Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-352_c0n2.pdf
Page Number: 28.0

2 

B&B HARDWARE, INC. v. HARGIS INDUSTRIES, INC. 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

“whether  claimants  under  the  Age  Discrimination  in 
Employment  Act  of  1967  [(ADEA)]  . . .  are  collaterally 
estopped  to  relitigate  in  federal  court  the  judicially  unre-
viewed  findings  of  a  state  administrative  agency  made
with  respect  to  an  age-discrimination  claim.”    Id.,  at  106. 
It answered that question in the negative, concluding that
the  availability  of  administrative  preclusion  was  an  issue 
of statutory construction and that the particular statute at
issue  “carrie[d]  an  implication  that  the  federal  courts
should recognize no [such] preclusion.”  Id., at 108, 110. 

Despite  rejecting  the  availability  of  preclusion,  the 
Court  nevertheless,  in  dictum,  announced  a  presumption
in  favor  of  giving  preclusive  effect  to  administrative  de-
terminations  “where  Congress  has  failed  expressly  or 
impliedly  to  evince  any  intention  on  the  issue.”    Id.,  at 
110.  That dictum rested on two premises.  First, that “Con-
gress  is  understood  to  legislate  against  a  background  of
common-law  adjudicatory  principles.”    Id.,  at  108.    And, 
second,  that  the  Court  had  “long  favored  application  of 
the  common-law  doctrines  of  collateral  estoppel  (as  to 
issues) and res judicata (as to claims) to those determina-
tions of administrative bodies that have attained finality.” 
Id., at 107. 

I do not quarrel with the first premise, but I have seri-
ous doubts about the second.  The Court in Astoria offered 
only one decision predating the enactment of the ADEA to
shore up its assertion that Congress had legislated against 
a  background  principle  in  favor  of  administrative  preclu-
sion—United  States  v.  Utah  Constr.  &  Mining  Co.,  384 
U. S.  394,  422  (1966).    See  Astoria,  supra,  at  107.1    And  
that  decision  cannot  be  read  for  the  broad  proposition 
—————— 

1 The Court also cited University of Tenn. v. Elliott, 478 U. S. 788, 798 
(1986), but because that decision postdated the enactment of the ADEA
by almost two decades and itself primarily relied on Utah Construction 
it  cannot  be  evidence  of  any  background  principle  existing  at  the 
relevant time.