The U.S. Supreme Court case Henry G. Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, et al. v. Alpine Ridge Group et al., 1992 revolved around the issue of whether a federal agency's interpretation of its own regulations should be given deference by courts in legal disputes involving those regulations. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had interpreted one of its rules to allow it to recapture certain subsidies from developers who sold their low-income housing projects before the expiration of a 20-year use restriction period stipulated in HUD contracts with these developers. Alpine Ridge Group, along with other property owners affected by this rule interpretation, sued HUD arguing that such an interpretation was incorrect and inconsistent with the language used in their contracts as well as congressional intent behind relevant statutes governing these subsidies. In ruling for HUD, the Supreme Court held that courts must give substantial deference to an agency's interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation unless it is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation itself.

In the dissenting opinion for the case of Henry G. Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, et al. v. Alpine Ridge Group et al., Justice Thomas argued that the majority's interpretation of Section 8(c)(6) was incorrect and overly broad in its scope. He contended that this section only applies to situations where a housing project owner seeks to prepay a mortgage insured by HUD or refuses to renew an expiring contract under Section 8; it does not apply when an owner simply decides not to participate in the program any longer after fulfilling their contractual obligations. The justice believed that Congress did not intend for owners who have fulfilled their contracts with HUD and wish to exit from low-income housing provision be forced into perpetual service due merely because they had once participated in such programs.