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Nature of Suit Code: 891
Nature of Suit: Agricultural Acts
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 7, 2012 Decided February 22, 2013

No. 12-5075

NICK KORETOFF, DOING BUSINESS AS NICK KORETOFF 

RANCHES, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

TOM VILSACK, SECRETARY, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF 

AGRICULTURE,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:08-cv-01558)

John H. Vetne argued the cause for appellants. With him 

on the briefs was Susan Silber. 

David A. Nauheim and James S. Turner were on the brief 

for amici curiae Alliance for Natural Health USA, et al. in 

support of appellants.

Michael P. Abate, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were 

Stuart F. Delery, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Ronald 

C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, Michael S. Raab, Attorney, and 

Andrew R. Varcoe, Attorney, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

USCA Case #12-5075 Document #1421850 Filed: 02/22/2013 Page 1 of 13
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Before: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.

Concurring opinion filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS.

PER CURIAM: Appellants, California almond producers, 

claim that the Secretary of Agriculture, seeking to prevent the 

spread of salmonella, exceeded his authority in requiring 

California almonds sold domestically to be treated with heat 

or chemicals. The district court granted summary judgment 

for the Secretary. Finding that appellants have waived their 

claims by failing to raise them during the rulemaking process, 

we affirm.

I.

Under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 

1937, 7 U.S.C. §§ 601–74 (“AMAA”), the Secretary of 

Agriculture may issue marketing orders binding “handlers” of 

commodities such as almonds. 7 U.S.C. § 608c(1)–(2). While 

“producers” grow commodities, commodity handlers are 

“processors, associations of producers, and others engaged in 

the handling” of commodities. Id. § 608c(1). As relevant here, 

marketing orders may provide “terms and conditions . . . 

[l]imiting, or providing methods for the limitation of, the total 

quantity of any such commodity or product, or of any grade, 

size, or quality thereof.” Id. § 608c(6)(A). For a marketing

order to become effective, the handlers responsible for at least 

half the volume of the commodity in the covered area must 

approve it. Id. § 608c(8). The Secretary, however, may 

impose a marketing order without handler consent if, among 

other things, he finds that the order is “the only practical 

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means of advancing the interests of the producers.” Id. § 

608c(9).

California almond handlers are subject to the California 

Almond Marketing Order, 7 C.F.R. pt. 981. The Almond 

Order provides for “quality control” of almonds, allowing the 

Secretary to approve “such minimum quality and inspection 

requirements applicable to almonds to be handled . . . as will 

contribute to orderly marketing or be in the public interest.” 7 

C.F.R. § 981.42(b).

After two salmonella outbreaks were linked to almonds 

grown in California, the Secretary published in the Federal 

Register a proposed rule requiring handlers to treat almonds 

sold domestically with heat or chemicals. Almonds Grown in 

California; Outgoing Quality Control Requirements and 

Request for Approval of New Information Collection, 71 Fed. 

Reg. 70,683 (Dec. 6, 2006). Every California almond 

producer was mailed a brochure that explained the proposed 

rule and encouraged producers to “take part in the public 

process.” After receiving comments and modifying the 

proposal somewhat to address issues raised, the Secretary 

adopted the treatment rule as a “quality control” requirement 

under the Almond Order. Almonds Grown in California; 

Outgoing Quality Control Requirements, 72 Fed. Reg. 15,021, 

15,021–22, 15,029–33 (Mar. 30, 2007) (“Treatment Rule”). 

Several almond producers challenged the treatment rule 

under the Administrative Procedure Act. The producers

claimed that the treatment rule exceeded the Secretary’s 

authority under both the AMAA and the Almond Order. 

Although conceding that the Secretary may prohibit the sale 

of contaminated almonds under his authority to limit almond 

quality, the producers contended that the Secretary lacks 

authority to require the treatment of all almonds irrespective 

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of whether they are contaminated. The producers also claimed

that almond handlers withdrew their support for the Almond 

Order in 1996 and that the Secretary never determined that the 

treatment rule is “the only practical means of advancing the 

interests of the producers,” as the AMAA requires for orders

lacking handler support. 7 U.S.C. 

§ 608c(9)(B). The district court, finding that the Secretary had 

authority to issue the rule and that the producers had waived 

their claim about the “only practical means” determination, 

granted summary judgment for the Secretary. Koretoff v. 

Vilsack, 841 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2012). The producers now 

appeal, reiterating the arguments they made in the district 

court.

II.

The Secretary argues that the producers have waived all 

their claims by failing to raise them during notice and 

comment. See Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety v. 

FMCSA, 429 F.3d 1136, 1150 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (“[A] party 

will normally forfeit an opportunity to challenge an agency 

rulemaking on a ground that was not first presented to the 

agency for its initial consideration.”). Although these

particular producers did not participate in the rulemaking

process, they nonetheless insist that their arguments about the 

Secretary’s authority to issue the rule are preserved for two

reasons.

First, the producers argue that an exception to the waiver 

doctrine applies because “[t]he issues were presented to (and 

resolved by) the agency.” Appellants’ Reply Br. 7. Although 

conceding that none of the producers who did comment made 

this argument during the rulemaking, the producers maintain 

that “the question of agency authority to issue a mandatory 

processing rule was expressly raised early in the rule 

development process,” pointing to a meeting attended by a 

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Department of Agriculture representative in which “it was 

asked if [the Secretary] has authority to mandate a kill step 

process.” Appellants’ Reply Br. 7–8, 8 n.4 (emphasis added). 

The representative replied that the Department was

“investigating the issue” and reported back a week later that 

“there is legal authority under the Marketing Order” to 

“implement a mandatory treatment or ‘pasteurization’ 

program.” Appellants’ Reply Br. 8 n.4. 

Under our case law, this was insufficient to preserve the 

issue. Nothing in the record suggests that the Secretary

considered the producers’ specific argument, i.e., that 

although the Secretary may prohibit the sale of contaminated 

almonds, he lacks authority to require the treatment of all 

almonds irrespective of whether they are contaminated. We 

require “the argument [petitioner] advances here” to be raised 

before the agency, not merely the same general legal issue. 

Nuclear Energy Institute, Inc. v. EPA, 373 F.3d 1251, 1291 

(D.C. Cir. 2004) (per curiam). “While there are surely limits 

on the level of congruity required between a party’s 

arguments before an administrative agency and the court, 

respect for agencies’ proper role in the Chevron framework 

requires that the court be particularly careful to ensure that 

challenges to an agency’s interpretation of its governing 

statute are first raised in the administrative forum.” NRDC v. 

EPA, 25 F.3d 1063, 1074 (D.C. Cir. 1994). Furthermore, as 

the producers themselves make clear in their brief, the issue

considered at the meeting related only to the Secretary’s 

authority under the Almond Order, not the statute.

Second, the producers argue that the Secretary was 

“obligated under the APA to address [his] statutory authority 

sua sponte,” whether “raised by a commenter or not.” 

Appellants’ Reply Br. 7–9. It is certainly true that agencies 

are required to ensure that they have authority to issue a 

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particular regulation. See 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)(2) (“The notice 

[of proposed rulemaking] shall include . . . reference to the 

legal authority under which the rule is proposed . . . .”). But as 

we have repeatedly made clear, agencies have no obligation to 

anticipate every conceivable argument about why they might 

lack such statutory authority. See, e.g., Ohio v. EPA, 997 F.2d 

1520, 1528–29 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (finding waived argument 

that rule violated statute). Here, the Secretary expressly stated

that he was issuing the treatment rule under his AMAA and 

Almond Order authority to regulate almond quality. 

Treatment Rule, 72 Fed. Reg. at 15,021–22 (“This rule adds 

outgoing quality control requirements under the 

administrative rules and regulations of the California almond 

marketing order . . . . The order is effective under the 

[AMAA] . . . .”). Absent a comment arguing otherwise, he 

had no further obligation.

Finally, we agree with the district court that the producers 

waived their argument that the Secretary needed to determine 

that the Almond Order was “the only practical means of 

advancing the interests of the producers.” According to the

producers, they had no way to raise the Secretary’s failure to 

make an “only practical means” determination because such 

determinations “are first made by the Secretary, if at all, only 

in the final rulemaking document.” Appellants’ Br. 64. But 

the Secretary never considered whether an “only practical 

means” determination was necessary for one simple reason: 

no one suggested during the rulemaking that such a 

determination was required. If the producers believed that an 

“only practical means” determination was necessary because 

the Almond Order has lacked handler support since 1996, 

they had ample opportunity to alert the Secretary before he 

issued the treatment rule. 

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III.

For the reasons stated above, we affirm the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment for the Secretary. In doing 

so, we emphasize that nothing in this opinion affects the 

producers’ ability to raise their statutory arguments if and 

when the Secretary applies the rule. See Murphy Exploration 

& Production Co. v. U.S. Department of Interior, 270 F.3d 

957, 958 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“Nothing . . . prevents [plaintiff]

from pursuing its claim in a second forum, i.e., apart from the 

original rulemaking, if such a forum is otherwise available. 

As we have held before, such a forum is available to a party 

when a rule is brought before this court for review of further 

agency action applying it.” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)).

So ordered.

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WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring: I concur in 

the opinion of the court. I write separately primarily to note 

that in the realm of judicial review of agency rules, much of 

the language of our opinions on “waiver” has been a good 

deal broader than the actual pattern of our holdings, and that 

that pattern itself may unfairly disadvantage parties that 

generally are not well represented by interest groups. 

 Some of our cases suggest that parties seeking review of 

an agency rule issued through notice-and-comment 

rulemaking may raise only those issues that they presented to 

the agency in the rulemaking. For example: “It is well 

established that issues not raised in comments before the 

agency are waived and this Court will not consider them.” 

Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n v. EPA, 286 F.3d 554, 562 (D.C. Cir. 

2002) (per curiam). But see City of Seabrook v. EPA, 659 

F.2d 1349, 1360-61 (5th Cir. 1981) (refusing to impose any 

such requirement on objections to EPA approval of a state 

implementation plan).1

 Indeed, the government’s brief in this 

 1 Seabrook’s own fate has wobbled. The Fifth Circuit followed 

it in American Forest & Paper Ass’n v. EPA, 137 F.3d 291 (5th Cir. 

1998), noting that it “remains valid.” But in BCCA Appeal Group 

v. EPA, 355 F.3d 817, 828-29 & n.10 (5th Cir. 2003), the court 

accepted the government’s argument that a party waived its 

objections to a state implementation plan by failing to comment 

during the administrative proceedings. The court distinguished 

Seabrook as involving a “purely legal” determination of whether the 

agency properly made the findings required by statute, whereas 

BCCA involved “an obligation [not] expressly imposed by the 

[Clean Air Act].” Id. at 829 n.10. The court also criticized 

Seabrook on its merits, explaining that “in recent years the court has 

stepped back from Seabrook’s holding on waiver, and has even 

applied the waiver doctrine to bar its consideration of claims that 

were not raised before the EPA in similar situations as the present 

dispute.” Id. (citing cases). 

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case stretched the principle still further, throwing into the 

hopper a case involving an adjudication rather than a 

rulemaking, Orion Reserves Ltd. P’ship v. Salazar, 553 F.3d 

697 (D.C. Cir. 2009), even though parties to a litigation 

obviously have a far clearer burden to speak up to protect their 

interests than do all of the potentially millions of persons that 

may be affected by a rulemaking. 

These broad statements disregard one context where they 

are flatly wrong. As the court’s opinion notes, we have 

distinguished between a direct challenge to a rule on 

enactment and a challenge to the rule when applied. Murphy 

Exploration & Prod. Co. v. U.S. Dep’t of Interior, 270 F.3d 

957, 958 (D.C. Cir. 2001). In Murphy we stated the waiver 

rule in terms of “the incontrovertible proposition that one may 

not present an argument on appeal without having first raised 

it below, i.e., in the proceedings from which the litigant 

appeals.” Id. Thus a party that has objected in the rulemaking 

can raise its claim in a facial challenge in court, and a party 

attacking the rule in the agency’s own application proceedings 

can similarly extend the attack on appeal from the agency. In 

explaining why failure to raise a claim in the rulemaking was 

not a bar to an application challenge, we drew an analogy to 

our cases holding that a party’s missing a statutory deadline 

for facial review of a regulation would not bar its challenge on 

“review of further [agency] action applying it.” Id. (emphasis 

added) (citing Functional Music, Inc. v. FCC, 274 F.2d 543, 

546-47 (D.C. Cir. 1958)). For other cases applying the 

 

This tension between the Fifth Circuit’s cases has been noted, 

see, e.g., Fleming Cos. v. USDA, 322 F. Supp. 2d 744, 753-54 (E.D. 

Tex. 2004), but apparently not resolved. Some other circuits have 

also declined to follow Seabrook. See, e.g., Universal Health 

Servs., Inc. v. Thompson, 363 F.3d 1013, 1020 n.3 (9th Cir. 2004); 

1000 Friends of Md. v. Browner, 265 F.3d 216, 228 n.7 (4th Cir. 

2001). 

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principle as to missed statutory deadlines, see Independent 

Community Bankers of America v. Board of Governors of the 

Federal Reserve System, 195 F.3d 28, 33-35 (D.C. Cir. 1999) 

(citing cases), and NLRB Union v. Federal Labor Relations 

Authority, 834 F.2d 191, 195-99 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (citing 

cases). Of course where a statute specifically precludes even 

an application challenge if the claim was not timely raised 

before the agency, we necessarily honor the statute unless the 

challenger poses a valid constitutional objection. See, e.g., 

Eagle-Picher Indus., Inc. v. EPA, 759 F.2d 905, 911, 914 

(D.C. Cir. 1985).2 

Thus a party is barred from making facial claims that 

were not raised in the rulemaking process,3 even ones that are 

ripe within the meaning of Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 

387 U.S. 136 (1967); but a timely objection at the application 

stage preserves the party’s rights. The upshot is that, with 

limited exceptions—for example, in cases where an agency 

may act without affording a pre-deprivation hearing and the 

affected party can and does immediately challenge the action 

in court, see, e.g., James Madison Ltd. v. Ludwig, 82 F.3d 

 2

 That principle is subject to an exception based on ripeness 

concepts. See Clean Air Implementation Project v. EPA, 150 F.3d 

1200, 1204 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (noting that, notwithstanding the time 

limit in the Clean Air Act’s review provision, 42 U.S.C. § 7607(b), 

it is a “necessary corollary” of the ripeness doctrine that if issues 

that were unripe on direct challenge “later become justiciable, as a 

result for instance of an enforcement action, the petitioner may then 

raise those issues”). 

3

 This formulation of the matter assumes, as is normally the 

case, that the waiver rule would not bar a facial challenge if the 

agency has actually addressed the issue, either sua sponte or at the 

behest of another party. See, e.g., Ohio v. EPA, 997 F.2d 1520, 

1529 (D.C. Cir. 1993). 

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1085, 1092-95 (D.C. Cir. 1996); Holiday CVS, LLC v. Holder, 

839 F. Supp. 2d 145 (D.D.C. 2012), or in cases such as 

McKart v. United States, 395 U.S. 185 (1969)—courts do not 

hear claims that the agency has had no opportunity to respond 

to or perhaps, to adapt to or adopt. This tends to economize 

on effort on the part of courts, agencies and to some extent 

even parties, including reducing the need for shuttling cases 

back to the agency for an explanation of its choices. See 

generally SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 87-88 (1943). 

It further increases the potential benefits of the notice-andcomment process itself. 

Generally speaking, then, the price for a ticket to facial 

review is to raise objections in the rulemaking. This system 

probably operates quite well for large industry associations 

and consumer or environmental groups (and the firms and 

individuals thus represented). But for some the impact is 

more severe. Firms filling niche markets, for example, as 

appellants appear to be, may be ill-represented by broad 

industry groups and unlikely to be adequately lawyered-up at 

the rulemaking stage. As the Fifth Circuit observed, we 

presumably do not want to “require everyone who wishes to 

protect himself from arbitrary agency action not only to 

become a faithful reader of the notices of proposed 

rulemaking published each day in the Federal Register, but a 

psychic able to predict the possible changes that could be 

made in the proposal when the rule is finally promulgated.” 

City of Seabrook, 659 F.2d at 1360-61. For expressions of 

similar doubts from this circuit, see Gage v. United States 

Atomic Energy Commission, 479 F.2d 1214, 1218-19 (D.C. 

Cir. 1973); see also 32 Charles A. Wright & Charles H. Koch, 

Jr., Federal Practice & Procedure § 8174 (2012 ed.) 

(explaining that “[m]any may be affected in various degrees 

by numerous rulemaking efforts” but “[c]itizens cannot 

participate in all the rulemakings which might affect us”). 

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A decision of our court has suggested a principle that 

would open the door to facial challenges by such mavericks. 

In Murphy Exploration & Production Co. v. U.S. Department 

of Interior, 252 F.3d 473 (D.C. Cir. 2001), predecessor of the 

Murphy referred to earlier, we said that where a party had 

participated in the rulemaking, “it made sense to speak of [the 

party’s] failure to raise [its argument] below.” Id. at 478. But 

that could not rightly be said where there was no indication 

that the plaintiff had participated in the rulemaking in any 

way. Id. Thus we found no waiver. 

Such a principle would provide facial review for parties 

who don’t bother to participate in the rulemaking—probably a 

group largely coincident with parties who fail to anticipate its 

inflicting serious costs on their interests. (Of course there 

would be some risk that the rule might induce strategic 

behavior expanding that group: non-participation in order to 

get facial review without disclosing one’s position to the 

agency. It’s not clear that such a strategy presents many 

advantages.) The argument for allowing facial review under 

these circumstances is of course at its strongest where the 

issue posed cannot require a remand to the agency (e.g., a 

claim under Chevron’s “first step”) and the hardship to the 

plaintiff from delay (see Abbott Labs, 387 U.S. at 148-49, 

153) is especially acute. 

The first Murphy decision (cited immediately above) is, 

however, not binding circuit law. After the opinion was 

issued, the government submitted evidence that the challenger 

had, in fact, participated in the rulemaking proceeding, and 

the panel—in the Murphy decision cited earlier—vacated the 

relevant part of the opinion. See Murphy, 270 F.3d at 958. 

The panel’s reasoning, of course, remains available to future 

panels. 

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 In this case, however, it seems appropriate to follow the 

general principle that we “take the dispute as the parties frame 

it.” Creighton Ltd. v. Gov’t of Qatar, 181 F.3d 118, 125 (D.C. 

Cir. 1999). I agree with the panel that appellants in this case 

did not frame the dispute in any of the terms set forth above, 

so it would be inappropriate to resolve such possible 

variations of the waiver doctrine in this case. 

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