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Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 2, 1996 Decided January 10, 1997

No. 96-5011

ANIMAL LEGAL DEFENSE FUND, INC., ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

DONNA E. SHALALA, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(94cv01003)

Eric R. Glitzenstein argued the cause for appellants, with whom Katherine A. Meyer and Valerie J.

Stanley were on the briefs.

Alisa B. Klein, Attorney, United States Department ofJustice, argued the cause for appellees Donna

Shalala et al., with whomFrank W. Hunger, Assistant Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, Jr., United

States Attorney, and Mark B. Stern, Attorney, United States Department ofJustice, were on the brief.

Patricia A. Millett, Attorney, entered an appearance.

Richard A. Meserve argued the cause for appellee NationalAcademy of Sciences, with whomElliott

Schulder, James R. Wright and Audrey Byrd Mosley were on the brief. John F. Duffy entered an

appearance.

Before: SILBERMAN, GINSBURG, and SENTELLE, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SILBERMAN.

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge: Appellants challenge the district court's determination that a

NationalAcademy of Sciences committee, which promulgates and revises a guide on the care and use

oflaboratory animalsfor government agencies, is not subject to the FederalAdvisoryCommittee Act

because it is not "utilized" within the meaning of the statute. We reverse.

I.

The NationalAcademy of Sciences(NAS), Appellee- Intervenor, was chartered byCongress

in 1863 and has a duty to, "whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate,

examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art." 36 U.S.C. § 253 (1994). The

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Academy's principal operating arm is the National Research Council, which includes as one of its

subcomponentsthe Institute for Laboratory AnimalResources. For over four decades, the Research

Council and the Institute have produced for the federal government the Guide for the Care and Use

of Laboratory Animals, a scientific manualwhich includes guidelinesfor handling and monitoring the

treatment of laboratory animals.

Although the Guide is distributed and referenced throughout the world, some of its primary

users are federal agencies that have statutory duties to ensure that research laboratory animals are

treated properly. Health and Human Services regulations, for instance, actually require that

institutions funded by the National Institute of Health follow the most recent version of the Guide in

adopting programsinvolving laboratory animals. See 48 C.F.R. § 380.205(a)(1) (1995). The United

States Department of Agriculture has also incorporated the Guide's recommendations into

regulations. See 56 Fed. Reg. 6,428 (Feb. 15, 1991). The Interagency Research Animal Committee,

which consists of representatives from each federal agency that uses animals in research, refers

readers of its government-wide Principles for the Utilization and Care of Vertebrate Animals Used

in Testing, Research and Training to the Guide as an aid to the interpretation and execution of the

Principles.

The most recent revision of the Guidethe 7th editionis again being produced by a

committee ofthe ResearchCouncil and the Institute (the "Guide Committee"). The Institute selected

16 individuals to serve on the Committee based on the recommendations of academics, industry

scientists, toxicologists, veterinarians, members of the Academy, and others. A majority of the

members are scientists of nationalstature who use animalsin research and possess expertise in various

areas ofscience, ethics, veterinary medicine, and animal welfare. The Institute had decided to revise

the Guide at a workshop it convened in 1991, so it submitted a grant proposal to the NIH, which

approved the grant in 1993. Representatives of the NIH and other federal agencies attended the

Committee's first meeting and recommended new issues to be addressed by the updated Guide, but

no federalagencyfurtherinvolved itselfin theCommittee's deliberative process. The Academy's rules

on confidentiality prevented Committee members from discussing the substance of the Guide with

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representatives of the sponsoring agencies. The NAS informed the public of the Guide Committee's

appointment and held public forums, but the Committee denied public access to its deliberative

meetings.

Appellants, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals, and the Association ofVeterinariansfor AnimalRights,sought accessto those meetings and

to any minutes, transcripts, or records ofthe Committee under the Federal AdvisoryCommittee Act,

5 U.S.C. App. §§ 1-15 (1994) (FACA). Appellants named as defendants, individually and

collectively, HHS, the Public Health Service, and NIH (collectively, "the government"). The NAS

subsequently intervened as a co-defendant. The district court denied appellants' motion for a

preliminary injunction to attend the meetings, and their appealfromthat order was dismissed as moot

when four days before oral argument the Committee conducted its final meeting, leaving nothing to

enjoin. Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Shalala, 53 F.3d 363 (D.C. Cir. 1995). On remand, the

district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, concluding that the Guide

Committee was not an "advisory committee" subject to FACA because it was not "established or

utilized by one or more agencies." 5 U.S.C. App. § 3(2)(C).

II.

Congress enacted FACA in 1972 to control the establishment of advisory committees to the

federalgovernment and to allow the public to monitor their existence, activities, and cost. See Public

Citizen v. United States Dep't of Justice, 491 U.S. 440 (1989). The statute states:

For the purpose of this Act

* * *

(2)The term"advisorycommittee'means anycommittee, board, commission, council,

conference, panel, task force, or other similar group, or any subcommittee or other

subgroup thereof (hereafter in this paragraph referred to as "committee'), which is

(A) established by statute or reorganization plan, or

(B) established or utilized by the President, or

(C) established or utilized by one or more agencies,

in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President or one or

more agencies or officers of the Federal Government except that such term excludes

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(i) the AdvisoryCommission on IntergovernmentalRelations, (ii) the Commission on

Government Procurement, and (iii) any committee which is composed wholly of

full-time officers or employees of the Federal Government.

5 U.S.C. App. § 3 (emphasis added). It is quite obvious that the Committee was and is used byHHS,

but the term "utilized" was given a very narrow interpretation by the Supreme Court in Public

Citizen. In so doing, however, the Court indicated quite explicitly in an extensive discussion, which

appellants emphasize, that advisory committees formed by the NAS were precisely the sort of

advisory committeesthat would be covered by the Act. See Public Citizen, 491 U.S. at 462-63. The

government and the NAS respond that the Supreme Court's discussion regarding the NAS in that

opinion was only dictum; the status of the NAS committee was not really in issue in that case, and

therefore this case is governed by subsequent opinions of our court, particularly Washington Legal

Found. v. United States Sentencing Comm'n, 17 F.3d 1446 (D.C. Cir. 1994), and Food Chem. News

v. Young, 900 F.2d 328 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 846 (1990), both of which applied Public

Citizen and adopted a "management and control" test to determine whether a committee not

established by a government agency is nevertheless "utilized." It is indisputable that no government

agency could be thought to exercise that degree of influence over the Guide Committee.

The case before us, then, turns on a careful reading of these three previous cases. We start

naturally with Public Citizen. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether FACA covered the

ABA's Standing Committee, which although not "established" by the government, had been for many

years formally consulted by the Justice Department, on behalf of the President, as to the relative

qualifications of individuals whom the Administration intended to nominate for federal judgeships.

Since the Standing Committee solicited views of lawyers, judges, and others on a confidential basis,

and its deliberations were also supposed to be confidential, it was argued that the application of

FACA to it would be its death knell. FACA requires that committees file charters, notify the public

in advance of meetings, open the doors to those meetings to all comers, keep detailed minutes, and

perhaps most onerous, make documents available for public inspection subject to Freedom of

Information Act limitations. 5 U.S.C. App. §§ 9(c), 10(a)-(c). An application of those requirements

allegedly would have made it impossible for the Standing Committee to continue to operate.

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1 The Standing Committee purported to be nonpartisan, although in recent times that

proposition has been in dispute. See Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. v.

Clinton, 997 F.2d 898, 906 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 1993). 

Justice Brennan, writing for the majority, observed that the statute "[r]ead unqualifiedly ...

would extend FACA's requirements to any group of two or more persons, or at least any formal

organization, from which the President or an executive agency seeks advice." 491 U.S. at 452. It

should be noted that the "definition" in the statute never fully explains what is an advisory committee;

this is why the majority (and the dissenters) in Public Citizen thought that determining whether a

private group consulted by the executive branch was a FACA advisory committeethus triggering

all the requirements of the statutedepended entirely on the meaning of one word: utilize.

The Court reasoned, drawing upon legislative history, that Congress did not intend that every

time the President consulted the NAACP on an appointment to the EEOC, or the leaders of an

American Legion Post for their opinion of military policy, or the presidential party's National

Committee on Cabinet appointments, that an advisory committee charter be prepared and minutes

kept of the meeting. The Court therefore further canvassed the legislative history to find the limiting

principle to determine what sort of private group could be thought "utilized" as an "advisory

committee." (The word "utilized" had to be given some meaning.) That "legislative history" included

a previous executive order and the proceedings of the Congress prior to the one which passed the

Act. The Court concluded that Congress intended to extend the requirements of the Act beyond

those committees established by the government only to private groups that were used by the

President or an executive branch agency in the same manner as advisory groups established by the

government.

At that point, there is a gap in the Court's stated reasoning; it was not explained why the

ABA Standing Committee was not employed in the same way as a government- established advisory

committee.1 The Court simply asserted that "[t]here is no indication in the [House] Report that a

purely private group like the ABA Committee that was not formed by the Executive, accepted no

public funds, and assisted the Executive in performing a constitutionally specified task ... wasthe type

of advisory entity that legislation was urgently needed to address." 491 U.S. at 460 (emphases

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2 The Court went on to reason that its restricted definition of utilize is necessary to avoid the

constitutional questioninterference with the President's appointment powerthat the dissent

would have decided. Id. at 465-67. 

added).

Instead, according to the Court, the House Report and Congress intended to cover, by use

ofthe word "utilized," committeeslike those established by the National Academy of Sciences. NAS

Committees were the "paradigmatic example" because the NAS is a "quasi-public organization in

receipt of public funds." Id. at 460. The Court thereafter repeatedly referred to the NASand its

committeesas the example of the organization Congress had in mind as "offspring of [an]

organization created or permeated by the Federal Government." Id. at 463. In other words, the

definition given bytheCourt to an advisory committee utilized by the federal government focuses not

so much on how it is used but whether or not the character of its creating institution can be thought

to have a quasi-public status.2

Still, both the government and the NAS argue that we are not bound bytheCourt's conclusion

that NAS committees are the paradigm encompassed by the term utilizedand thus covered by the

Act. The NAS points out that the Supreme Court did not consider the deleterious effects of FACA's

requirements on its deliberative processes: As the NAS sees it, open meetings and records would

compromise itsinternalreview procedures and inhibit candid exchange among its members. And the

NAS contends that the Supreme Court's analysis of the legislative history is flawed because it relied

on the deliberation of a prior Congress (and a preexisting executive order addressing advisory

committees), which should not be thought probative ofthe views ofthe enacting Congress. We admit

that we are not admirers of the Court's techniques in exploring the legislative history (or indeed on

its extensive reliance on legislative history itself), but we are in no position, hierarchically, to reject

the Court's approach.

The NAS calls to our attention a piece of legislative history favorable to itbut not

mentioned by the Supreme Court: Just before the House voted to enact the bill, the Chairman of the

Committee that developed the legislation, Mr. Holifield, seemed to indicate that the NAS was not to

be included within the coverage of the Act.

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Mr. Horton: Am I correct in the understanding that this bill does not apply to such

organizations asthe National Academy of Sciences and its various committees which

make studies and submit reports to Federal agencies on request?

Mr. Holifield: The gentleman is quite correct. If he will refer to the joint explanatory

statement of the committee of conference [the Conference Report on FACA] at page

10, the first full paragraph, it states as follows:

The Act does not apply to persons or organizations which have contractual

relationships with Federal agencies nor to advisory committees not directly

established by or for such agencies.

As the gentleman knows, the National Academy of Sciences was founded by

Congress and, therefore, it comes under that category.

Mr. Horton: So, it would be excluded?

Mr. Holifield: That is correct.

118 CONG. REC. 31,421 (1972). Chairman Holifield's answer appears to be something of a non

sequitur and this sort of parliamentary dialogue is not the most reliable form of legislative history.

Moreover, this dialogue appeared in a district court opinion, Lombardo v. Handler, 397 F. Supp.

792, 799 (D.D.C. 1975), aff'd mem., 546 F.2d 1043 (D.C. Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 932

(1977), squarely holding that a NAS committee was not subject to FACA, of which the Supreme

Court was surely aware. Indeed, it was cited, albeit in a footnote, in the amicus brief filed by the

People for American Way upon which the Supreme Court heavily relied. That it was not mentioned

in the opinion, we must presume, indicates that the Supreme Court did not think it significant.

We agree with appellees nevertheless that the Supreme Court's analysis is not, strictly

speaking, a holding that NAS committees are FACA advisory committees. What is part of the

holding however, isits conclusion that by employing the term "utilized," in addition to "established,"

Congress had in mind an extension of the Act's coverage to include the offspring of "quasi-public"

organizations "permeated by the Federal government." Id. at 460, 463. After all, that is the only sort

of advisory committee the Court recognized as reached by the term "utilized." Unfortunately for

appellees, they are not able to point to any other organization that fits this category more readily.

In that regard, we think appellees' argument and the district court's conclusion that the NAS

is not really a "public" corporation is quite beside the point. It is irrelevant that, as the district court

pointed out, the NAS charter specifically provides that it is "a private corporation," or that it lacks

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regulatoryauthority, or that its employees are not employed bythe United States Government, or that

the United States Government has no seats on the Academy's Board nor power to choose its officers

nor appoint members of its committees. This argument assumes that there is some sort of

pre-existing definition of "quasi-public" to which the Public Citizen Court referred when it discussed

quasi-public organizations. But quasi-public does not have an independent meaning divorced from

the Court's reference in Public Citizen. The term merely stood for a set of qualities that the Court

thought critical. And the NAS is imbued with those very characteristics: [W]hat mattered to the

Court was whether the organization was "purely private," who formed and funded it, and whether

it was formed "for the explicit purpose of furnishing advice to the Government." 491 U.S. at 460

n.11. The NAS was created by Congress to answer the government's requests for investigations,

examinations, experiments, and reports, 36 U.S.C. § 253, and the government takes care of the

expenses associated with performing these tasks.

It follows that the district court's reliance on Lebron v. National RR Passenger Corp., 115

S. Ct. 961 (1995), holding that Amtrak is a government entity for purposes of the First Amendment,

is whollymisplaced. Whether an organization has sufficient governmental characteristics to implicate

the First Amendment is hardly the same question (nor does it even bear on the issue) as whether an

organization is quasi-public for purposes ofthe Supreme Court's analysisin Public Citizen. In Public

Citizen, the Court asked only whether particular committees asserted to be "utilized" by the

government as FACA advisory committees were formed (established) by a non-governmental

organization that was "created or permeated by the Federal Government." 491 U.S. at 463. It is

almost redundantin light of the Court's reasoning from its perception of the NAS'

characteristicsfor us to conclude that NAS committees pass that test.

We see no real tension between appellants' reading of Public Citizen, with which we agree,

and our two cases on which appellees rely. In Food Chemical News v. Young, we encountered a

committee of a wholly private organization, the Federation of America Societies for Experimental

Biology (a major biomedical research organization), 900 F.2d at 329. We held that its committee,

which advised the FDA, was not an advisory committee utilized by the federal government because

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it "was not amenable to [any] management by [FDA] officials," or "by [any] semiprivate entity the

Federal Government helped bring into being." 900 F.2d at 333 (quoting Public Citizen, 491 U.S. at

457-58, 463). By so doing, we actually extended slightly, rather than, as the government contends,

restricted, the meaning of a "utilized advisory committee" that the Supreme Court gave in Public

Citizen. The Court's opinion could have been read to imply that no purely private committees could

be FACA advisory committees. We recognized, however, that if a government agency actually took

over the management of such a committee, it would be brought under FACA. But we also

recognized, asindeed we were compelled to do by the Supreme Court's Public Citizen opinion, that

if a committee advising the government were established by a "semiprivate" (read: quasi-public)

agency instead of a government agency, it would meet the alternative test set forth by the Supreme

Court.

In Washington Legal Found. v. United States Sentencing Comm'n, it was claimed that an

"Advisory Working Group on Environmental Sanctions," 17 F.3d at 1447 (emphasis added) (a

committee by any other name is still a committee), established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission

was covered by FACA. The primary issue in the case was whether the Sentencing Commission was

an "agency" within the meaning of FACA. We held that it was not because FACA exempted the

courts of the United States; the Sentencing Commission is part of the judicial branch and, in any

event,Congressmeant theSentencingCommissionto be excluded fromtheAdministrativeProcedure

Act, which determines FACA coverage. Id. at 1447-48.

The alternative argument presented inWashington Legal Foundationwasthat theDepartment

of Justice had two members on the "working group" (presumably the product of their deliberations

was shared by the Department) and therefore the committee was utilized within the meaning of

FACA. We dismissed this argument, stating that the utilized test is a stringent standard, denoting

"something along the lines of actual management or control ofthe advisory committee." Id. at 1450

(emphasis added). Appellees, and the district court, believe that by so stating we narrowed the Public

Citizen test so that no advisory committee, including one established by a quasi-public organization,

could be deemed utilized unless the circumstances met the management and control by the

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government test.

We think appellees and the district court badly overread our opinion. We did not even refer

to the alternative prong of the utilize test that comes from Public Citizen, i.e., whether an

organizationthat establishes an advisorycommittee can be described as quasi-public. We quoted only

the first prong drawn from Food Chemical News v. Young, "so closely tied to an agency as to be

amenable to strict management by agencyofficials," id. at 1451 (internalquotation omitted), ignoring

the second part of the full Young sentence: or "by [any] semiprivate entity the Federal Government

helped bring into being." 900 F.2d at 333. We obviously thought the case did not raise an issue

similar to the instant case. Certainly, the Sentencing Commission, which established the working

group, is more than a quasi-public organization; it is itself a governmental entity. But it would have

been anomalous, once having concluded that advisory committees directly established by the

Sentencing Commission were exempt from FACA, to decide that they could nevertheless lose their

exemption if their deliberations were passed on to the Department of Justice because of the

Sentencing Commission's public status. That result would surely pervert congressional intent. In

short, the quasi-public prong simply did not have any relevance to the Sentencing Commission case.

That is why we focused only on the question whether the Justice Department itself could be said to

manage and control the working group. In that event, the Young standard would be met and, as a

corollary, the exemption for Sentencing Commission advisory committees would not properly apply.

* * * *

To sum up, under Public Citizen, the Guide Committee must be regarded as utilized by HHS

because it relies on the Committee's work product and because it was formed by the NAS, a

quasi-public entity. Nothing in our two cases undermines that conclusion. Accordingly, we reverse

the district court's grant of summary judgment for the government and remand so that the district

court may determine whether there are documents to which the appellants may obtain access under

FACA and whether other injunctive relief should issue.

So ordered.

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