Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-1062.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

8 

SACKETT v. EPA 

Opinion of the Court 

not  self-executing,  but  must  be  enforced  by  the  agency  in
a plenary judicial action.  It suggests that Congress there­
fore viewed a compliance order “as a step in the delibera­
tive  process[,]  . . .  rather  than  as  a  coercive  sanction  that 
itself  must be  subject  to  judicial  review.”    Id.,  at  38.  But 
the  APA  provides  for  judicial  review  of  all  final  agency 
actions,  not  just  those  that  impose  a  self-executing  sanc­
tion.  And it is hard for the Government to defend its claim 
that the issuance of the compliance order was just “a step 
in  the  deliberative  process”  when  the  agency  rejected  the
Sacketts’  attempt  to  obtain  a  hearing  and  when  the  next 
step  will  either  be  taken  by  the  Sacketts  (if  they  comply 
with the order) or will involve judicial, not administrative,
deliberation (if the EPA brings an enforcement action).  As 
the  text  (and  indeed  the  very  name)  of  the  compliance
order  makes  clear,  the  EPA’s  “deliberation”  over  whether 
the  Sacketts  are  in  violation  of  the  Act  is  at  an  end;  the 
agency  may  still  have  to  deliberate  over  whether  it  is
confident  enough  about  this  conclusion  to  initiate  litiga­
tion, but that is a separate subject. 

The Government further urges us to consider that Con­
gress expressly provided for prompt judicial review, on the
administrative record, when the EPA assesses administra­
tive penalties after a hearing, see §1319(g)(8), but did not 
expressly  provide  for  review  of  compliance  orders.    But  if 
the  express  provision  of  judicial  review  in  one  section  of 
a long and complicated statute were alone enough to over- 
come  the  APA’s  presumption  of  reviewability  for  all  final
agency  action,  it  would  not  be  much  of  a  presumption  at 
all. 

The  cases  on  which  the  Government  relies  simply  are
not analogous.  In Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 
supra,  we  held  that  the  Agricultural  Marketing  Agree­
ment  Act  of  1937,  which  expressly  allowed  milk  handlers
to obtain judicial review of milk market orders, precluded 
review  of  milk  market  orders  in  suits  brought  by  milk