Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-12-01347/USCOURTS-ca13-12-01347-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Aqua Farms Crawfish, Inc.
Not party
Charles Bernard
Not party
Catfish Wholesale, Inc.
Not party
French's Enterprises Seafood Peeling Plant
Not party
Jim Fruge
Not party
International Trade Commission
Appellee
J. Bernard Seafood Processing, Inc.
Not party
Koyo Corporation of U.S.A.
Appellant
Andre Leger
Not party
MPB Corporation
Appellee
Pat Huval Restaurant & Oyster Bar, Inc.
Not party
SKF USA Inc.
Not party
Timken Company
Appellee
United States Customs and Border Protection
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER BAR, INC., 

AQUA FARMS CRAWFISH, INC., CATFISH 

WHOLESALE, INC., CHARLES BERNARD, DBA 

CHARLES' CRAWFISH PAD, ANDRE LEGER, DBA 

CHEZ FRANCOIS, JIM FRUGE, DBA 

FISHERMAN'S COVE, J. BERNARD SEAFOOD 

PROCESSING, INC., FRENCH'S ENTERPRISES 

SEAFOOD PEELING PLANT,

Plaintiffs

SKF USA INC., JTEKT NORTH AMERICA 

CORPORATION (FORMERLY KNOWN AS KOYO 

CORPORATION OF U.S.A.),

Plaintiffs-Appellants

v.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION, UNITED 

STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, 

THE TIMKEN COMPANY, MPB CORPORATION,

Defendants-Appellees

______________________ 

2012-1250, 2012-1347

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States Court of International 

Trade in Nos. 06-CV-0290, 06-CV-0324, 06-CV-0328, 07-

CV-0035, 08-CV-0340, 10-CV-0001, Judge Gregory W. 

Carman.

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2 PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC

______________________ 

Decided: May 7, 2015

______________________ 

HERBERT C. SHELLEY, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant SKF USA Inc. 

Also represented by CHRISTOPHER GENTILE FALCONE. 

JOHN M. GURLEY, Arent Fox, LLP, Washington, DC, 

for plaintiff-appellant JTEKT North America Corporation. 

Also represented by DIANA DIMITRIUC-QUAIA, NANCY 

NOONAN. 

PATRICK VINCENT GALLAGHER, JR., Office of the General Counsel, United States International Trade Commission, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee

International Trade Commission. Also represented by 

NEAL J. REYNOLDS, JAMES M. LYONS, ROBIN LYNN TURNER,

DOMINIC L. BIANCHI. 

MARTIN M. TOMLINSON, Commercial Litigation 

Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of 

Justice, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee 

United States Customs and Border Protection. Also 

represented by ALEXANDER V. SVERDLOV, JOYCE R.

BRANDA, JEANNE E. DAVIDSON, FRANKLIN E. WHITE, JR.;

JESSICA MILLER, SUZANNA HARTZELL-BALLARD, Office of 

Assistant Chief Counsel, United States Customs and 

Border Protection, Indianapolis, IN.

TERENCE PATRICK STEWART, Stewart & Stewart, 

Washington, DC, argued for defendants-appellees The 

Timken Company, MPB Corporation. Also represented by 

PATRICK JOHN MCDONOUGH, GEERT M. DE PREST. 

______________________ 

Before LOURIE, BRYSON, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.

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PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC 3

BRYSON, Circuit Judge.

This is another in a series of cases challenging the 

constitutionality of the Continued Dumping and Subsidy 

Offset Act of 2000, 19 U.S.C. § 1675c(a) (2000), known as 

the CDSOA or “the Byrd Amendment.” We have previously upheld that statute against challenges based on the 

First Amendment and the equal protection component of 

the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. See SKF 

USA, Inc. v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot., 556 F.3d 1337 

(Fed. Cir. 2009); see also Giorgio Foods, Inc. v. United 

States, Nos. 2013-1304 et al., slip op. 13-16 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 

24, 2015); Ashley Furniture Indus., Inc. v. United States, 

734 F.3d 1306, 1310-12 (Fed. Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 135 

S. Ct. 72 (2014); PS Chez Sidney, L.L.C. v. United States 

Int’l Trade Comm’n, 684 F.3d 1374, 1380-81 (Fed. Cir.

2012). Today we address a challenge to the statute in 

which the appellants have asserted that the retroactive 

application of the Byrd Amendment violates due process. 

The Court of International Trade rejected that constitutional attack, and we affirm.

I 

In the prior SKF appeal, we described the legislative 

background of the Byrd Amendment and litigation relating to that amendment in some detail. We therefore 

summarize that background only briefly here. 

The Byrd Amendment provided for the distribution of 

antidumping duties collected by the United States to 

“affected domestic producers” of goods that are subject to 

an antidumping duty order. See 19 U.S.C. § 1675c(b)(1), 

(d). The statute defined an “affected domestic producer” 

as a party that either petitioned for an antidumping duty 

order or was an “interested party in support of the petition.” Id. § 1675c(b)(1)(A). The Byrd Amendment was 

repealed in 2006, Pub. L. 109-171, § 7601(a), 120 Stat. 4, 

154 (2006), but the repealing statute provided that any 

duties paid on goods that entered the United States prior

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4 PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC

to the date of repeal would continue to be distributed in 

accordance with the pre-repeal statutory scheme. Id. 

§ 7601(b), 120 Stat. at 154.

The Byrd Amendment provided for antidumping duties to be distributed to parties who supported the corresponding antidumping petitions that resulted in “orders 

or findings in effect on January 1, 1999, or thereafter.” 19 

U.S.C. § 1675c(d)(1). Because the Byrd Amendment 

directed that distributions of antidumping duties be made 

only to petitioners and those interested parties “in support of the petition,” domestic producers who opposed 

antidumping petitions were not eligible for Byrd Amendment payments. Several ineligible domestic producers 

challenged the constitutionality of the Byrd Amendment 

on various grounds, leading to a number of decisions by 

both the Court of International Trade and this court.

The first challenge to the Byrd Amendment filed in 

this court was brought by SKF USA, Inc. A series of 

antidumping petitions had been filed seeking antidumping duty orders on two classes of imported antifriction 

bearings. SKF opposed the petitions, but the petitions 

were granted in 1989. When the Byrd Amendment was 

subsequently enacted in 2000, the Commerce Department 

distributed the duties collected under those antidumping 

duty orders to those domestic producers who had supported the petitions. Because SKF had opposed the petitions, 

the Byrd Amendment rendered SKF ineligible to receive a 

share of the collected duties. SKF then brought suit in 

the Court of International Trade, seeking a share of the 

duties collected under the antidumping duty orders on 

antifriction bearings for fiscal year 2005. 

SKF’s principal argument was that the Byrd Amendment impermissibly discriminates among participants in 

an antidumping investigation in violation of the First 

Amendment and equal protection principles. SKF prevailed in the Court of International Trade on its equal 

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PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC 5

protection claim, see 451 F. Supp. 2d 1355 (Ct. Int’l Trade 

2006), but this court reversed. On appeal, SKF put forward its First Amendment argument as its primary 

theory for affirmance. We rejected that argument, holding that the Byrd Amendment’s provision granting payments only to parties who supported the antidumping 

petition was not a penalty based on speech, but instead

was a constitutionally permissible reward for supporting 

the enforcement of U.S. antidumping law. SKF USA, Inc. 

v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot., 556 F.3d 1337, 1355-60

(Fed. Cir. 2009). We also rejected SKF’s secondary argument that the Byrd Amendment denied it the equal 

protection of the laws, holding that the statute served a 

substantial governmental interest and was not unconstitutional under the “rational basis standard” typically 

applied to equal protection challenges to economic regulations. Id. at 1360. 

In the two cases that led to this appeal, appellants 

JTEKT and SKF USA, Inc., filed constitutional challenges 

in 2006 to the petition-support requirement of the Byrd 

Amendment.1 They were among those domestic producers who did not support the antidumping petitions relating to antifriction bearings and were therefore not 

awarded distributions of antidumping duties under the 

Byrd Amendment. They alleged that by depriving them 

of a share of those disbursements—while providing disbursements to their competitors who had supported the 

1 SKF USA, Inc., was a party to the first SKF case, 

which was decided by this court in 2009, and is also a 

party to this appeal. The first case involved distributions 

of Byrd Amendment funds for fiscal year 2005; SKF’s 

complaints in this case involve distributions for fiscal 

years 2004 and 2006. SKF has raised additional constitutional challenges to the statute in this appeal beyond 

those raised in the first appeal. 

 

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petitions—the statute violated their rights under the 

First Amendment and both the equal protection and due 

process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment. The trial 

court stayed the action pending this court’s disposition of 

the first SKF appeal.

After this court’s decision in the first SKF case, the 

Court of International Trade dismissed the complaints 

filed by JTEKT and SKF in the present cases for failure to 

state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The 

court also granted judgment as to several claims raised by 

JTEKT and SKF on timeliness and mootness grounds.

While SKF precluded the challenges on First 

Amendment and equal protection grounds, the complaints 

also alleged that the petition-support requirement of the 

Byrd Amendment is impermissibly retroactive. The 

Court of International Trade rejected that argument, 

holding that the retroactive reach of the petition-support 

requirement in the Byrd Amendment is justified by a 

rational legislative purpose and therefore is not vulnerable to attack on constitutional due process grounds. Pat 

Huval Rest. & Oyster Bar, Inc. v. U.S. Int’l Trade 

Comm’n, 823 F. Supp. 2d 1365, 1377 (Ct. Int’l Trade 

2012). The court explained that it “was not arbitrary or 

irrational for Congress to conclude that the legislative 

purpose of rewarding domestic producers who supported 

antidumping petitions . . . would be more fully effectuated 

if the petition support requirement were applied both 

prospectively and retroactively.” 823 F. Supp. 2d at 1377

(quoting N.H. Ball Bearing, Inc. v. United States, 815 F. 

Supp. 2d 1301, 1309 (Ct. Int’l Trade 2012)) (alteration in 

original) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the 

court ruled that it was not impermissible for Congress to 

base eligibility for Byrd Amendment disbursements “on a 

decision on whether to support the petition that Plaintiffs 

made prior to the enactment of the CDSOA.” Id.

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The trial court also held that two of the claims—SKF’s 

claim for fiscal year 2004 distributions and JTEKT’s claim 

for fiscal year 2006 distributions—were barred by the 

two-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. § 2636(i). 

According to the trial court, those claims accrued when 

Customs and Border Protection published its notice of 

intent to distribute duties for the applicable fiscal year in 

the Federal Register, which was more than two years 

before SKF and JTEKT filed their complaints for the 

distributions attributable to those fiscal years. 823 F. 

Supp. 2d at 1374.

SKF and JTEKT took appeals from the judgments 

against them. Their appeals were consolidated and then 

stayed pending this court’s decision in the Ashley Furniture case, which involved a further First Amendment 

challenge to the petition-support requirement of the Byrd 

Amendment. In its decision in Ashley Furniture, this 

court affirmed the dismissal of the First Amendment 

challenges raised in that case. 734 F.3d at 1310-12. 

Following the decision in Ashley Furniture, the private 

appellees—the Timken Corporation and MPB Corporation—moved for summary affirmance in the present

cases. This court denied the motion for summary affirmance, and the cases proceeded to briefing and argument.

II

Issues of retroactivity frequently involve questions of 

whether a particular statute was intended to have retroactive effect or not. This case does not present that issue, 

as it is clear that the Byrd Amendment applies retroactively; that is, it provides for distributions to parties who 

expressed their support for antidumping petitions prior to 

the enactment of the statute. 

In its brief, the International Trade Commission argues that the statute is not retroactive because it does not 

impose any burdens on parties such as SKF and JTEKT 

on account of their failure to support the antidumping

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8 PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC

petitions other than denying them disbursements. However, the appellants contend that they have suffered 

injury from the petition-support requirement of the Byrd 

Amendment because they have suffered competitive 

injury on account of the distributions made to their competitors who supported the petition. Had they been aware 

that support of the petition would result in distributions, 

they argue, they might have acted differently.

The competitive injury claimed by the appellants is 

indirect, unlike injuries typically suffered as a result of 

retroactive legislative acts, such as imposing liability for 

conduct that was not prohibited at the time of the conduct, or imposing fees for past activity after the activity 

has ceased. Nonetheless, the claim of injury is sufficiently 

plausible that it is reasonable to treat the Byrd Amendment as retroactive in effect, even though the retroactivity is substantially less severe than in other cases. See, 

e.g., Canadian Lumber Trade Alliance v. United States, 

425 F. Supp. 2d 1321, 1338-41 (Ct. Int’l Trade 2006), 

vacated in part on other grounds, Canadian Lumber 

Trade Alliance v. United States, 517 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. 

2008). 

For that reason, we treat the Byrd Amendment as 

retroactive in effect. The question before us, then, is 

whether the retroactive application of the statute violates 

the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.2 

2 Several of the cases cited by the appellants address 

the question whether a particular statute should be 

interpreted as having retroactive effect. See Landgraf v. 

USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244 (1994); Princess Cruises, 

Inc. v. United States, 397 F.3d 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2005). 

Because we conclude that the Byrd Amendment is retroactive, those cases have no application here.

 

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The due process restrictions on Congress’s freedom to 

legislate on economic matters are not exacting. The 

Supreme Court explained in Usery v. Turner Elkhorn 

Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 15 (1976), that “legislative Acts 

adjusting the burdens and benefits of economic life come 

to the Court with a presumption of constitutionality, and 

. . . the burden is on one complaining of a due process 

violation to establish that the legislature has acted in an 

arbitrary and irrational way.” That principle is fully 

applicable to retroactive legislation. “[T]he strong deference accorded legislation in the field of national economic 

policy is no less applicable when that legislation is applied 

retroactively.” Pension Benefit Guar. Corp. v. R.A. Gray 

& Co., 467 U.S. 717, 729 (1984). It has been recognized 

that “[t]he retroactive aspects of legislation, as well as the 

prospective aspects, must meet the test of due process, 

and the justifications for the latter may not suffice for the 

former,” id. at 730 (quoting Usery, 428 U.S. at 17), but 

that standard is met so long as the retroactive application 

of the legislation is “justified by a rational legislative 

purpose,” id.; see also Brooks v. Dunlop Mfg. Inc., 702 

F.3d 624, 628 (Fed. Cir. 2012); Commonwealth Edison Co.

The private party appellees argue that the Due Process Clause does not apply in this case because the appellants have not shown that they have been deprived of any 

vested property right. This court has ruled that while the 

presence of vested rights may be relevant to the due 

process analysis of retroactive legislation, it is not a 

threshold test. GPX Int’l Tire Co. v. United States, 780 

F.3d 1136, 1141 (Fed. Cir. 2015). We therefore decide this 

case on the merits of the due process claim and do not 

decide whether the competitive injury claimed by the 

appellants constitutes a deprivation of a cognizable property interest of the sort that would be sufficient to trigger 

procedural due process rights.

 

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v. United States, 271 F.3d 1327, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (en 

banc). 

The Supreme Court has been quite explicit on that

point: “Provided that the retroactive application of a 

statute is supported by a legitimate legislative purpose 

furthered by rational means, judgments about the wisdom 

of such legislation remain within the exclusive province of 

the legislative and executive branches.” Pension Benefit 

Guar. Corp., 467 U.S. at 729. As this court has recognized, “[t]he presumption of constitutionality is extremely 

difficult to overcome,” Wheeler v. United States, 768 F.2d 

1333, 1337 (Fed. Cir. 1985), and therefore “such Due 

Process challenges will only succeed in the rarest of 

cases,” Commonwealth Edison, 271 F.3d at 1345. 

Based on those applicable standards, this court’s 2009 

decision in SKF largely decides this issue against the 

appellants here. In that case, addressing First Amendment and equal protection challenges to the Byrd 

Amendment, the court held that the statute was “within 

the constitutional power of Congress to enact,” that it 

furthered “the government’s substantial interest in enforcing the trade laws,” and that it was “not overly broad.” 

SKF, 556 F.3d at 1360. In particular, the court found 

that the purpose of the statute was “to reward injured 

parties who assisted government enforcement of the 

antidumping laws by initiating or supporting antidumping proceedings,” id. at 1352, and that the government 

“has a substantial interest in rewarding those who assist 

in the enforcement of government policy,” id. at 1355. For 

that reason, the court concluded, it was “rational for 

Congress to conclude that those who did not support the 

petition should not be rewarded,” id. at 1359, and that the 

statute was “rationally related to the government’s legitimate purpose of rewarding parties who promote the 

government’s policy against dumping,” id. at 1360.

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The SKF court’s conclusion that the statute promoted 

a substantial governmental interest in a rational manner, 

albeit reached in the context of First Amendment and 

equal protection analysis, is nonetheless squarely applicable here, where the constitutionality of the statute 

turns on the same standard: whether the statute is rationally related to a legitimate legislative purpose.

In their reply brief, the appellants cite Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55, 62 (1982), for the proposition that 

rewarding parties for past conduct is not a legitimate 

governmental purpose. Zobel, however, does not stand for 

such a broad proposition. In that case, the State of Alaska provided citizens with distributions derived from state 

receipts from natural resource development. The state 

allocated different amounts to citizens based on the 

length of each citizen’s residence in the state, including 

periods prior to the enactment of the statute providing for 

those distributions. 

The Supreme Court in Zobel held that the articulated 

state justification for the disbursement scheme—to reward citizens for unspecified past contributions to the 

state—was not a legitimate state purpose that would 

justify the differential treatment of citizens based on the 

length of their residence in the state. Citing Shapiro v. 

Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), the Court ruled that the 

Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment 

prohibits making the amount of a cash dividend depend 

on the length of a citizen’s residence in the state, just as it 

would prohibit limiting eligibility for civil service jobs or 

government contracts to long-time residents, or charging 

citizens different amounts for the use of public facilities

based on the length of their residence in the state. 457 

U.S. at 63-64.

This case does not involve the issue of discriminating 

among citizens of a state based on the length of their 

residence in the state. It therefore does not run afoul of

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the principles articulated by the Supreme Court in Zobel 

and Shapiro v. Thompson. Nothing in Zobel suggests that 

its analysis is so broad as to render illegitimate any 

legislative action designed to reward conduct that preceded the enactment of the legislation. This court’s decision 

in SKF makes clear that equal protection does not sweep 

that broadly.

The appellants have failed to distinguish the determination of the SKF court that there is a “rational relationship” between a party’s past support for an antidumping 

petition and legislatively sanctioned rewards for that past 

conduct. For that reason, the appellants have not met 

their burden of showing that when it enacted the Byrd 

Amendment, Congress acted in “an arbitrary and irrational way.” Usery, 428 U.S. at 15.3

The appellants make several arguments in support of 

their contention that the retroactive aspect of the Byrd 

Amendment “is not rationally related to a legitimate 

governmental purpose.” Appellants’ Br. 19. First, they 

contend that “[r]ewarding speech and conduct that occurred prior to the enactment of the CDSOA will not

further the governmental purposes of preventing dumping 

or enforcing the trade laws.” Id.

3 This court in GPX set out a nonexclusive list of 

factors that bear on whether particular retroactive legislation is constitutional. They include whether the retroactive provision is wholly unexpected and whether the 

new statute is remedial in nature. GPX, 780 F.3d at 

1142. Another relevant consideration is whether the 

complaining party has suffered a direct burden as a result 

of the retroactive statute. Where, as here, the complaining party has suffered only an indirect injury, the factors 

relating to detrimental reliance have less weight. 

 

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The problem with the appellants’ position is that it 

treats the legislative purpose of rewarding parties that 

have supported antidumping petitions as having only one 

legitimate objective—“incentivizing litigation support 

activities that aid enforcement of the trade laws.” Appellants’ Br. 20. That purpose, according to the appellants, 

is “only rationally related to post-enactment orders where 

domestic producers had notice of the CDSOA’s provisions.” Id. In the appellants’ view, “[t]o reward preenactment litigation support activities would be gratuitous and unrelated to the goal of motivating compliance 

with governmental policy.” Id.

 The appellants are mistaken in two respects. First, 

a legislative purpose to reward particular conduct is valid 

for its own sake, not just because it may have the effect of 

incentivizing particular conduct. Thus, for example, a 

legislative program retroactively providing benefits to 

veterans is justified as a reward to the veterans for their 

service; its rationality does not depend on whether the 

program induces others to join the military. Indeed, some 

such programs have no direct prospective effects at all 

(such as programs limited to veterans of a particular past 

conflict) but nonetheless undoubtedly serve a legitimate

legislative purpose and thus do not offend the Due Process Clause on account of their retroactive effect.4

4 That example cannot be distinguished on the 

ground that in this case the appellants claim to have 

suffered competitive injury from the disbursements made 

to their competitors in the domestic industry; statutory 

benefits to veterans include such benefits as preference in 

civil service employment, which gives veterans a competitive advantage over non-veterans, yet such statutes have 

been consistently upheld against constitutional challenge. 

See, e.g., Regan v. Taxation with Representation, 461 U.S. 

540, 551 (1983); Personnel Adm’r v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 

 

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Second, even to the extent that the purpose of the 

Byrd Amendment was to encourage support for trade 

policy, retroactive payments to supporters are rationally 

related to that objective. By giving the statute retroactive 

effect, Congress increased the magnitude of the rewards 

to supporters of antidumping petitions. The magnitude of 

the rewards—even retroactive rewards—serves as a 

measure of congressional support for the conduct at issue, 

thereby encouraging similar conduct in the future. See

Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 267-68 (“Retroactivity provisions 

often serve entirely benign and legitimate purposes, . . . 

[including] giv[ing] comprehensive effect to a new law 

Congress considers salutary.”); Pension Benefit Guar. 

Corp., 467 U.S. at 730 (“[I]t was eminently rational for 

Congress to conclude that the purposes of the [legislation 

before the Court] could be more fully effectuated if its 

withdrawal liability provisions were applied retroactively.”). 

The Court of International Trade made this point

clearly in language upon which we cannot improve:

It was not arbitrary or irrational for Congress 

to conclude that the legislative purpose of rewarding domestic producers who supported antidumping petitions, i.e., the very legislative purpose the 

Court of Appeals recognized, would be “more fully 

effectuated if the petition support requirement 

were applied both prospectively and retroactively. 

See Pension Benefit, 467 U.S. at 730-31. By doing 

so, Congress provided monetary rewards, in the 

form of reimbursed expenses, not only to domestic 

producers expressing support for petitions in future antidumping investigations but also to those 

domestic producers who supported past antidump-

(1979); Russell v. Hodges, 470 F.2d 212, 218 (2d Cir. 

1972). 

 

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PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC 15

ing petitions that ripened into antidumping duty 

orders and who continue to produce goods competing with imported merchandise subject to those 

orders. By applying the CDSOA to the approximately 350 antidumping and countervailing duty 

orders in effect before the CDSOA enactment, rather than only to those orders issued afterwards, 

Congress provided a reward mechanism that was 

considerably more comprehensive than one based 

only on a prospective scheme. 

N.H. Ball Bearings, Inc. v. United States, 815 F. Supp. 2d 

1301 (Ct. Int’l Trade 2012) (citation omitted), aff’d, 563 F. 

App’x 779 (Fed. Cir. 2014). 

The appellants also argue that the retroactive application of the Byrd Amendment is not rationally related to 

legitimate governmental interests because not all qualifying parties receive distributions. That is, in some instances antidumping duty orders provide no revenue, and 

thus no distributions can be made. 

That argument is frivolous. If it is rational for the 

government to make payments from a fund to reward a 

certain class of persons, it is no less rational for the

government to provide that those payments will be made 

whenever such funds are available, but not otherwise. 

That is particularly true in light of the fact that when 

antidumping duties are not available for disbursement, 

that means that dumping has not continued for the covered products, and that the antidumping duty order has

effectively eliminated unfair import pricing for those 

products. In that situation, where the domestic producers 

are no longer being injured, Congress could legitimately 

conclude that, in light of the purpose of rewarding injured 

domestic producers, there is less need to provide payments to producers who supported the antidumping 

petition. 

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In their reply brief, the appellants challenge the rationality of the Byrd Amendment’s distinction between 

those domestic industries that supported the petition and 

those that did not. They argue that to the extent the Byrd 

Amendment is intended to remedy injury caused by 

dumping, it is not reasonable to assume that those who 

supported the antidumping petition were injured, while 

those who did not support the petition were not. 

Because the rationale for the statute identified in 

SKF was principally one of reward, not remedy, that 

argument does not address the main justification for the 

distinction drawn by the statute. In any event, to the 

extent that the statute is addressed to remedial concerns, 

the statutory distinction may not be a perfect fit for 

assessing injury, but it is not irrational. Looking to those 

who asked for protection from dumping is at least a 

reasonable proxy for those who needed it.

The appellants next contend that the Byrd Amendment is constitutionally suspect because it was devised as 

“a means of retribution” against parties who did not 

support antidumping petitions. To the contrary, there is 

no indication that the Byrd Amendment was intended to 

serve a retributive purpose, and the appellees have not 

defended its constitutionality on that ground. 

To support their “retribution” argument, the appellants point out that the Byrd Amendment provides that a 

company that opposed an antidumping petition cannot 

make itself eligible for disbursements simply by acquiring 

a company that supported a petition. See 19 U.S.C. 

§ 1675c(b)(1). That provision of the statute is not evidence of a retributive purpose. Instead, it simply maintains the integrity of the line between those companies 

that supported an antidumping petition and those that 

did not. It does so by closing a potential loophole that 

would allow non-supporters in effect to purchase the right 

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PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC 17

ing a company that had supported the petition. Congress’s decision to distinguish between supporters of a 

petition and non-supporters is not an indication of a 

punitive or retributive purpose, but simply underscores 

Congress’s purpose of according separate treatment to 

those two classes of domestic producers, a purpose that 

we have already held, in SKF, to be valid.

Finally, the appellants argue that the retroactive nature of the Byrd Amendment renders the statute unconstitutional because it has produced too great a reward for 

the particular beneficiaries of the antidumping duty order 

at issue in this case. It is difficult to understand how the 

legitimate purpose of rewarding particular conduct is 

rendered illegitimate if the rewards are too generous. In 

any event, however, the amount collected in antidumping 

duties can be viewed as a rough indicator of the degree of 

injury suffered by the domestic industry and the need for 

an antidumping remedy, so the fact that petition supporters in industries in which large sums were collected have 

received generous distributions does not render the statutory scheme irrational.

For those reasons, we reject the appellants’ contention 

that the retroactive application of the Byrd Amendment 

violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

III

The Court of International Trade held that the claim 

by SKF for distributions for fiscal year 2004 and the claim 

by JTEKT for distributions for fiscal year 2006 were 

barred by the two-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2636(i).5 The appellants argue that “if successful as to 

5 There is some confusion as to whether the trial 

court held that JTEKT’s claim for distributions for fiscal 

year 2004 was time-barred. The appellants assert that 

the court so held, but the court’s opinion does not contain 

 

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18 PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC

the Due Process claims, they challenge the CIT’s statute 

of limitations decision for each Plaintiff-Appellant.” 

Appellants’ Br. 3. In the earlier SKF case, we assumed, 

without deciding, that the statute of limitations in section 

2636(i) is jurisdictional, but we held that SKF had satisfied the statute. SKF, 556 F.3d at 1347-49. In this case,

we likewise assume that the statute of limitations is 

jurisdictional, but again find that it is not necessary to 

decide that issue. 

Although each appellant had at least one claim that 

the trial court held to be time-barred, each also had at 

least one claim that was timely. As to JTEKT, the trial 

court held that its claim for distributions for fiscal year 

2006 was untimely because the complaint raising that 

claim was not filed until 2008, more than two years after 

the notice of intent to distribute was published for that 

year. However, as the parties acknowledge, JTEKT’s 

2006 complaint referenced its claim for distributions for 

fiscal year 2006. JTEKT’s claim for fiscal year 2006 was 

therefore timely. With respect to SKF, it is undisputed 

that its claim for distributions for fiscal year 2006 was 

timely.

Because each appellant has raised a claim that was

clearly within the limitations period, we have jurisdiction 

to reach the merits of the appellants’ due process claims. 

And because the appellants represented in their brief that 

they challenge the trial court’s ruling on the statute of 

limitations issue only if they prevail on their due process 

claim, our decision rejecting the due process claim means 

that the claims that the trial court found to be barred on 

limitations grounds are not before us. We therefore 

an explicit ruling on that issue. We will assume, with the 

appellants, that the court implicitly ruled against JTEKT 

on that issue, as it makes no difference to the disposition 

of this appeal. 

 

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PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER v. ITC 19

affirm the judgment as to both appellants without reaching the issue of untimeliness as to the claim for distributions in fiscal year 2004.

AFFIRMED

Case: 12-1347 Document: 3-2 Page: 19 Filed: 05/07/2015