Whitman v. American Trucking Associations
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| Whitman v. American Trucking Associations Inc | |
| Reference: 531 US 457 (2001) | |
| Term: 2000 | |
| Important Dates | |
| Argued: November 7, 2000 Decided: February 27, 2001 | |
| Outcome | |
| United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded | |
| Majority | |
| Antonin Scalia • John Paul Stevens • William Rehnquist • Sandra Day O'Connor • Anthony Kennedy • David Souter • Clarence Thomas • Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Stephen Breyer | |
| Concurring | |
| Clarence Thomas • John Paul Stevens & David Souter • Stephen Breyer | |
| Dissenting | |
| None | |
Whitman v. American Trucking Associations Inc is a case decided on February 27, 2001, by the United States Supreme Court. It involved the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to issue National Ambient Air Quality Standards under Sections 108 and 109 of the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, holding that the EPA's interpretation of Sections 108 & 109 of the Clean Air Act did not unconstitutionally delegate legislative power to the EPA, though the EPA's implementation policy for the 1997 Ozone NAAQS had been unlawful. The Supreme Court ordered the EPA to develop a new implementation policy, which would then be subject to judicial review.[1]
In brief:
Industry groups challenged the revised 1997 Ozone NAAQS using several lines of argument, mainly questioning the constitutionality of the EPA's interpretation of Sections 108 & 109 of the CAA, but also arguing that the EPA should take economic costs into account when formulating its standards. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the groups and ruled that the EPA's interpretation involved an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power since it provided no intelligible principle to guide the agency's actions (see J.W. Hampton Jr. & Company v. United States). The Supreme Court reversed this ruling and said that the delegation in those sections was constitutional because the Clean Air Act provided an intelligible principle, which must come from Congress and not from the agency receiving delegated power. The court also ruled that the language of the CAA did not instruct the EPA to consider implementation costs when formulating NAAQS, which were to be based only on concerns of public health.
Why it matters: The Supreme Court affirmed the language of the Clean Air Act instructing the EPA administrator to promulgate NAAQS based solely on concerns of public health, and not of economic cost. The court also reaffirmed the intelligible principle test and held that those limiting principles must come from Congress, agencies could not limit themselves when power had been delegated unconstitutionally.
Background
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The Clean Air Act was passed in 1963 and amended several times in subsequent years. The 1970 amendment introduced the idea of National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which were the focus of Whitman v. American Trucking Associations Sections 108 and 109 of the CAA directed the EPA to identify pollutants and create air quality criteria for them, then promulgate a NAAQS for each pollutant. The law also stated that the EPA must review its NAAQS every five years and make any necessary revisions. Following the 1997 revision to the ozone NAAQS, industry groups claimed that Section 109(b)(1) of the CAA, which had instructed the EPA administrator to issue standards "requisite to protect the public health," involved an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to an administrative agency, since it provided no intelligible principle to guide the EPA's actions.[2]
The Supreme Court ruled in the 1928 case J.W. Hampton Jr. & Company v. United States that Congress must provide an intelligible principle when delegating power to the executive branch to guide the latter's actions.This idea was reinforced by subsequent rulings (see A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan).
The EPA petitioned the Supreme Court to address the following questions:
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The respondents conditionally cross-petitioned for review of the question:
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Oral argument
Oral argument was held on Nov 7, 2000. The case was decided on Feb 27, 2001.[4]
Decision
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that section 109(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act did not represent an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. Additionally, it ruled that the EPA could not consider implementation costs when promulgating NAAQS, but the EPA's implementation policy for its 1997 Ozone NAAQS was unlawful. The Supreme Court remanded the implementation policy to the EPA to reformulate, after which it would be subject to judicial review. This reversed the decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had held the EPA's interpretation of section 109(b)(1) to be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power, but that a reformulated interpretation that limited the EPA's actions could resolve the constitutional issue.
Justice Antonin Scalia authored the majority opinion and was joined in full by Justices William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion. Justice John Paul Stevens filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment and was joined by Justice David Souter. Justice Stephen Breyer filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
Opinions
Opinion of the court
Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia listed four questions that the ruling sought to answer.
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Constitutionality of the delegation of power in CAA Sections 108 & 109
The Appeals Court had ruled that the EPA's interpretation Sections 108 & 109, which had given the EPA administrator authority to create NAAQS, was unconstitutional because it did not provide an intelligible principle to guide the agency's actions.[2] It had held, however, that the statute itself was constitutional and the EPA could reformulate its interpretation to prevent itself from violating the nondelegation doctrine. The Supreme Court reversed this decision, holding that while the sections of the CAA did indeed fall within the bounds of acceptable delegation, the limitations on agency actions must come from Congress. An agency could not set those limits for itself.
| “ | The idea that an agency can cure an unconstitutionally standardless delegation of power by declining to exercise some of that power seems to us internally contradictory. The very choice of which portion of the power to exercise--that is to say, the prescription of the standard that Congress had omitted--would itself be an exercise of the forbidden legislative authority. Whether the statute delegates legislative power is a question for the courts, and an agency's voluntary self-denial has no bearing upon the answer.[1][3] | ” |
Considering costs of implementation when formulating standards
The industry groups attempted to retroactively argue that the Clean Air Act allowed the consideration of economic costs when implementing standards, even if it did not explicitly call for it. As established in earlier caselaw, the court could 'choose only between reasonable interpretations of a text.'[1] The respondents' attempts to recast the language and mandate of the CAA thus represented too much of a divergence from existing jurisprudence to be considered reasonable.
| “ | The text of §109(b), interpreted in its statutory and historical context and with appreciation for its importance to the CAA as a whole, unambiguously bars cost considerations from the NAAQS-setting process, and thus ends the matter for us as well as the EPA. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals on this point.[1][3] | ” |
Did the Appeal Court have jurisdiction to review the EPA's implementation of the NAAQS?
In the appeal, the EPA had put forth a new argument that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction to review its implementation because that implementation did not constitute final agency action. The Supreme Court, affirming the judgment of the Appeals Court, rejected this characterization and held that the implementation did indeed represent final action, so the Appeals Court had not overstepped its bounds by reviewing it.
| “ | The Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to consider the implementation issue under §307 of the CAA. The implementation policy constitutes final agency action under §307 of the CAA because it marked the consummation of the EPA's decisionmaking process, see Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154.[1][3] | ” |
Was the EPA's implementation of the NAAQS permissible?
The industry groups had raised questions regarding the interaction between Subparts 1 & 2 of Part D of Title I of the Clean Air Act. These two subparts contained language that could have been interpreted as contradictory in the context of the NAAQS. The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA's implementation policy had not sufficiently resolved the potential contradictions between Subparts 1 & 2, thus rendering it overly vague and preventing the court from exercising Chevron deference.
| “ | These gaps in Subpart 2's scheme prevent us from concluding that Congress clearly intended Subpart 2 to be the exclusive, permanent means of enforcing a revised ozone standard in nonattainment areas. The statute is in our view ambiguous concerning the manner in which Subpart 1 and Subpart 2 interact with regard to revised ozone standards, and we would defer to the EPA's reasonable resolution of that ambiguity. See FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 526 U. S. 415, 424 (1999). We cannot defer, however, to the interpretation the EPA has given.[1][3] | ” |
The court invalidated the implementation policy for the 1997 Ozone NAAQS and remanded it to the EPA.
| “ | We therefore find the EPA's implementation policy to be unlawful, though not in the precise respect determined by the Court of Appeals. After our remand, and the Court of Appeals' final disposition of this case, it is left to the EPA to develop a reasonable interpretation of the nonattainment implementation provisions insofar as they apply to revised ozone NAAQS.[1][3] | ” |
Concurring opinions
Thomas
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which he called into question the intelligible principle test as a means to prevent all unconstitutional delegations.
| “ | The parties to this case who briefed the constitutional issue wrangled over constitutional doctrine with barely a nod to the text of the Constitution. Although this Court since 1928 has treated the 'intelligible principle' requirement as the only constitutional limit on congressional grants of power to administrative agencies, see J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U. S. 394, 409 (1928), the Constitution does not speak of 'intelligible principles.' Rather, it speaks in much simpler terms: 'All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress.' U. S. Const., Art. 1, §1 (emphasis added). I am not convinced that the intelligible principle doctrine serves to prevent all cessions of legislative power. I believe that there are cases in which the principle is intelligible and yet the significance of the delegated decision is simply too great for the decision to be called anything other than 'legislative.'[1][3] | ” |
Justice Thomas concluded his opinion by suggesting that the Supreme Court should someday reconsider the entire jurisprudence governing delegation of powers.
Stevens & Souter
Justice John Paul Stevens filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment and was joined by Justice David Souter. Justice Stevens also questioned the nondelegation doctrine itself, but on different grounds than Justice Thomas.
| “ | The Court has two choices. We could choose to articulate our ultimate disposition of this issue by frankly acknowledging that the power delegated to the EPA is 'legislative' but nevertheless conclude that the delegation is constitutional because adequately limited by the terms of the authorizing statute. Alternatively, we could pretend, as the Court does, that the authority delegated to the EPA is somehow not 'legislative power.' Despite the fact that there is language in our opinions that supports the Court's articulation of our holding, I am persuaded that it would be both wiser and more faithful to what we have actually done in delegation cases to admit that agency rulemaking authority is 'legislative power.'[1][3] | ” |
Justice Stevens further argued that in many cases, the distinction between legislative and executive power seemed arbitrary.
| “ | The proper characterization of governmental power should generally depend on the nature of the power, not on the identity of the person exercising it. See Black's Law Dictionary 899 (6th ed. 1990) (defining 'legislation' as, inter alia, '[f]ormulation of rule[s] for the future')...If the NAAQS that the EPA promulgated had been prescribed by Congress, everyone would agree that those rules would be the product of an exercise of 'legislative power.' The same characterization is appropriate when an agency exercises rulemaking authority pursuant to a permissible delegation from Congress.[1][3] | ” |
Breyer
Justice Stephen Breyer filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Though he agreed with almost all parts of the court's opinion, he felt that the refutation of the respondents' argument should have drawn more from the actual legislative history of the Clean Air Act and its amendments, rather than simply requiring a "textual commitment."[1]
| “ | Although I rely more heavily than does the Court upon legislative history and alternative sources of statutory flexibility, I reach the same ultimate conclusion. Section 109 does not delegate to the EPA authority to base the national ambient air quality standards, in whole or in part, upon the economic costs of compliance.[1][3] | ” |
Dissenting opinions
There were no dissenting opinions.
Impact
The majority opinion included a discussion of the history of the nondelegation doctrine and its limited scope.
| “ | The scope of discretion §109(b)(1) allows is in fact well within the outer limits of our nondelegation precedents. In the history of the Court we have found the requisite 'intelligible principle' lacking in only two statutes, one of which provided literally no guidance for the exercise of discretion, and the other of which conferred authority to regulate the entire economy on the basis of no more precise a standard than stimulating the economy by assuring 'fair competition.' [3] | ” |
The two cases referred to are Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (1935) and A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935).
Justice Scalia concluded, using language from the ruling in Mistretta v. United States:
| “ | In short, we have 'almost never felt qualified to second-guess Congress regarding the permissible degree of policy judgment that can be left to those executing or applying the law.'[3] | ” |
In its refutation of the Appeals Court's reasoning, the Supreme Court clarified that the limits on delegated powers must come from Congress, they could not come from the receiving agency.
| “ | The court thought, however, that the EPA could perhaps avoid the unconstitutional delegation by adopting a restrictive construction of §109(b)(1), so instead of declaring the section unconstitutional the court remanded the NAAQS to the agency.[3] | ” |
| “ | The idea that an agency can cure an unconstitutionally standardless delegation of power by declining to exercise some of that power seems to us internally contradictory. The very choice of which portion of the power to exercise--that is to say, the prescription of the standard that Congress had omitted--would itself be an exercise of the forbidden legislative authority. Whether the statute delegates legislative power is a question for the courts, and an agency's voluntary self-denial has no bearing upon the answer.[1][3] | ” |
The court also offered notes for future cases involving judicial review of agency actions and interpretations.
| “ | Congress, we have held, does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions--it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.[1][3] | ” |
The Supreme Court's reaffirmation of the Clean Air Act's mandate for the EPA, that it promulgate NAAQS based only on health and not economic cost, represented a victory for environmentalists.
See also
- A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
- Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan
- Separation of powers
- Rulemaking
- Administrative law
- Supreme Court of the United States
- History of the Supreme Court
External links
- Full Text of the Case via Justia
- Supreme Court of the United States
- Search Google News for this topic
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 FindLaw, Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc., accessed November 14, 2017
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Southern California Association of Governments, Federal Clean Air Act Section 108, accessed November 14, 2017
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Oyez, Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc., accessed November 14, 2017
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