represents a single violation exposing a nonwillful violator to one $10,000 penalty. Nowhere in these materials did the government announce its current theory that a single deficient or untimely report can give rise to multiple violations, that the number of nonwillful penalties may turn on the number of accounts, or that the $10,000 maximum penalty may be multiplied 272 times or more without respect to an individual’s foreign holdings or net worth.
Doubtless, the government’s guidance documents do not control our analysis and cannot displace our independent obligation to interpret the law. But this Court has long said that courts may consider the consistency of an agency’s views when we weigh the persuasiveness of any interpretation it proffers in court. Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 140 (1944). Here, the government has repeatedly issued guidance to the public at odds with the interpretation it now asks us to adopt. And surely that counts as one more reason yet to question whether its current position represents the best view of the law.[1]
The drafting history of the nonwillful penalty provision undermines the government’s theory too. When Congress adopted the BSA in 1970, the law included penalties only for willful violations and capped them at $1,000. Pub. L. 91–508, §125(a), 84 Stat. 1117. It took many years before
- ↑ The dissent expresses “surpris[e]” that we cite the government’s guidance documents. Post, at 8. We don’t see why. Our point is not that the administrative guidance is controlling. Nor is it that the government’s guidance documents have consistently endorsed Mr. Bittner’s reading of the law. It is simply that, when the government (or any litigant) speaks out of both sides of its mouth, no one should be surprised if its latest utterance isn’t the most convincing one. This is no new principle in the law any more than it is in life. In Skidmore, this Court noted that the persuasiveness of an agency’s interpretation of the law may be undermined by its inconsistency “with earlier [agency] pronouncements.” 323 U. S., at 140.
