The following excerpt is from Lambert v. Saul, 980 F.3d 1266 (9th Cir. 2020):
There are, however, limited circumstances in which we are permittedand, indeed, requiredto depart from it. Those circumstances include the "intervening higher authority," id. , of an administrative agency's authoritative and reasonable interpretation of a statute. See, e.g. , Campos-Hernandez v. Sessions , 889 F.3d 564, 56869 (9th Cir. 2018) (deferring to an agency's later interpretation of a statute when the earlier judicial decision did not hold that the agency's interpretation was unambiguously foreclosed). Whether such an intervening agency interpretation can overcome our prior interpretation of a statute depends, in turn, on whether we regarded the statute as unambiguously compelling our interpretation.
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