Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 98.0

529US1

Unit: $U32

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 1 (2000)

23

Opinion of the Court

pears to be simply a channeling requirement into complete
preclusion of judicial review. See Haitian Refugee Center,
supra, at 496–497. Of course, individual hardship may be
mitigated in a different way, namely, through excusing a
number of the steps in the agency process, though not the
step of presentment of the matter to the agency. See supra,
at 14–15; infra, at 24. But again, the Council has not shown
anything other than potentially isolated instances of the in-
conveniences sometimes associated with the postponement
of judicial review.

The Council complains that a host of procedural regula-
tions unlawfully limit the extent to which the agency itself
will provide the administrative review channel leading to
judicial review, for example, regulations insulating from
review decisions about a home’s level of noncompliance or
a determination to impose one, rather than another, pen-
alty. See 42 CFR §§ 431.153(b), 488.408(g)(2), 498.3(d)(10)(ii)
(1998). The Council’s members remain free, however, after
following the special review route that the statutes pre-
scribe, to contest in court the lawfulness of any regulation
or statute upon which an agency determination depends.
The fact that the agency might not provide a hearing for that
particular contention, or may lack the power to provide one,
see Sanders, 430 U. S., at 109 (“Constitutional questions ob-
viously are unsuited to resolution in administrative hearing
procedures . . .”); Salﬁ, 422 U. S., at 764; Brief for Petitioners
45, is beside the point because it is the “action” arising under
the Medicare Act that must be channeled through the agency.
See Salﬁ, supra, at 762. After the action has been so chan-
neled, the court will consider the contention when it later
reviews the action. And a court reviewing an agency deter-
mination under § 405(g) has adequate authority to resolve
any statutory or constitutional contention that the agency
does not, or cannot, decide, see Thunder Basin Coal, 510