Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-01050/USCOURTS-caDC-10-01050-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Aiken County
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 22, 2011 Decided July 1, 2011

No. 10-1050

IN RE: AIKEN COUNTY,

PETITIONER

On Petitions for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, Petitions

for Extraordinary Relief, and Petitions for Review

Consolidated with 10-1052, 10-1069, 10-1082

Andrew A. Fitz, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the

Attorney General for the State of Washington, and Barry M.

Hartman argued the cause for petitioners. With them on the

briefs were Thomas R. Gottshall, Alexander Shissias, S. Ross

Shealy, Alan Wilson, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the State of South Carolina, Robert M. McKenna,

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State

of Washington, Todd R. Bowers, Assistant Attorney General for

the State of Washington, Christopher R. Nestor, William Henry

Davidson II, Kenneth Paul Woodington, James Bradford

Ramsay and Robin J. Lunt.

Michael A. Bauser and Anne W. Cottingham were on the

brief for amicus curiae Nuclear Energy Institute in support of

petitioners. 

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Ellen J. Durkee, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for respondents. With her on the brief were

Robert Dreher, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General,

Lisa E. Jones, Aaron P. Avila, and Allen Brabender, Attorneys,

U.S. Department of Justice, John F. Cordes Jr., Solicitor,

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Charles E. Mullins, Senior

Attorney, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Jeremy M.

Suttenberg, Attorney, Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Martin G. Malsch, Charles J. Fitzpatrick, and John W.

Lawrence were on the brief for intervenor State of Nevada in

support of respondents.

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, BROWN and KAVANAUGH,

Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge SENTELLE.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge KAVANAUGH.

SENTELLE, Chief Judge: Three state and local governmental

units, along with individual citizens, petition this court for

review of and other relief from two “determinations” made by

the Department of Energy (“DOE”) and the other respondents: 

the DOE’s attempt to withdraw the application it submitted to

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC” or the

“Commission”) for a license to construct a permanent nuclear

waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and the DOE’s

apparent decision to abandon development of the Yucca

Mountain nuclear waste repository. Because we believe that

Petitioners’ two claims are, respectively, not ripe for judicial

determination and not justiciable by this court, we dismiss the

petitions for lack of jurisdiction.

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I.

This case once again brings before this court the federal

government’s controversial ongoing attempt to devise a

permanent solution to the problems of civilian radioactive waste

disposal. See, e.g., Nevada v. DOE, 457 F.3d 78 (D.C. Cir.

2006) (challenging the DOE’s Final Environmental Impact

Statement and Record of Decision for the Yucca Mountain

nuclear waste repository); Nevada v. DOE, 400 F.3d 9 (D.C. Cir.

2005) (challenging a DOE order denying Nevada a grant to fund

its participation in an NRC proceeding regarding Yucca

Mountain); Nuclear Energy Inst., Inc. v. EPA, 373 F.3d 1251

(D.C. Cir. 2004) (challenging a congressional joint resolution

and the associated federal regulations selecting Yucca Mountain

as the site for the federal nuclear repository); Northern States

Power Co. v. DOE, 128 F.3d 754 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (requesting

a writ of mandamus requiring DOE to comply with the Nuclear

Waste Policy Act). The present petitioners argue that recent

actions taken by the DOE—which at the very least demonstrate

the DOE’s desire to abandon development of the Yucca

Mountain nuclear waste repository—violate the Nuclear Waste

Policy Act (“NWPA”), the National Environmental Policy Act,

and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). Three of the

petitioners—Aiken County in South Carolina, the State of South

Carolina, and the State of Washington—are state or local

governments of localities that are home to sites that temporarily

store spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste pending

the opening of a federal nuclear waste repository. The

remaining petitioners are three private citizens who live and

work near one of those sites. Put succinctly, Petitioners believe

that if the federal government abandons the Yucca Mountain

nuclear repository, the only congressionally-approved site for

permanently disposing of the nation’s spent nuclear waste will

be lost and the federal government will fail to comply with its

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statutory responsibility to provide for the permanent disposal of

all of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste.

Congress imposed that responsibility upon the federal

government in 1983 when it enacted the NWPA, Pub. L. No. 97-

425, 96 Stat. 2201 (1983) (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C.

§§ 10101-270). Recognizing that “Federal efforts during the

past 30 years to devise a permanent solution to the problems of

civilian radioactive waste disposal [had] not been adequate,” 42

U.S.C. § 10131(a)(3), Congress passed the NWPA “to establish

a schedule for the siting, construction, and operation of

repositories” for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level

radioactive waste. 42 U.S.C. § 10131(b)(1). As originally

enacted, the NWPA set forth a process by which the DOE would

first identify five repositories “determine[d] suitable for site

characterization for selection of the first repository site.” 42

U.S.C. § 10132(b)(1)(A). After performing environmental

assessments of each of those first five potential sites, the NWPA

required the DOE to recommend three of the sites to the

President for characterization as candidate sites no later than

January 1, 1985. 42 U.S.C. § 10132(b)(1)(B), (E). In 1987,

after the DOE had recommended the Yucca Mountain site as

well as sites in Washington and Texas to the President, Congress

short-circuited the original process and amended the NWPA to

designate Yucca Mountain as the only site for possible

development as a repository. Congress ordered the DOE to

“provide for an orderly phase-out of site specific activities at all

candidate sites other than the Yucca Mountain site.” 42 U.S.C.

§ 10172(a)(1). 

After Congress specified Yucca Mountain as the sole

potential location for the nation’s nuclear waste repository, the

DOE moved on to the site characterization, approval, review,

and licensing phase of the process created by the NWPA. See

42 U.S.C. §§ 10133-38. Over the next fifteen years, the DOE

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performed site characterization activities at Yucca Mountain,

and in 2002, the DOE recommended “that Yucca Mountain be

developed as the site for an underground repository for spent

fuel and other radioactive wastes.” Recommendation by the

Secretary of Energy Regarding the Suitability of the Yucca

Mountain Site for a Repository Under the Nuclear Waste Policy

Act of 1982 at 1 (Feb. 2002). As expressly permitted by the

NWPA, the State of Nevada submitted an official objection to

the DOE’s recommendation, halting consideration of the Yucca

Mountain site. See 42 U.S.C. § 10135(b). Congress overcame

this objection by passing a joint resolution “affirmatively and

finally approv[ing] the Yucca site for a repository, thus bringing

the site-selection process to a conclusion.” Nuclear Energy

Inst., 373 F.3d at 1309; see also Pub. L. No. 107-200, 116 Stat.

735 (2002) (codified at 42 U.S.C. § 10135 note). 

The NWPA next directed the DOE to “submit to the

Commission an application for a construction authorization for

a repository at such site.” 42 U.S.C. § 10134(b). Although the

NWPA required that the DOE submit this application within

ninety days of the site designation becoming effective, id., the

DOE did not submit the Yucca Mountain application for another

six years. Finally, on June 17, 2008, the DOE submitted the

application and the Commission docketed it for review by its

Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (“Licensing Board”). See

Department of Energy; Notice of Acceptance for Docketing of

a License Application for Authority to Construct a Geologic

Repository at a Geologic Repository Operations Area at Yucca

Mountain, NV, 73 Fed. Reg. 53,284 (Sept. 15, 2008). The

NRC’s LicensingBoard began its review of the Yucca Mountain

application, but on March 3, 2010, the DOE filed a motion to

withdraw its application with prejudice. See Dep’t of Energy

Motion to Withdraw, In re U.S. Dep’t of Energy (High-Level

Waste Repository), Docket No. 63-001, ASLBP No. 09-892-

HLW-CAB04 (United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

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(Mar. 3, 2010). In its motion, the DOE stated that although it

“reaffirms its obligation to take possession and dispose of the

nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste, the

Secretary of Energy has decided that a geologic repository at

Yucca Mountain is not a workable option for long-term

disposition of these materials.” Id. at 1. The DOE clarified that

it sought to dismiss the application with prejudice “because it

does not intend ever to refile an application to construct a

permanent geologic repository . . . at Yucca Mountain.” Id. at

3 & n.3.

On June 29, 2010, the NRC Licensing Board denied the

DOE’s motion to withdraw. Order of Atomic Safety and

Licensing Board, In re U.S. Dep’t of Energy (High-Level Waste

Repository), Docket No. 63-001, ASLBP No. 09-892-HLWCAB04 (United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission) (June

29, 2010). Noting that the DOE conceded that the Yucca

Mountain license application was not defective nor the site

unsafe, the Licensing Board concluded that the NWPA “does

not permit the Secretary [of the DOE] to withdraw the

Application that the NWPA mandates the Secretary file.” Id. at

3. In denying the DOE’s motion, the Licensing Board held that

“the NWPA does not give the Secretary the discretion to

substitute his policy for the one established by Congress in the

NWPA that, at this point, mandates progress toward a merits

decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the

construction permit.” Id. The next day, the Secretary of the

Commission invited all of the participants before the Licensing

Board to file briefs as to whether the Commission should

review, reverse, or uphold the Licensing Board’s decision to

deny the DOE’s motion to withdraw. Order, In re U.S. Dep’t of

Energy (High-Level Waste Repository), Docket No. 63-001-

HLW (United States Nuclear RegulatoryCommission) (June 30,

2010). At this time, both the NRC Licensing Board’s review of

the DOE Yucca Mountain license application and the

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Commission’s review of the Licensing Board’s denial of the

DOE’s motion to withdraw are ongoing.

Petitioners identify the DOE’s attempt to withdraw its

Yucca Mountain license application from consideration by the

NRC Licensing Board as the “determination” they seek to have

us review. Petitioners argue that the DOE lacks the legal

authority to withdraw its application and that the DOE’s attempt

to do so violates the NWPA. Petitioners’ second claim

challenges a different “determination:” the DOE’s efforts

outside of the NRC licensing context “to irrevocably abandon

the Yucca Mountain process and terminate the entire Yucca

Mountain project.” Brief of Petitioners at 42. As evidence that

the DOE is abandoning the Yucca Mountain site, Petitioners

point to an array of DOE actions including announcing on

January 29, 2010 that the DOE was abandoning the Yucca

Mountain site and creating a Blue Ribbon Commission to find

another way of disposing of high level nuclear waste;

withdrawing its Yucca Mountain water permit applications from

the State of Nevada; repurposing funds appropriated by

Congress for Yucca Mountain; notifying employees supporting

the Yucca Mountain license application that they may be

separated; and drafting plans to shut down the Yucca Mountain

site. Petitioners argue that the NWPA does not authorize the

DOE to take actions to abandon Yucca Mountain, that

abandoning Yucca Mountain without preparing an

Environmental Impact Statement violates the National

Environmental Policy Act, and that the action should be

overturned as arbitrary and capricious agency action under the

APA. 

In response, the DOE both disputes the merits of

Petitioners’ claims and argues that this court lacks jurisdiction

to hear their petitions. The DOE makes multiple threshold

arguments, contending, inter alia, that Petitioners lack standing

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before this court, that Petitioners’ first claim is unripe for

judicial review, that Petitioners fail to state a claim upon which

relief can be granted, and that there has been no final agency

action which would be reviewable by this court. Any one of

these arguments, if correct, would establish that this court lacks

the authority to grant relief upon these petitions. Because we

agree with the DOE that there is, at least, a lack of finality and

ripeness until the Commission either acts on the DOE’s motion

to withdraw or rules on the license application, we hold that we

lack jurisdiction and therefore cannot address either the merits

of the petitions or the remaining threshold issues.

II.

Ripeness is a justiciability doctrine “‘drawn both from

Article III limitations on judicial power and from prudential

reasons for refusing to exercise jurisdiction.’” Nat’l Park

Hospitality Ass’n v. Dep’t of Interior, 538 U.S. 803, 808 (2003)

(quoting Reno v. Catholic Soc. Services, Inc., 509 U.S. 43, 57

n.18 (1993)). Prudentially, the basic rationale of the ripeness

doctrine “is to prevent the courts, through avoidance of

premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract

disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect

the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative

decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete

way by the challenging parties.” Abbott Labs. v. Gardner, 387

U.S. 136, 148-49 (1967). As the Supreme Court has observed,

“federal courts may exercise power only ‘in the last resort, and

as a necessity.’” Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752 (1984)

(quoting Chicago & Grand Trunk Railway Co. v. Wellman, 143

U.S. 339, 345 (1892)). We have noted that it is sometimes true

that if we do not decide a case prematurely, we may never need

to decide it. Nat’l Treasury Employees Union v. United States,

101 F.3d 1423, 1431 (D.C. Cir. 1996). Refusing to involve the

courts in ongoing administrative matters both protects judicial

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resources and comports with the judiciary’s role as the

governmental branch of last resort. Id. The ripeness doctrine,

even in its prudential aspect, is a threshold inquiry that does not

involve adjudication on the merits and which may be addressed

prior to consideration of other Article IIIjusticiabilitydoctrines. 

Toca Producers v. FERC, 411 F.3d 262, 265 n.* (D.C. Cir.

2005).

When we apply the ripeness doctrine to review of agency

actions, “‘we balance the interests of the court and the agency in

delaying review against the petitioner’s interest in prompt

consideration of allegedly unlawful agency action.’” Toca

Producers, 411 F.3d at 265 (quoting Fed. Express Corp. v.

Mineta, 373 F.3d 112, 118 (D.C. Cir. 2004)). “The interests of

the court and of the agency in withholding judicial review

ordinarily depend upon ‘the fitness of the issues for judicial

decision,’” id. at 266 (quoting Abbott Labs., 387 U.S. at 149),

which depends, inter alia, on whetherthe issues are purely legal,

whether consideration of the issues would benefit from a more

concrete setting, and whether the agency’s actions are

sufficiently final. CTIA–The Wireless Ass’n v. FCC, 530 F.3d

984, 987 (D.C. Cir. 2008); Atl. States Legal Found., Inc. v. EPA,

325 F.3d 281, 284 (D.C. Cir. 2003). “But when an agency

decision may never have its effects felt in a concrete way by the

challenging parties, the prospect of entangling ourselves in a

challenge to such a decision is an element of the fitness

determination as well.” Devia v. NRC, 492 F.3d 421, 424 (D.C.

Cir. 2007) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). 

“Hence, a ‘claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon

contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or

indeed may not occur at all.’” Id. (quoting Texas v. United

States, 523 U.S. 296, 300 (1998) (internal citation and quotation

marks omitted)).

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In this case, Petitioners fear that the DOE will withdraw its

Yucca Mountain license application, significantly delaying or

perhaps permanently preventing the construction of the Yucca

Mountain repository. If the Yucca Mountain repository never

opens, Petitioners argue, the federal government will never

remove the nuclear waste temporarily stored within their

jurisdictions or near where they live, despite the federal

government’s responsibility for doing so. This fear is not

unreasonable, considering that the NWPA ordered the DOE to

“terminate all site specific activities (other than reclamation

activities) at all candidate sites, other than the Yucca Mountain

site.” 42 U.S.C. § 10172(a)(2). But despite the reasonableness

of Petitioners’ fears, their petitions are premature.

A.

Petitioners’ first claim challenges the DOE’s attempt to

withdraw its Yucca Mountain construction license application

from consideration by the Commission. At this stage of the

administrative process, however, the DOE has no say in whether

the Yucca Mountain license application will be reviewed and

granted. That power lies exclusively with the Secretary of the

Commission and the NRC Licensing Board, which already

denied the DOE’s motion to withdraw the license application

and still has the responsibility and authority to review the merits

of the Yucca Mountain application. There are two ongoing

NRC administrative procedures—the Commission’s review of

the Licensing Board’s denial of the DOE motion to withdraw

and the Licensing Board’s review of the Yucca Mountain

construction license application—both of which have the

potential to moot Petitioners’ first claim entirely.

First, the Commission has not yet decided whether it will

review the Licensing Board’s denial of the DOE motion to

withdraw. If the Commission declines to review the denial, the

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DOE will have failed in its attempt to withdraw the Yucca

Mountain application and Petitioners’ first claim will be moot. 

The same outcome will occur if the Commission chooses to

review and then upholds the Licensing Board’s denial of the

DOE motion. The only way in which Petitioner’s first claim

will not become moot is if the Commission chooses to review

and then reverses the Licensing Board’s denial.

Second, independent of the Commission’s review of the

Licensing Board’s denial order, the NRC Licensing Board’s

consideration of the DOE Yucca Mountain license application

has not been completed. Although Petitioners point to evidence

that the Commission has suspended the Licensing Board’s

review, we note that the NWPA requires the Commission to

review the application, see 42 U.S.C. § 10134(d) (“The

Commission shall consider an application for a construction

authorization for all or part of a repository . . . .”), and therefore

we must assume that the Commission will comply with its

statutory mandate. If the Licensing Board denies the

application, consideration of Yucca Mountain as a location for

the federal nuclear waste repository will come to an end. 

Although this outcome will not remedy the harm that Petitioners

potentially face—indefinite exposure to the nuclear waste

temporarily stored at sites in Washington and South

Carolina—the Licensing Board’s disapproval of Yucca

Mountain on technical and scientific grounds will be a final

agency action that Petitioners may challenge under the APA. 

On the other hand, if the Licensing Board approves the

application, the Commission will issue a construction license for

Yucca Mountain, which would complete the process mandated

in the NWPA and remove the legal basis of Petitioners’ first

claim (i.e. the failure of Respondents to comply with the process

mandated by Congress).

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Between the Commission’s possible review of the denial

order and the Licensing Board’s consideration of the Yucca

Mountain license application, the only administrative outcome

that will fail to resolve the issues presented in Petitioner’s first

claim would be if the Commission reviews and overturns the

Licensing Board’s denial, permitting the DOE to withdraw its

license application. At that point, petitioners would have the

opportunity to demonstrate whether the effects of the DOE

action are “‘felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties.’” 

See Devia, 492 F.3d at 424 (quoting Abbott Labs., 387 U.S. at

148-49). Petitioners’ first claim, therefore, is not fit for judicial

decision because “it rests upon ‘contingent future events that

may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’” 

Id. (quoting Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. at 300 (internal

citations and quotation marks omitted)).

Looking to the other aspect of the prudential ripeness

analysis, delaying review of the issues in this case causes little

harm to Petitioners’ interest in prompt consideration of allegedly

unlawful agency action. As we noted above, the NWPA

requires the Commission to “issue a final decision approving or

disapproving the issuance of a construction authorization not

later than the expiration of 3 years after the date of the

submission of such application, except that theCommission may

extend such deadline by not more than 12 months” subject to

specified reporting requirements. 42 U.S.C. §§ 10134(d)-(e). 

Without an extension, the three-year statutory deadline for the

Commission to issue its final decision on the DOE’s Yucca

Mountain application—submitted on June 17, 2008—has

potentially already come and gone. Very soon, the 1

At oral argument, the DOE suggested that the three-year deadline should toll

1

from September 15, 2008, the date when the application was docketed, rather

than from when the application was submitted. We offer no opinion on the

correctness of that suggestion, but note that in either case, the deadline for the

Commission to act is at hand.

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contingencies discussed above should be resolved and

Petitioners—and importantly this court—will know whetherthe

Commission will permit the DOE to withdraw the Yucca

Mountain license application, and if not, whether the

Commission approves or disapproves the application. Should

the Commission fail to act within the deadline specified in the

NWPA, Petitioners would have a new cause of action under this

court’s ruling in Telecommunications Research and Action

Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (hereinafter

“TRAC”). In TRAC, we held that the Courts of Appeals have

exclusive jurisdiction to issue writs of mandamus to compel

agency actions that have been unreasonably delayed. 750 F.2d

at 75. Although mandamus is an extraordinary remedy reserved

for extraordinary circumstances, “we will interfere with the

normal progression of agencyproceedings to correct transparent

violations of a clear duty to act.” In re Am. Rivers and Idaho

Rivers United, 372 F.3d 413, 418 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (emphasis

added) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). We do

so both to protect our own future jurisdiction over the merits of

the dispute and because “[i]t is obvious that the benefits of

agency expertise and creation of a record will not be realized if

the agency never takes action.” Id. (quoting TRAC, 750 F.2d at

76, 79). We will not permit an agency to insulate itself from

judicial review by refusing to act. See, e.g., In re Core

Communications, Inc., 531 F.3d 849, 861-62 (D.C. Cir. 2008)

(granting a writ of mandamus to force the FCC to issue a final

appealable order); Radio-Television News Directors Ass’n v.

FCC, 229 F.3d 269, 308 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (granting a writ of

mandamus to vacate an FCC order when the FCC failed to take

final action).

Having concluded that Petitioners’ challenge of the DOE’s

motion to withdraw is unfit for judicial decision and that

Petitioners’ interest in prompt consideration of allegedly

unlawful agency action will be onlyminimally harmed by delay,

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we further conclude that Petitioners’ first claim is not ripe and

is therefore outside of our jurisdiction.

B.

Petitioners’ second claim challenges DOE actions which are

simply not reviewable by this court. Petitioners characterize the

agency action challenged in their second claim as the

“determination made on or about January 29, 2010, by

Respondents President Obama, Secretary Chu and DOE to

unilaterally and irrevocably terminate the Yucca Mountain

repository process mandated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act,

42 U.S.C. §§ 10101-10270.” Agency actions are reviewable by

courts of appeal under the terms of 5 U.S.C. § 704. That section

delineates reviewable actions as “[a]gency action made

reviewable by statute and final agency action for which there is

no other adequate remedy in a court . . . .” Petitioners have

failed to identify any agency action coming within that

delineation. Otherwise put, petitioners have set forth no discrete

action mandated by the NWPA that the DOE has failed to

perform or performed inadequately. In 42 U.S.C. § 10134(b),

Congress ordered the DOE to “submit to the Commission an

application for a construction authorization for a repository.” 

The DOE completed this task on June 17, 2008, and its

application is currently under review by the NRC Licensing

Board. Despite the DOE’s publicly stated desire and intention

to abandon the Yucca Mountain repository, the DOE has shown

us nothing that grants it the authority or ability to stop the NRC

Licensing Board from continuing its congressionally-mandated

review and has entered no order or official decision inconsistent

with its statutory duty. See 42 U.S.C. § 10134(d). Unable to

point to any unlawful action by the DOE, Petitioners challenge

DOE’s public announcement regarding Yucca Mountain. 

Neither the NWPA nor the APA authorizes this type of legal

attack.

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The DOE’s policy announcement, which has no legal

consequence, is not a “final decision or action of the Secretary”

or a “final agency action” as required by 42 U.S.C.

§ 10139(a)(1)(A) and 5 U.S.C. § 704 . See Bennett v. Spear, 520

U.S. 154, 178 (1997) (holding that “final” agency action must

both mark consummation of an agency’s decision making

process and either determine rights or obligations or be an action

from which legal consequences will flow). Nor, at this stage of

the ongoing Yucca Mountain saga, has the DOE failed to make

any decision or take any action mandated by the NWPA—as

required to give this court jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C.

§ 10139(a)(1)(B)—or made a decision or taken an action which

violates the Constitution—as required to give this court

jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. § 10139(a)(1)(C). Likewise, since

the DOE has not taken any action prohibited under the NWPA

or failed to take any action required by the NWPA, the DOE’s

failure to prepare an environmental impact statement before

making its announcement, as would otherwise have been

required by 42 U.S.C. § 10139(a)(1)(D), is not yet an official,

reviewable decision. Finally, to the extent that Petitioners wish

to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld” based on the

language of 5 U.S.C. § 706(1), “a claim under § 706(1) can

proceed only where a plaintiff asserts that an agency failed to

take a discrete agency action that it is required to take.” Norton

v. S. Utah Wilderness Alliance, 542 U.S. 55, 64 (2004)

(emphasis in original). At least to this date, the DOE has not

failed to take any discrete agency action that Congress ordered

it to take. Petitioners’ general complaints about the DOE’s new

policy regardingYucca Mountain are simply not justiciable. See

Cobell v. Kempthorne, 455 F.3d 301, 307 (D.C. Cir. 2006)

(“Because an on-going program or policy is not, in itself, a ‘final

agency action’ under the APA, our jurisdiction does not extend

to reviewing generalized complaints about agency behavior.”

(quotation and citation omitted)).

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III.

The NWPA set forth a process and schedule for the siting,

construction, and operation of a federal repository for the

disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. 

At this point in that process, the DOE has submitted a

construction license application for the Yucca Mountain

repository and the Commission maintains a statutory duty to

review that application. Despite the respondents’

pronouncements and apparent intentions, unless and until

Petitioners are able to demonstrate that one of the respondents

has either violated a clear duty to act or otherwise affirmatively

violated the law, Petitioners’ challenges to the ongoing

administrative process are premature. For the reasons set forth

above, we conclude that we lack jurisdiction over Petitioners’

claims. The petitions are dismissed.

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BROWN, Circuit Judge, concurring: I fully concur with the 

court’s opinion. I write separately only to note that after 

setting the President and his administration firmly in their 

sights, Petitioners all but ignore the NRC—a named party in 

this suit and the only agency with an existing obligation under 

the NWPA. “[O]ur jurisdiction . . . is not limited to situations 

in which ‘final action,’ as it is commonly understood, has 

indeed been taken.” Sierra Club v. Thomas, 828 F.2d 783, 

793 (D.C. Cir. 1987). “Agency inaction may represent 

‘agency recalcitrance . . . in the face of a clear statutory 

duty . . . of such magnitude that it amounts to an abdication of 

statutory responsibility.’” Id. (quoting Pub. Citizen Health 

Research Gr. v. FDA, 740 F.2d 21, 32 (D.C. Cir. 1984)) 

(alterations in original). It is arguable the NRC has abdicated 

its statutory responsibility under the NWPA. The 

Commissioner publically said: 

The agency budget encompasses the licensing board, 

so if there is no money for the program, there is no 

money for licensing activities and for the licensing 

board itself . . . Our overall focus is on closing out 

our review of the license application, and so that 

includes the licensing board, it includes everything 

that is involved in that. If there were unresolved 

legal questions, they would stay unresolved legal 

questions. 

Steve Tetreault, NRC Chairman Says Yucca Mountain 

Closeout to Include License Panel ̧ LAS VEGAS REV. J., Feb. 

2, 2011 (quoting Greg Jaczko). But Petitioners simply do not 

press this agency inaction claim. Despite months of extensive 

briefing and protracted questioning at oral argument, 

Petitioners still see only the President and his administration 

obstructing their path to judicial review. Nietzsche once 

remarked that “many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they 

have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.” Such stubbornness 

may snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 17 of 36
KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge, concurring: 

“No one doubts Congress’s power to create a vast and 

varied federal bureaucracy. But where, in all this, is 

the role for oversight by an elected President? The 

Constitution requires that a President chosen by the 

entire Nation oversee the execution of the laws.” Free 

Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight 

Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3155-56 (2010). 

“The President has been given the power to oversee 

executive officers; he is not limited, as in Harry 

Truman’s lament, to persuading his unelected 

subordinates to do what they ought to do without 

persuasion. In its pursuit of a workable government, 

Congress cannot reduce the Chief Magistrate to a 

cajoler-in-chief.” Id. at 3157 (internal quotation 

marks, citation, and alteration omitted). 

Who in the Executive Branch is ultimately responsible 

and accountable for deciding whether to terminate the project 

for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain? Under the text 

of the Constitution, the answer seems simple: the President of 

the United States. But it is not so simple. This case illustrates 

the point. Given the importance and bitterness of the 

underlying dispute over Yucca Mountain, I think it worth 

exploring how we got here, constitutionally speaking. 

I 

The Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission are both agencies in the Executive Branch. See 

5 U.S.C. § 105; 42 U.S.C. § 7131 (Department of Energy); 42 

U.S.C. § 5841 (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). As a result 

of the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s 

Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, there are two kinds 

of agencies in the Executive Branch: executive agencies and 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 18 of 36
2 

independent agencies. The Secretary of Energy is removable 

by the President at will, meaning the Department of Energy is 

an executive agency that the President has authority to direct 

and supervise. By statute, the Commissioners of the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission are removable by the President only 

for cause, not at will, meaning that the Commission is an 

independent agency that operates free of presidential direction 

and supervision. 

This case is a mess because the executive agency (the 

Department of Energy) and the independent agency (the 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission) have overlapping statutory 

responsibilities with respect to the Yucca Mountain project. 

In particular, both agencies have critical roles in interpreting 

the relevant statutes and in exercising discretion under those 

laws. Of importance here, the statutes give the independent 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission the final word in the 

Executive Branch on whether the Executive Branch may 

terminate the Yucca Mountain project. At the President’s 

direction, the Department of Energy decided to withdraw the 

Yucca Mountain license application and terminate the Yucca 

Mountain nuclear storage project. A board within the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission preliminarily rejected the decision of 

the Department of Energy (and thus of the President) to 

withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application. But the 

full Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to decide 

whether it will approve or reject the decision of the 

Department of Energy. Because the Commission has not yet 

acted on the Department of Energy’s request, the Court’s 

opinion today properly holds this case unripe under the 

existing legal framework. 

 

Taking a step back and reading the Constitution, 

however, it seems odd that the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission has the final word within the Executive Branch 

on this important issue. One would think that the President of 

the United States controls the Executive Branch and would be 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 19 of 36
3 

able to direct the interpretation of law and exercise of 

discretion by all agencies in the Executive Branch. See U.S. 

CONST. art. II. The first 15 words of Article II state quite 

plainly that “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a 

President of the United States of America” – not some of the 

executive power, but all of it. And Article II later says that 

the President alone has the authority and responsibility to 

“take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” As 

Professor Amar has summarized, “What Article II did make 

emphatically clear from start to finish was that the president 

would be personally responsible for his branch.” AKHIL REED 

AMAR, AMERICA’S CONSTITUTION: A BIOGRAPHY 197 (2005). 

The Framers’ decision to give the President responsibility 

for the executive power and to take care that the laws be 

faithfully executed was not just about the lines on the 

Executive Branch organizational chart. The Constitution’s 

Framers sought a national government that would be more 

effective than under the Articles of Confederation (especially 

in maintaining national security, facilitating economic growth, 

and raising necessary revenue) and a national government that 

would be more accountable to the people and more protective 

of liberty than under the rule of King George III. The 

Framers were particularly cognizant, moreover, of the link 

between accountability of officials in the Legislative and 

Executive Branches and individual liberty. The Framers 

designed our constitutional structure with the idea that 

unaccountable power is inconsistent with individual liberty. 

“The Framers created a structure in which ‘a dependence on 

the people’ would be the ‘primary control on the 

government.’” Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. 

Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3157 (2010) 

(quoting THE FEDERALIST NO. 51 (Madison)) (alteration 

omitted). 

The President is dependent on the people for election and 

re-election, but the officers of agencies in the Executive 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 20 of 36
4 

Branch are not. Presidential control of those agencies thus 

helps maintain democratic accountability and thereby ensure 

the people’s liberty. See id; see also Bond v. United States, 

No. 09-1227, slip op. at 10 (U.S. June 16, 2011) (“[T]he 

dynamic between and among the branches is not the only 

object of the Constitution’s concern. The structural principles 

secured by the separation of powers protect the individual as 

well.”); Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 450 

(1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“Liberty is always at stake 

when one or more of the branches seek to transgress the 

separation of powers.”); Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 

727 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“The purpose of the 

separation and equilibration of powers in general, and of the 

unitary Executive in particular, was not merely to assure 

effective government but to preserve individual freedom.”). 

Reading only the text of Article II, one would assume 

that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would report to the 

President, not the President to the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission. If two agencies in the Executive Branch were 

not on the same page (as may happen in this case if the 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejects the Department of 

Energy’s withdrawal application), the President presumably 

would have the authority to resolve that disagreement. If an 

agency were departing from the President’s preferred course 

(as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may do), the 

President presumably would have the authority to prevent 

that. And if an agency were taking too long to make a critical 

legal or policy decision (as appears to be the case with the 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission), the President presumably 

would have the authority to fix that as well. 

But that conception of the constitutional chain of 

command turns out to be inaccurate with respect to 

independent agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission – a consequence of the Supreme Court’s 1935 

decision in Humphrey’s Executor. In that case, the Supreme 

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5 

Court, over the strenuous objection of President Franklin 

Roosevelt, upheld the constitutionality of independent 

agencies – that is, agencies whose heads are removable by the 

President only for cause, not at will, and that thus operate free 

of presidential direction and supervision. 

President Roosevelt wanted to direct and supervise the 

Federal Trade Commission in the exercise of its statutorily 

assigned duties and discretion. In 1933, shortly after taking 

office, he therefore fired Commissioner William Humphrey, 

who disagreed with the President’s views on antitrust and 

competition issues. Humphrey sued, arguing that under the 

FTC statute he could be removed only for cause, not at will, 

and that policy disagreement did not constitute a sufficient 

basis to be removed for cause. For his part, the President 

argued that he must be able to remove subordinate executive 

officers at will in order to exercise the executive power and 

take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He contended 

that the statutory restriction on removing Humphrey was 

unconstitutional under Article II of the Constitution and the 

Court’s landmark decision nine years earlier in Myers v. 

United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926). In Myers, Chief Justice 

and former President Taft wrote a lengthy opinion for the 

Court holding that the President possessed the constitutional 

authority to cause the removal of subordinate officers in the 

Executive Branch. 

Notwithstanding the text of Article II and Myers, the 

Supreme Court in Humphrey’s Executor sided with 

Humphrey and ruled that President Roosevelt acted illegally 

when he fired Humphrey. The Humphrey’s Executor Court 

determined that the President’s “simple disagreement with the 

[independent agency’s] policies or priorities” did not 

“constitute ‘good cause’ for . . . removal.” Free Enterprise,

130 S. Ct. at 3157. 

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6 

Humphrey’s Executor thus approved the creation of 

“independent” agencies – independent, that is, from 

presidential control and thus from democratic accountability. 

See Humphrey’s Executor, 295 U.S. at 628 (independent 

agencies “cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an 

arm or an eye of the executive”); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 

1, 133 (1976) (“The Court in [Humphrey’s Executor] 

carefully emphasized that . . . the members of such agencies 

were to be independent of the Executive in their day-to-day 

operations . . . .”); see also Freytag v. Comm’r of Internal 

Revenue, 501 U.S. 868, 916 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in 

part) (“independent regulatory agencies” are “specifically 

designed not to have the quality . . . of being subject to the 

exercise of political oversight and sharing the President’s 

accountability to the people”) (internal quotation marks and 

alteration omitted); Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 

411 (1989) (statutory provisions restricting presidential 

removal of agency heads are “specifically crafted to prevent 

the President from exercising ‘coercive influence’ over 

independent agencies”).1

Humphrey’s Executor is perhaps best explained by the 

fact that it was decided in 1935 on what became known as 

Roosevelt’s “Black Monday.” It was one in a line of 

 1

 The question of presidential control over agencies is distinct 

from the question of the executive power vis-à-vis congressional 

power: “The unitary executive theory merely means that truly 

executive power is concentrated in the President; the theory alone 

does not specify what counts as executive power in the first place.” 

Neal Kumar Katyal, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The Legal Academy 

Goes to Practice, 120 HARV. L. REV. 65, 69 n.16 (2006). For 

example, one could believe, as Chief Justice Taft and President 

Roosevelt did, that the President must have the authority to control 

subordinate officers in the Executive Branch and at the same time 

could believe that the War Powers Resolution, which limits the 

President’s power to wage war without congressional approval, is 

constitutional. 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 23 of 36
7 

decisions issued in 1935 and 1936 – including two others on 

the same day as Humphrey’s Executor – by a Supreme Court 

seemingly bent on resisting President Roosevelt and his New 

Deal policies. See Geoffrey P. Miller, Independent Agencies, 

1986 SUP. CT. REV. 41, 93 (“Humphrey’s Executor, as 

commentators have noted, is one of the more egregious 

opinions to be found on pages of the United States Supreme 

Court Reports.”). The other cases in that line have long since 

been discarded as relics of an overly activist anti-New Deal 

Supreme Court. See Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414 

(1944) (backing away from prior opinions that had expanded 

non-delegation doctrine); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel 

Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937) (backing away from prior cases that 

had narrowly interpreted Commerce Clause); see also West 

Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937) (backing 

away from prior decisions that had aggressively used 

substantive due process doctrine to overturn state legislation). 

But Humphrey’s Executor survived. And it lives on. 

II 

Because of Humphrey’s Executor, the President cannot 

remove an independent agency’s officers when the agency 

pursues policies or makes decisions the President disagrees 

with. Because the power to remove is the power to control, 

the President lacks control over an independent agency – that 

is, the President lacks the power to direct or supervise an 

agency such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To be 

sure, the President has power to cajole. The President also 

has the power to periodically appoint independent agency 

heads when the terms of old independent agency heads expire. 

But the President’s power to cajole or to appoint – when not 

accompanied by the power to remove – is not the power to 

direct, supervise, or control, as a President or one who has 

worked for a President could readily explain. As the Supreme 

Court has stated: “Once an officer is appointed, it is only the 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 24 of 36
8 

authority that can remove him, and not the authority that 

appointed him, that he must fear and, in the performance of 

his functions, obey.” Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 726 

(1986); see also Elena Kagan, Presidential Administration, 

114 HARV. L. REV. 2245, 2308-09 (2001) (“When the 

independents were involved, [the President] acted not as the 

commander, but as a simple petitioner of the administrative 

state. Any other approach often would have proved futile 

(and therefore embarrassing): [The President], after all, had 

appointed only a subset of the commissioners, could remove 

none of them, and lacked any claim recognized in either the 

legal or the political sphere to their submission.”). 

Because of Humphrey’s Executor, the President to this 

day lacks day-to-day control over large swaths of regulatory 

policy and enforcement in the Executive Branch – from 

communications regulation (the FCC) to labor regulation (the 

NLRB) to securities regulation (the SEC) to nuclear power 

regulation (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Those and 

many other independent agencies have huge policymaking 

and enforcement authority and greatly affect the lives and 

liberties of the American people. Yet those independent 

agencies are democratically unaccountable – neither elected 

by the people nor supervised in their day-to-day activities by 

the elected President.2

 2 One theory behind making agencies such as the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission independent instead of executive was that 

independent agencies would make only “expert” scientific 

decisions and that such expert decisions should be made in an 

apolitical way. But those independent agencies also have to make a 

slew of non-scientific legal and policy judgments – such as how to 

interpret governing statutes, how to exercise policy discretion under 

those statutes, and whom to charge for violations of the law. Those 

legal and policy decisions generally cannot be resolved simply by 

scientific formula. Moreover, executive agencies such as EPA and 

FDA often have to make the same kinds of expert scientific 

decisions as independent agencies, yet those agencies have not been 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 25 of 36
9 

This case is a good example of the continuing 

significance of Humphrey’s Executor and the independent 

agency structure it endorsed. Interpreting the relevant nuclear 

waste statutes, the President of the United States has decided 

not to use Yucca Mountain as a repository for nuclear waste. 

As a candidate, the President campaigned on this issue. See, 

e.g., Scott Conroy, Obama’s Nevada Ad Hits McCain on 

Yucca Mountain ̧ CBS NEWS (Aug. 9, 2008). And as 

President, he has followed through on that commitment. See 

e.g., DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, FY 2011 CONGRESSIONAL 

BUDGET REQUEST, BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS 8 (Feb. 2010) (J.A. 

688-89) (“The Administration has determined that developing 

a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is not a workable 

option and has decided to terminate” work on the Yucca 

Mountain project); Statement of Carol Browner, Director of 

White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, at 

News Conference Announcing Blue Ribbon Commission on 

America’s Nuclear Future (Jan. 29, 2010) (J.A. Addendum 

177) (“As the President has said many times, we’re done with 

Yucca . . . . [W]e work for the President, we take our 

 

made independent. An agency’s status as an executive agency does 

not preclude it from developing and operating with customary 

independence, such as the Attorney General and Solicitor General 

possess with respect to many decisions. But the President remains 

accountable for those officers’ decisions. And the President has the 

legal authority to make the final decisions. There is no doubt, for 

example, that the Attorney General reports to the President, not the 

President to the Attorney General. Last Term in Free Enterprise, 

the Supreme Court noted: “One can have a government that 

functions without being ruled by functionaries, and a government 

that benefits from expertise without being ruled by experts. Our 

Constitution was adopted to enable the people to govern 

themselves, through their elected leaders.” Free Enterprise Fund v. 

Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3156 

(2010).

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 26 of 36
10 

directions from the President, the President has been clear that 

Yucca Mountain was not an option.”). 

Whether the President’s Yucca Mountain decision, as 

implemented by his subordinates in the Department of 

Energy, is in fact consistent with federal statutory law is a 

hotly disputed question. If it is not consistent with the 

statutory law, the courts could so rule in an appropriate case. 

Cf., e.g., Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006); FDA v. 

Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120 (2000). 

But that’s not the question at issue here because the President 

turns out not to have the final word in the Executive Branch 

on that issue. He is powerless to direct or supervise the 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is the independent 

agency charged with determining whether the Executive 

Branch may terminate the Yucca project. If the Commission 

rejects the President’s policy decision and legal interpretation 

– by rejecting the pending application by the Department of 

Energy (the President’s subordinate) to withdraw the 

licensing application for Yucca Mountain – then the President 

may be forced to continue with the Yucca Mountain project 

simply because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told 

him so.3

In its recent Free Enterprise decision, the Supreme Court 

recognized the constitutional and practical issues that 

continue to result from the Humphrey’s Executor structure. 

Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight 

 3

 The oddity of the situation is apparent in the Government’s 

brief in this case. The Department of Justice filed a single brief for 

the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

But the brief includes chestnuts such as this: “Because the 

Commission has not reached a decision on the motion to withdraw 

[the Yucca Mountain license application], NRC does not join the 

merits-based arguments set forth in this brief on behalf of DOE . . . 

.” Gov’t Br. at 7.

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11 

Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3155-59 (2010); see also FCC v. Fox 

Television Stations, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 1800, 1816-17 (2009); id. 

at 1825-26 (Stevens, J., dissenting); id. at 1829-30 (Breyer, J., 

dissenting). In Free Enterprise, the Supreme Court drew an 

important constitutional line by refusing to extend 

Humphrey’s Executor so far as to allow two levels of forcause removal – an independent agency appointed by another 

independent agency. See Free Enterprise, 130 S. Ct. 3138.4

In so doing, the Free Enterprise Court repeatedly 

emphasized the central role of the President under Article II 

and the importance of that role to a government that remains 

accountable to the people. The Court’s rhetoric and reasoning 

are notably in tension with Humphrey’s Executor – and, 

indeed, in tension with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 

having the final word in the Executive Branch on this Yucca 

Mountain issue: 

 “Article II confers on the President the general 

administrative control of those executing the laws. It 

is his responsibility to take care that the laws be 

faithfully executed. The buck stops with the 

President, in Harry Truman’s famous phrase. As we 

explained in Myers, the President therefore must have 

some power of removing those for whom he can not 

 4 In this case, the issue created by Humphrey’s Executor is that 

the President’s decision on the Yucca Mountain issue is not the 

final word in the Executive Branch. In other cases, the issue 

created by Humphrey’s Executor is that it allows Presidents to 

avoid making important decisions or to avoid taking responsibility 

for decisions made by independent agencies. When independent 

agencies make such important decisions, no elected official can be 

held accountable and the people “cannot ‘determine on whom the 

blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of 

pernicious measures ought really to fall.’” Free Enterprise, 130 S. 

Ct. at 3155 (quoting THE FEDERALIST NO. 70 (Hamilton)).

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 28 of 36
12 

continue to be responsible.” 130 S. Ct. at 3152 

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 

 “The people do not vote for the Officers of the United 

States. They instead look to the President to guide the 

assistants or deputies subject to his superintendence. 

Without a clear and effective chain of command, the 

public cannot determine on whom the blame or the 

punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of 

pernicious measures ought really to fall. That is why 

the Framers sought to ensure that those who are 

employed in the execution of the law will be in their 

proper situation, and the chain of dependence be 

preserved; the lowest officers, the middle grade, and 

the highest, will depend, as they ought, on the 

President, and the President on the community.” Id. at 

3155 (internal quotation marks, citations, and 

alteration omitted). 

 Granting an agency “executive power without the 

Executive’s oversight . . . subverts the President’s 

ability to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed – 

as well as the public’s ability to pass judgment on his 

efforts.” That result is “incompatible with the 

Constitution’s separation of powers.” Id.

 “No one doubts Congress’s power to create a vast and 

varied federal bureaucracy. But where, in all this, is 

the role for oversight by an elected President? The 

Constitution requires that a President chosen by the 

entire Nation oversee the execution of the laws.” Id. 

at 3155-56. 

 “One can have a government that functions without 

being ruled by functionaries, and a government that 

benefits from expertise without being ruled by experts. 

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13 

Our Constitution was adopted to enable the people to 

govern themselves, through their elected leaders. The 

growth of the Executive Branch, which now wields 

vast power and touches almost every aspect of daily 

life, heightens the concern that it may slip from the 

Executive’s control, and thus from that of the people.” 

Id. at 3156. 

 “[T]he dissent dismisses the importance of removal as 

a tool of supervision, concluding that the President’s 

power to get something done more often depends on 

who controls the agency’s budget requests and 

funding, the relationships between one agency or 

department and another, purely political factors 

(including Congress’ ability to assert influence), and 

indeed whether particular unelected officials support 

or resist the President’s policies. The Framers did not 

rest our liberties on such bureaucratic minutiae.” Id.

at 3156 (internal quotation marks, citation, and 

alteration omitted). 

 “The Framers created a structure in which a 

dependence on the people would be the primary 

control on the government. That dependence is 

maintained, not just by parchment barriers, but by 

letting ambition counteract ambition, giving each 

branch the necessary constitutional means, and 

personal motives, to resist encroachments of the 

others. A key constitutional means vested in the 

President – perhaps the key means – was the power of 

appointing, overseeing, and controlling those who 

execute the laws.” Id. at 3157 (internal quotation 

marks, citations, and alterations omitted). 

 “The President has been given the power to oversee 

executive officers; he is not limited, as in Harry 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 30 of 36
14 

Truman’s lament, to persuading his unelected 

subordinates to do what they ought to do without 

persuasion. In its pursuit of a workable government, 

Congress cannot reduce the Chief Magistrate to a 

cajoler-in-chief.” Id. (internal quotation marks, 

citation, and alteration omitted). 

 Even “[b]road power” over an independent agency’s 

functions – for example, with respect to approving the 

agency’s budget – “is not equivalent to the power to 

remove” agency heads. “[A]ltering the budget or 

powers of an agency as a whole is a problematic way 

to control an inferior officer. The [supervisor] cannot 

wield a free hand to supervise individual [officers] if it 

must destroy the [agency] in order to fix it.” Id. at 

3158-59. 

 “The Constitution that makes the President 

accountable to the people for executing the laws also 

gives him the power to do so. That power includes, as 

a general matter, the authority to remove those who 

assist him in carrying out his duties. Without such 

power, the President could not be held fully 

accountable for discharging his own responsibilities; 

the buck would stop somewhere else. Such diffusion 

of authority would greatly diminish the intended and 

necessary responsibility of the chief magistrate 

himself.” Id. at 3164 (internal quotation marks and 

citation omitted). 

The Court’s various statements in Free Enterprise may 

be of great significance – as Justice Breyer seemed to suggest 

in issuing a strongly worded dissent in Free Enterprise and in 

reading it at length from the bench. To be sure, the Free 

Enterprise Court said that it was not reconsidering 

Humphrey’s Executor because the double for-cause removal 

USCA Case #10-1050 Document #1316111 Filed: 07/01/2011 Page 31 of 36
15 

question presented in Free Enterprise was “far more modest.” 

Id. at 3157. But there can be little doubt that the Free 

Enterprise Court’s wording and reasoning are in tension with 

Humphrey’s Executor and are more in line with Chief Justice 

Taft’s majority opinion in Myers.

5

In addition to Free Enterprise, another recent 

development has prompted greater attention to the 

Humphrey’s Executor independent agency structure: the 

uneven effectiveness of some of those agencies. For example, 

the financial crisis of 2008 obviously caused widespread 

hardship, and some say that several independent agencies 

were in part responsible for the collapse. When one 

presidential candidate in 2008 contended in the midst of the 

crisis that the President should fire the chairman of the SEC, 

many responded – with apparent justification, given 

 5 Importantly, as Free Enterprise itself illustrated, Humphrey’s 

Executor is not necessary to the existence of any particular agency. 

Rather, Humphrey’s Executor affects only the accountability of the 

agencies and the control the President exercises over them. As 

Free Enterprise ruled, therefore, the remedy for holding an 

independent agency unconstitutional under Article II is not to 

abolish the agency. See 130 S. Ct. at 3161-62. Rather, the remedy 

is simply to ensure that the agency is more accountable to the 

people by giving the elected and accountable President greater 

control over the agency (by making the heads of agencies 

removable at will, not for cause). Similarly, if President Roosevelt 

had prevailed in the Humphrey’s case itself, the Federal Trade 

Commission would not have disappeared. Rather, the agency 

simply would have become accountable to the President and thus to 

the people. Although Humphrey’s Executor is sometimes criticized 

by those who oppose the size and scope of the modern 

administrative state, the case is a mistaken target for that criticism. 

Humphrey’s Executor does not affect the size and scope of the 

administrative state. Rather, Humphrey’s Executor affects the 

democratic accountability (or lack thereof) of the independent 

agencies within the administrative state.

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16 

Humphrey’s Executor – that the President had no such power 

under current law. See, e.g., Jeff Mason, McCain Says He 

Would Fire Republican SEC Chief Cox, REUTERS (Sept. 18, 

2008). As that episode showed, in the Humphrey’s Executorstyle Executive Branch, the buck doesn’t always stop with the 

President. Cf. THE FEDERALIST NO. 70 (Hamilton) (“A feeble 

executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A 

feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; 

and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, 

must be, in practice, a bad government.”). 

III 

All of that said, Humphrey’s Executor is an entrenched 

Supreme Court precedent, protected by stare decisis. The 

point of explaining its history and continuing repercussions 

here is not to suggest that the case should be overturned. But 

the fact that courts do and must accept the Humphrey’s 

Executor precedent does not require ignoring the issues of 

accountability, liberty, and government effectiveness raised 

by independent agencies. 

Various proposals have been advanced to enhance the 

accountability and effectiveness of independent agencies in a 

manner consistent with Humphrey’s Executor. 

For example, writing for four justices, Justice Breyer 

recently suggested that judicial review under the 

Administrative Procedure Act’s arbitrary and capricious 

standard perhaps should be more intensive when courts 

review actions of independent agencies. Justice Breyer noted 

that the independent agency’s “comparative freedom from 

ballot-box control makes it all the more important that courts 

review its decisionmaking to assure compliance with 

applicable provisions of the law – including law requiring that 

major policy decisions be based upon articulable reasons.” 

FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 1800, 1829-

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17 

30 (2009) (Breyer, J., dissenting). Justice Scalia, writing for 

four Justices, disagreed with that suggestion, arguing that 

there was “no reason to magnify the separation-of-powers 

dilemma posed by the Headless Fourth Branch by letting 

Article III judges – like jackals stealing the lion’s kill – 

expropriate some of the power that Congress has wrested 

from the unitary Executive.” Id. at 1817 (citation omitted). 

Of course, Justice Scalia has previously expressed severe 

criticism of Humphrey’s Executor. See Morrison v. Olson, 

487 U.S. 654, 725-27 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting). So his 

point in Fox seemed to be that he would prefer overruling 

Humphrey’s Executor to the half-a-loaf approach articulated 

by Justice Breyer.6

Others have suggested, given the Article II backdrop, that 

an agency may be considered independent rather than 

executive only if Congress has expressly said as much, by 

placing for-cause limits on removal of the agency head. 

Indeed, Justice Breyer raised this issue in the Free Enterprise

case. See Transcript of Oral Argument at 18, Free Enterprise 

Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138 

(2010) (No. 08-861) (“The SEC. What . . . restrictions? 

Because, interestingly enough, my law clerks have been 

unable to find any statutory provision that says that the 

President of the United States can remove an SEC 

commissioner only for cause. . . . It’s silent.”); see also Free 

Enterprise, 130 S. Ct. at 3182-84 (Breyer, J., dissenting). For 

example, the FCC and the SEC were created in the interim 

between Myers and Humphrey’s Executor (that is, between 

1926 and 1935), and Congress did not include for-cause 

removal provisions in their governing statutes, no doubt 

because such provisions were thought to be unconstitutional 

after Myers. In the wake of Humphrey’s Executor, it 

nonetheless became customary to treat multi-member 

commissions created without for-cause removal provisions in 

 6

 Justice Kennedy did not take a position on this issue in Fox. 

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the interim between Myers and Humphrey’s Executor as if 

they were independent. But Congress never went back and 

actually made the SEC and FCC Commissioners removable 

only for cause.7

Moreover, as President Roosevelt suggested in the wake 

of Humphrey’s Executor itself, Congress and the President 

remain free to craft legislation that would increase the 

accountability of these agencies by making the agency heads 

removable at will – accompanied, if Congress chooses, by 

more tightly drawn substantive statutes so as to prevent 

excessive delegations of power to the Executive Branch or 

perceived concentration of power in the President. 

Humphrey’s Executor holds only that independent agencies 

are constitutionally permissible, not that such agencies are 

constitutionally required. The political branches have their 

own authority and responsibility to interpret the Constitution 

in a situation like this and, in any event, are able as a policy 

matter to ensure that agencies are accountable to the people 

and run efficiently and effectively. Cf. Presidential 

Memorandum on Government Reform for Competitiveness 

and Innovation, 76 Fed. Reg. 14,273 (Mar. 11, 2011); THE 

PRESIDENT’S COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT

(“the Brownlow Committee”), REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE 

 7

 There is one post-Humphrey’s case in which the Court 

suggested that there could be such a thing as an implied 

independent agency. See Wiener v. United States, 357 U.S. 349, 

353-56 (1958). Assistant Attorney General Dellinger for the Office 

of Legal Counsel later opined that the “rationale of Wiener, which 

is essentially that Congress must have implied a for-cause removal 

restriction when the Court believes that the functions of the agency 

demand such tenure protection, seems questionable.” The 

Constitutional Separation of Powers Between the President and 

Congress, 20 Op. Off. Legal Counsel 124, 168 n.115 (1996) 

(citation omitted). Whether Wiener applies to the SEC and FCC, 

for example, is a question that would need to be confronted if 

Justice Breyer’s inquiry were further pursued. 

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WITH STUDIES OF ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT IN THE 

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (1937). 

* * * 

I end where I began. This case is a dramatic illustration 

of the continuing significance and implications of 

Humphrey’s Executor. As a result of Humphrey’s Executor 

and the current statutory scheme, the President does not have 

the final word in the Executive Branch about whether to 

terminate the Yucca Mountain project. For now, therefore, 

the ball in this case rests in the Executive Branch not with the 

President, but rather with the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission. 

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