Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 122

529US1

Unit: $U32

[10-04-01 09:20:53] PAGES PGT: OPIN

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

47

Thomas, J., dissenting

Security beneﬁts claim for purposes of 42 U. S. C. § 405(g) is
accomplished by the near-costless act of ﬁling an application
for beneﬁts, to be contrasted with the extremely burden-
some presentment requirement facing the aliens in Haitian
Refugee Center or the named plaintiff in Ringer. The only
signiﬁcant hardship facing the claimants in Salﬁ arose from
the possibility that a lengthy administrative review proc-
ess would postpone a judicial decision ordering the Secre-
tary to pay the disputed beneﬁts; but the Court took care
of that problem by leniently construing § 405(g)’s require-
ment of a “ﬁnal” agency decision and by allowing the Sec-
retary to waive entirely § 405(g)’s requirement that decision
be made “after a hearing.” At bottom, then, the major-
ity cannot demonstrate why the presumption in favor of
preenforcement review, which dates at least from Abbott
Laboratories, should not be invoked to resolve the debate
between our conﬂicting readings of § 1395ii.

There is a practical reason why we employ the pre-
sumption not only to questions of whether judicial review
is available, but also to questions of when judicial re-
view is available. Delayed review—that is, a requirement
that a regulated entity disobey the regulation, suffer an
enforcement proceeding by the agency, and only then seek
judicial review—may mean no review at all. For when
the costs of “presenting” a claim via the delayed review
route exceed the costs of simply complying with the regu-
lation, the regulated entity will buckle under and comply,
even when the regulation is plainly invalid. See Seidenfeld,
Playing Games with the Timing of Judicial Review, 58 Ohio
St. L. J. 85, 104 (1997). And we can expect that this con-
sequence will often ﬂow from an interpretation of an am-
In Haitian
biguous statute to bar preenforcement review.
Refugee Center, for example, the aliens’ “postenforcement”
review option for asserting their challenge to the agency’s
procedures required the aliens to voluntarily surrender
themselves for deportation, suffer an order of deporta-