Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. AKINS

Scalia, J., dissenting

ment of the law against a third party. Despite its liberality,
the Administrative Procedure Act does not allow such suits,
since enforcement action is traditionally deemed “committed
5 U. S. C. § 701(a)(2); Heckler
to agency discretion by law.”
v. Chaney, 470 U. S. 821, 827–835 (1985).
If provisions such
as the present one were commonplace, the role of the Execu-
tive Branch in our system of separated and equilibrated pow-
ers would be greatly reduced, and that of the Judiciary
greatly expanded.

Because this provision is so extraordinary, we should be
particularly careful not to expand it beyond its fair meaning.
In my view the Court’s opinion does that.
Indeed, it ex-
pands the meaning beyond what the Constitution permits.

I

.

It is clear that the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971
(FECA or Act) does not intend that all persons ﬁling com-
plaints with the Federal Election Commission have the right
to seek judicial review of the rejection of their complaints.
This is evident from the fact that the Act permits a complaint
to be ﬁled by “[a]ny person who believes a violation of this
Act .
. has occurred,” 2 U. S. C. § 437g(a)(1) (emphasis
added), but accords a right to judicial relief only to “[a]ny
party aggrieved by an order of the Commission dismissing a
complaint ﬁled by such party,” § 437g(a)(8)(A) (emphasis
added). The interpretation that the Court gives the latter
provision deprives it of almost all its limiting force. Any
voter can sue to compel the agency to require registration of
an entity as a political committee, even though the “aggrieve-
ment” consists of nothing more than the deprivation of ac-
cess to information whose public availability would have
been one of the consequences of registration.
This seems to me too much of a stretch.

It should be
borne in mind that the agency action complained of here is
not the refusal to make available information in its posses-
sion that the Act requires to be disclosed. A person de-