Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/499/144/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 10:31:02+00:00

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The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 assigns distinct regulatory tasks to two independent administrative actors: petitioner Secretary of Labor is charged with setting and enforcing workplace health and safety standards, and respondent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission is responsible for carrying out adjudicatory functions. The Act also requires a court of appeals reviewing a Commission order to treat as "conclusive" Commission findings of fact that are "supported by substantial evidence." In this case, having found that respondent CF & I Steel Corporation had equipped some of its employees with loose-fitting respirators that exposed them to impermissible coke oven emission levels, the Secretary issued a citation to CF & I and assessed a monetary penalty against it for violating a regulation promulgated by the Secretary requiring an employer to institute a respiratory protection program. The Commission vacated the citation, ruling that the facts did not establish a violation of that regulation, which was the sole asserted basis for liability, since the regulation expressly requires only that an employer train employees in the proper use of respirators, whereas another regulation expressly states the employer's obligation to assure a proper fit. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that where, as here, the relevant regulations are ambiguous, a reviewing court must defer to the Commission's reasonable interpretation rather than the Secretary's interpretation, since Congress intended to delegate to the Commission the normal complement of adjudicative powers possessed by traditional administrative agencies, including the power to "declare' the law." Concluding that the Commission's interpretation was a reasonable one, the court did not assess the reasonableness of the Secretary's competing view.
Held: A reviewing court should defer to the Secretary when the Secretary and the Commission furnish reasonable but conflicting interpretations of an ambiguous regulation promulgated by the Secretary under the Act. Pp. 499 U. S. 150-159.
Secretary, as the promulgator of standards, is in a better position than the Commission to reconstruct the purpose of particular regulations. Moreover, since the Secretary, as enforcer, comes into contact with a much greater number of regulatory problems than does the Commission, the Secretary is more likely to develop the expertise relevant to assessing the effect of a particular regulatory interpretation. Furthermore, dividing the power to make and enforce standards from the power to make law by interpreting them would make two administrative actors ultimately responsible for implementing the Act's policy objectives, an outcome inconsistent with Congress' intent in combining legislative and enforcement powers in the Secretary. It must also be concluded that Congress did not intend to endow the Commission with the normal adjudicative powers possessed by a traditional, unitary agency. Such an agency permissibly uses adjudication to engage in lawmaking and policymaking only because it also has been delegated the power to make law and policy through rulemaking, and necessarily interprets regulations that it has promulgated. The more plausible inference is that the Commission was meant to have the type of nonpolicymaking adjudicatory powers typically exercised by a court in the agency-review context, such that the Commission is authorized to review the Secretary's interpretations only for consistency with the regulatory language and for reasonableness, and possesses no more power than is necessary to make authoritative findings of fact and to apply the Secretary's standards to those facts in making a decision. Although the Commission was established in response to concerns that combining rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory power in the Secretary would leave employers unprotected from prosecutorial bias, such concerns are dispelled by the vesting of authoritative factfinding and review powers in a body wholly independent of the administrative enforcer; regulated parties are protected from biased interpretations when the Commission and ultimately the court of appeals review the Secretary's interpretation for reasonableness. Nor is such an interpretation, when furnished in the course of an administrative adjudication, a mere "litigating position" undeserving of judicial deference under this Court's precedents. Since such an interpretation is agency action, not a post hoc rationalization of it, and assumes a form expressly provided for by Congress when embodied in a citation, the Secretary's litigating position before the Commission is as much an exercise of delegated lawmaking powers as is the Secretary's promulgation of health and safety standards. Pp. 499 U. S. 150-157.
lawmaking power. Moreover, the decision to use a citation as the initial means for announcing a particular interpretation may bear on the adequacy of notice to regulated parties, the quality of the Secretary's elaboration of pertinent policy considerations, and other factors relevant to the reasonableness of the Secretary's exercise of delegated lawmaking powers. Since the Court of Appeals did not address the reasonableness of the Secretary's interpretation, it, rather than this Court, must do so in the first instance on remand. Pp. 499 U. S. 157-159.
891 F.2d 1495 (CA10 1989), reversed and remanded.
concluded that it should defer to the Commission's interpretation under such circumstances. We reverse.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act or Act) establishes a comprehensive regulatory scheme designed "to assure so far as possible . . . safe and healthful working conditions" for "every working man and woman in the Nation." 29 U.S.C. § 651(b). See generally Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Comm'n, 430 U. S. 442, 430 U. S. 444-445 (1977). To achieve this objective, the Act assigns distinct regulatory tasks to two independent administrative actors: the Secretary of Labor (Secretary); and the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (Commission), a three-member board appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. 29 U.S.C. §§ 651(b)(3), 661.
wishes to contest a citation, the Commission must afford the employer an evidentiary hearing and "thereafter issue an order, based on findings of fact, affirming, modifying, or vacating the Secretary's citation or proposed penalty." § 659(c). Initial decisions are made by an administrative law judge (ALJ), whose ruling becomes the order of the Commission unless the Commission grants discretionary review. § 661(j). Both the employer and the Secretary have the right to seek review of an adverse Commission order in the court of appeals, which must treat as "conclusive" Commission findings of fact that are "supported by substantial evidence." § 660(a) (b).
This case arises from the Secretary's effort to enforce compliance with OSH Act standards relating to coke oven emissions. Promulgated pursuant to the Secretary's rulemaking powers, these standards establish maximum permissible emissions levels and require the use of employee respirators in certain circumstances. See 29 CFR § 1910.1029 (1990). An investigation by one of the Secretary's compliance officers revealed that respondent CF & I Steel Corporation (CF & I) had equipped 28 of its employees with respirators that failed an "atmospheric test" designed to determine whether a respirator provides a sufficiently tight fit to protect its wearer from carcinogenic emissions. As a result of being equipped with these loose-fitting respirators, some employees were exposed to coke oven emissions exceeding the regulatory limit. Based on these findings, the compliance officer issued a citation to CF & I and assessed it a $10,000 penalty for violating 29 CFR § 1910.1029(g)(3) (1990), which requires an employer to "institute a respiratory protection program in accordance with [29 CFR] § 1910.134." CF & I contested the citation.
§ 1910.1029(g)(3) expressly requires only that an employer train employees in the proper use of respirators; [Footnote 2] the obligation to assure proper fit of an individual employee's respirator, the Commission noted, was expressly stated in another regulation, namely, § 1910.1029(g)(4)(i). [Footnote 3] See 12 OSHC at 2077-2078. Reasoning, inter alia, that the Secretary's interpretation of § 1910.1029(g)(3) would render § 1910.1029(g)(4) superfluous, the Commission concluded that the facts alleged in the citation and found by the ALJ did not establish a violation of § 1910.1029(g)(3). See 12 OSHC at 2078-2079. Because § 1910.1029(g)(3) was the only asserted basis for liability, the Commission vacated the citation. See id. at 2079.
was entitled to deference under such circumstances, reasoning that Congress had intended to delegate to the Commission "the normal complement of adjudicative powers possessed by traditional administrative agencies" and that "[s]uch an adjudicative function necessarily encompasses the power to declare' the law." Id. at 1498. Although the court determined that it would "certainly [be] possible to reach an alternate interpretation of the ambiguous regulatory language," the court nonetheless concluded that the Commission's interpretation was a reasonable one. Id. at 1500. The court therefore deferred to the Commission's interpretation without assessing the reasonableness of the Secretary's competing view. See ibid.
The Secretary thereafter petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari. We granted the petition in order to resolve a conflict among the Circuits on the question whether a reviewing court should defer to the Secretary or to the Commission when these actors furnish reasonable but conflicting interpretations of an ambiguous regulation under the OSH Act. [Footnote 4] 497 U.S. 1002 (1990).
To put this question in perspective, it is necessary to take account of the unusual regulatory structure established by the Act. Under most regulatory schemes, rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicative powers are combined in a single administrative authority. See, e.g., 15 U.S.C. § 41 et seq. (Federal Trade Commission); 15 U.S.C. §§ 77s-77u (Securities and Exchange Commission); 47 U.S.C. § 151 et seq. (Federal Communications Commission). Under the OSH Act, however, Congress separated enforcement and rulemaking powers from adjudicative powers, assigning these respective functions to two independent administrative authorities. The purpose of this "split enforcement" structure was to achieve a greater separation of functions than exists within the traditional "unitary" agency, which under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) generally must divide enforcement and adjudication between separate personnel, see 5 U.S.C. § 554(d). See generally Johnson, The Split-Enforcement Model: Some Conclusions from the OSHA and MSHA Experiences, 39 Admin.L.Rev. 315, 317-319 (1987).
This is not the first time that we have been called upon to resolve an OSH Act "jurisdictional" dispute between the Secretary and the Commission. See Cuyahoga Valley R. Co. v. United Transp. Union, 474 U.S. at 474 U. S. 3. At issue in Cuyahoga Valley was whether the Commission could conduct an administrative adjudication notwithstanding the Secretary's motion to vacate the citation. We held that the Commission had no such power. We noted "that enforcement of the Act is the sole responsibility of the Secretary," and concluded that "[a] necessary adjunct of that power is the authority to withdraw a citation and enter into settlement discussions with the employer." Id. at 474 U. S. 6-7. The Commission's role as "neutral arbiter," we explained, "plainly does not extend to overturning the Secretary's decision not to issue or to withdraw a citation." Id. at 474 U. S. 7.
of a particular regulatory interpretation. Because historical familiarity and policymaking expertise account in the first instance for the presumption that Congress delegates interpretive lawmaking power to the agency, rather than to the reviewing court, see, e.g., Mullins Coal Co. v. Director, OWCP, 484 U. S. 135, 484 U. S. 159 (1987); Ford Motor Credit Co. v. Milhollin, supra, 444 U.S. at 444 U. S. 566; INS v. Stanisic, 395 U. S. 62, 395 U. S. 72 (1969), we presume here that Congress intended to invest interpretive power in the administrative actor in the best position to develop these attributes.
the Act's policy objectives, we conclude that Congress did not expect the Commission to possess authoritative interpretive powers.
For the same reason, we reject the Court of Appeals' inference that Congress intended "to endow the Commission with the normal complement of adjudicative powers possessed by traditional administrative agencies." 891 F.2d at 1498 (emphasis added). Within traditional agencies -- that is, agencies possessing a unitary structure -- adjudication operates as an appropriate mechanism not only for factfinding, but also for the exercise of delegated lawmaking powers, including lawmaking by interpretation. See NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U. S. 267, 416 U. S. 292-294 (1974); SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194, 332 U. S. 201-203 (1947). But in these cases, we concluded that agency adjudication is a generally permissible mode of law- and policymaking only because the unitary agencies in question also had been delegated the power to make law and policy through rulemaking. See Bell Aerospace, supra, 416 U.S. at 416 U. S. 292-294; Chenery Corp., supra, 332 U.S. at 332 U. S. 202-203. See generally Shapiro, The Choice of Rulemaking or Adjudication in the Development of Administrative Policy, 78 Harv.L.Rev. 921 (1965). Insofar as Congress did not invest the Commission with the power to make law or policy by other means, we cannot infer that Congress expected the Commission to use its adjudicatory power to play a policymaking role. Moreover, when a traditional, unitary agency uses adjudication to engage in lawmaking by regulatory interpretation, it necessarily interprets regulations that it has promulgated. This, too, cannot be said of the Commission's power to adjudicate.
with the regulatory language and for reasonableness. In addition, of course, Congress expressly charged the Commission with making authoritative findings of fact and with applying the Secretary's standards to those facts in making a decision. See 29 U.S.C. § 660(a) (Commission's factual findings "shall be conclusive" so long as "supported by substantial evidence"). The Commission need be viewed as possessing no more power than this in order to perform its statutory role as "neutral arbiter." See Cuyahoga Valley, 474 U.S. at 474 U. S. 7.
CF & I draws a different conclusion from the history and structure of the Act. Congress, CF & I notes, established the Commission in response to concerns that combining rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory power in the Secretary would leave employers unprotected from regulatory bias. Construing the Act to separate enforcement and interpretive powers is consistent with this purpose, CF & I argues, because it protects regulated employers from biased prosecutorial interpretations of the Secretary's regulations. Indeed, interpretations furnished in the course of administrative penalty actions, according to CF & I, are mere "litigating positions," undeserving of judicial deference under our precedents. See, e.g., Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U. S. 204, 488 U. S. 212 (1988).
begs the question just how much Congress intended to depart from the unitary model. Sponsors of the Commission purported to be responding to the traditional objection that an agency head's participation in or supervision of agency investigations results in biased review of the decisions of the hearing officer, notwithstanding internal separations within the agency. See ibid. See generally 3 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 18.8, pp. 369-370 (2nd ed. 1980). Vesting authoritative factfinding and ALJ review powers in the Commission, an administrative body wholly independent of the administrative enforcer, dispels this concern.
We harbor no doubt that Congress also intended to protect regulated parties from biased interpretations of the Secretary's regulations. But this objective is achieved when the Commission, and ultimately the court of appeals, review the Secretary's interpretation to assure that it is consistent with the regulatory language and is otherwise reasonable. Giving the Commission the power to substitute its reasonable interpretations for the Secretary's might slightly increase regulated parties' protection from overzealous interpretations. But it would also clearly frustrate Congress' intent to make a single administrative actor "accountable for the overall implementation" of the Act's policy objectives by combining legislative and enforcement powers in the Secretary. S.Rep. No. 91-1282, p. 8, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1970, p. 5185, reprinted in Legislative History 148.
constitute an exercise of the agency's delegated lawmaking powers. The Secretary's interpretation of OSH Act regulations in an administrative adjudication, however, is agency action, not a post hoc rationalization of it. Moreover, when embodied in a citation, the Secretary's interpretation assumes a form expressly provided for by Congress. See 29 U.S.C. § 658. Under these circumstances, the Secretary's litigating position before the Commission is as much an exercise of delegated lawmaking powers as is the Secretary's promulgation of a workplace health and safety standard.
In addition, the Secretary regularly employs less formal means of interpreting regulations prior to issuing a citation. These include the promulgation of interpretive rules, see, e.g., Marshall v. W and W Steel Co., 604 F.2d 1322, 1325-1326 (CA10 1979); cf. Whirlpool Corp. v. Marshall, 445 U. S. 1, 445 U. S. 11 (1980), and the publication of agency enforcement guidelines, see United States Department of Labor, OSHA Field Operations Manual (3d ed. 1989). See generally S. Bokat & H. Thompson, Occupational Safety and Health Law 658-660 (1988). Although not entitled to the same deference as norms that derive from the exercise of the Secretary's delegated lawmaking powers, these informal interpretations are still entitled to some weight on judicial review. See Batterton v. Francis, 432 U. S. 416, 432 U. S. 425-426, and n. 9 (1977); Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 323 U. S. 140 (1944); Whirlpool, supra, 445 U.S. at 445 U. S. 11. A reviewing court may certainly consult them to determine whether the Secretary has consistently applied the interpretation embodied in the citation, a factor bearing on the reasonableness of the Secretary's position. See Ehlert v. United States, 402 U.S. at 402 U. S. 105.
did not intend to sever the power authoritatively to interpret OSH Act regulations from the Secretary's power to promulgate and enforce them. Subject only to constitutional limits, Congress is free, of course, to divide these powers as it chooses, and we take no position on the division of enforcement and interpretive powers within other regulatory schemes that conform to the split-enforcement structure. Nor should anything we say today be understood to bear on whether particular divisions of enforcement and adjudicative power within a unitary agency comport with § 554(d) of the APA.
In addition, although we hold that a reviewing court may not prefer the reasonable interpretations of the Commission to the reasonable interpretations of the Secretary, we emphasize that the reviewing court should defer to the Secretary only if the Secretary's interpretation is reasonable. The Secretary's interpretation of an ambiguous regulation is subject to the same standard of substantive review as any other exercise of delegated lawmaking power. See 6 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A); Batterton v. Francis, supra, 432 U.S. at 432 U. S. 426. As we have indicated, the Secretary's interpretation is not undeserving of deference merely because the Secretary advances it for the first time in an administrative adjudication. But as the Secretary's counsel conceded in oral argument, Tr. of Oral Arg. 18-19, 20-21, the decision to use a citation as the initial means for announcing a particular interpretation may bear on the adequacy of notice to regulated parties, see Bell Aerospace, 416 U.S. at 416 U. S. 295; Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U.S. at 488 U. S. 220 (SCALIA, J., concurring), the quality of the Secretary's elaboration of pertinent policy considerations, see Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins Co., 463 U. S. 29, 463 U. S. 43 (1983), and other factors relevant to the reasonableness of the Secretary's exercise of delegated lawmaking powers.
CF & I urges us to hold that the Secretary unreasonably interpreted 29 CFR § 1910.1029(g)(3) in this case. However, because the Court of Appeals deferred to the Commission's interpretation, it had no occasion to address the reasonableness of the Secretary's interpretation. Rather than consider this issue for the first time ourselves, we leave the issue for resolution on remand.
The Secretary has delegated certain statutory responsibilities to the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, who heads the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. See Secretary of Labor's Order No. 12-71, 36 Fed.Reg. 8754 (1971); Order No. 8-76, 41 Fed. Reg. 25059 (1976); Order No. 9-83, 48 Fed.Reg. 35736 (1983).
"For safe use of any respirator, it is essential that the user be properly instructed in its selection, use, and maintenance. Both supervisors and workers shall be so instructed by competent persons. Training shall provide the men an opportunity to handle the respirator, have it fitted properly, test its face-piece-to-face seal, wear it in normal air for a long familiarity period, and, finally, to wear it in a test atmosphere."
29 CFR § 1910.134(e)(5) (199O).
"Respirator usage. (i) The employer shall assure that the respirator issued to the employee exhibits minimum facepiece leakage and that the respirator is fined properly."
29 CFR § 1910.1029(g)(4) (1990). According to the Commission, the compliance officer who issued the citation "acknowledged that [§ 1910.1029(g)(4)(i)] applied," and "that he might have cited the wrong standard." CF & I, 12 OSHC 2067, 2078 (1986).
Compare Brock v. Williams Enterprises of Georgia, Inc., 832 F.2d 567, 569-570 (CA11 1987) (deference to Secretary); United Steelworkers of America v. Schuylkill Metals Corp., 828 F.2d 314, 319 (CA5 1987) (same); and Donovan v. A. Amorello & Sons, Inc., 761 F.2d 61, 6s-66 (CA1 1985) (same) with Brock v. Cardinal Industries, Inc., 828 F.2d 373, 376, n. 4 (CA6 1987) (deference to Commission); Brock v. Bechtel Power Corp., 803 F.2d 999, 1000-1001 (CA9 1986) (same); and Marshall v. Western Electric, Inc., 565 F.2d 240, 244 (CA2 1977) (same).
The parties do not challenge the Court of Appeals' conclusion that the regulations at issue in this case are ambiguous. We assume that this conclusion is correct for purposes of our analysis.

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