Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/426/167/case.php
Timestamp: 2019-12-12 12:06:49
Document Index: 113298674

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1857', '§ 107', '§ 1857', '§ 109', '§ 1857', '§ 110', '§ 1857', '§ 113', '§ 5', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 111', '§ 111', '§ 1857', '§ 1857', '§ 111', '§ 114', '§ 111', '§ 1', '§ 114', '§ 1857', '§ 302', '§ 304', '§ 118', '§ 304', '§ 304', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 304', '§ 304', '§ 304', '§ 118', '§ 118', '§ 116', '§ 116', '§ 118']

The question for decision in this case is whether a State whose federally approved implementation plan forbids an air contaminant source to operate without a state permit may require existing federally owned or operated installations to secure such a permit. The case presents an issue of statutory construction requiring examination of the Clean Air Act, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1857 et seq., and its legislative history in light of established constitutional principles governing the determination of whether and the extent to which federal installations have been subjected to state regulation. [Footnote 1] The specific question is whether obtaining a permit to operate chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Last Term, in Train v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 421 U. S. 60 (1975), we reviewed the development of federal air pollution legislation through the Clean Air Amendments of 1970 (Amendments), [Footnote 3] and observed that, although the Amendments "sharply increased federal authority and responsibility in the continuing effort to combat air pollution," they "explicitly preserved the principle" that "[e]ach State shall have the primary responsibility for assuring air quality within the entire geographic area comprising such State . . . ,'" id. at 421 U. S. 64, quoting from § 107(a) of the Clean Air Act, as added, 84 Stat. 1678, 42 U.S.C. § 1857c-2(a). Consistently with this principle, the Amendments required that, within nine months after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated the primary and secondary ambient air quality standards required by § 109(a) of the Clean Air Act, as added, 84 Stat. 1679, 42 U.S.C. § 1857c-4(a), [Footnote 4] for certain air pollutants, [Footnote 5] each State submit to the EPA a plan by which it would implement and maintain those standards within its territory. § 110(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, as added, 84 Stat. 1680, 42 U.S.C. § 1857c-5(a)(1). See 40 CFR pt. 51 (1975). The EPA was required to approve each State's chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Along with increasing federal authority and "taking a stick to the States" [Footnote 7] by requiring them to implement the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Once issued, a permit may be revoked or modified for failure to comply with the terms and conditions of the permit, with emission standards applicable to the air contaminant source, or with the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Commission continued to press the federal officials chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Kentucky then brought this suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. [Footnote 27] The complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief requiring the Army, TVA, and AEC facilities to secure operating permits. Kentucky also named several EPA officials as defendants, and asked the District Court to order them to commence appropriate actions under § 113 of the Clean Air Act, directing the Army, the TVA, and the AEC facilities to comply with the provisions of Regulation AP-1, § 5(1). [Footnote 28] On cross-motions for summary chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court of Appeals affirmed, 497 F.2d 1172 (CA6 1974). Like the District Court, 362 F.Supp. at 363 n. 3, the Court of Appeals found it unnecessary to determine whether the federal installations were in compliance with Kentucky's emission limitations or had adopted adequate compliance schedules, for it was Kentucky's position that, notwithstanding possible compliance, "the Kentucky Plan is so formulated that the State cannot meet its primary responsibility under the Clean Air Act without the use of permits." 497 F.2d 1174-1175. After examining § 118 and its purposes in relation to other provisions of the Clean Air Act, the court concluded:
497 F.2d 1177. We granted Kentucky's petition for certiorari, 420 U.S. 971 (1975), to resolve a conflict in the Courts of Appeals, [Footnote 29] and now affirm. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
@ 17 U. S. 426 (1819). From this principle is deduced the corollary that
Neither the Supremacy Clause nor the Plenary Powers Clause bars all state regulation which may touch the activities of the Federal Government. See 318 U. S. 9 (1941), and cases cited. "Here, however, the State places a prohibition on the Federal Government." [Footnote 39] The permit requirement is not intended simply to regulate the amount of pollutants which the federal installations may discharge. Without a permit, an air contaminant source is forbidden to operate even if it is in compliance with every other state measure respecting air pollution control and abatement. It is clear from the record that prohibiting operation of the air contaminant sources for which the State seeks to require permits, App. 14-17, is tantamount to prohibiting operation of the federal installations on which they are located. [email protected] at 89-93.
Kentucky, like the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Alabama v. Seeber, 502 F.2d 1238, 1247-1248 (1974), finds in § 118 a sufficient congressional authorization to the States not only to establish the amount of pollutants a federal installation may discharge, but also to condition operation of federal installations on securing a state permit. We disagree, because we are not convinced that Congress intended to subject federal agencies to state permits. We are unable to find in § 118, on its face or in relation to the Clean Air Act as a whole, or to derive from the legislative history of the Amendments, any clear and unambiguous declaration by the Congress that federal installations may not perform their activities unless a state official issues a permit. Nor can congressional intention to submit federal activity to state control be implied from the claim that, under Kentucky's EPA-approved implementation plan, it is only through the permit system that compliance schedules and other chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The parties rightly agree that § 118 obligates federal installations to conform to state air pollution standards or limitations and compliance schedules. [Footnote 40] With the enactment of the Amendments in 1970 came the end of the era in which it was enough for federal facilities to volunteer their cooperation with federal and state officials. In Kentucky's view, that era has been replaced by one in which federal installations are not only required to limit their air pollutant emissions to the same extent as their nonfederal neighbors, but also, subject only to case-by-case Presidential exemption, to submit themselves completely to the state regime by which the necessary information to promulgate emission limitations and compliance schedules is gathered, and by which collection of that information and enforcement of the emission limitations and compliance schedules are accomplished. Respondents (hereafter sometimes EPA) take the position that the Congress has not gone so far. While federal and nonfederal installations are governed by the same emission standards, standards which the States have the primary responsibility to develop, the EPA maintains that the authority to compel federal installations to provide necessary information to the States and to conform to state standards necessary to carry out the federal policy to control and regulate air pollution has not been extended to the States. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Analysis must begin with § 118. [Footnote 41] Although the language of this provision is notable for what it states in comparison with its predecessor, [Footnote 42] it is also notable for what it does not state. It does not provide that federal installations "shall comply with all federal, state, interstate, and local requirements to the same extent as any other person." Nor does it state that federal installations "shall comply with all requirements of the applicable state implementation plan." Section 118 states only to what extent -- the same as any person -- federal installations must comply with applicable state requirements; it does not identify the applicable requirements. There is agreement that § 118 obligates existing federal installations to join nonfederal sources in abating chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
available to the States to enforce that duty. Alabama v. Seeber, 502 F.2d 1247. In the case before us, the Court of Appeals concluded that federal installations were obligated to comply with state substantive requirements, as opposed to state procedural requirements, 497 F.2d 1177, but Kentucky reflects the distinction between procedural and substantive requirements, saying that whatever is required by a state implementation plan is a "requirement" under § 118.
When a State is without administrative means of implementing and enforcing its standards chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Clean Air Act, as amended, does not expressly provide for a permit system as part of a State's implementation plan. [Footnote 45] It is true that virtually every State chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
has adopted a form of permit system much like that adopted by Kentucky, see 40 CFR pt. 52 (1975), as a means of gathering information to determine what emission standards to set and compliance schedules to approve and of assuring compliance with them. Also, only an implementation plan enabling a State to meet these -- and other -- objectives can be approved by the EPA. [Footnote 46] Nonetheless, we find in the 1970 Amendments several firm indications that the Congress intended to treat emission standards and compliance schedules -- those requirements which, when met, work the actual reduction of air pollutant discharge -- differently from administrative and enforcement chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
methods and devices -- those provisions by which the States were to establish and enforce emission standards, compliance schedules, and the like. This is so in spite of the absence of any definition of the word "requirements" or of the phrase "requirements respecting control and abatement of air pollution." [Footnote 47] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Stronger indications that the term "requirements" as used in § 118 does not embrace every measure incorporated in a State's implementation limitations and compliance chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Thus, while the House bill spoke of "emission standards," the Senate amendment, like § 118, as enacted, spoke of "requirements." In accommodating the different language in the two bills and formulating what is now § 118, the Conference Committee simply combined the House and Senate provisions. If, as Kentucky argues, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
the Conference Committee in taking the Senate language of "requirements" meant thereby to subject federal facilities to enforcement measures obviously not embraced in the language of the House bill, it is remarkable that it made no reference to its having reconciled this difference in favor of extending state regulation over federal installations. Given the interchangeable use of "emission standards" and "emission requirements" in the Senate amendment, see n 52, supra, the predominance of the language of the Senate version in § 118 as enacted, [Footnote 53] and the absence of any mention of disagreement between the two bills, it is more probable that the Conference Committee intended only that federal installations comply with emission standards and compliance schedules than that its intention was to empower a State to require federal installations to comply with every measure in its implementation plan. See Alabama v. Seeber, 502 F.2d 1247.
In drawing on the manner in which the Clean Air Act has divided the authority to regulate new sources of air pollutants [Footnote 57] and the emission of hazardous air pollutants [Footnote 58] in comparison with existing air pollutant sources, Kentucky makes two separate, though related, arguments. The first is that, when Congress wanted to exempt federal facilities from compliance with a state requirement, it did so by express exclusionary language. Thus, § 111(c)(1) authorizes the Administrator to delegate to a State "any authority he has under this Act to implement and enforce" new-source standards of performance -- with which new sources owned or operated by the United States must comply (§ 111(b)(4)) -- "except with respect to new sources owned or operated by the United States." 42 U.S.C. § 1857c-6(c)(1). Section 114(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act, as added, 84 Stat. 1688, is to the same chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Kentucky's second argument is that the manner in which Congress differentiated treatment of new sources chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In contrast, controlling "new sources" is described as a straightforward task. This is because "standards of performance" for such sources, which are established in light of technologically feasible emission controls, and not in relation to ambient air quality standards, [Footnote 59] are set by the EPA for various categories of sources and are uniform throughout the Nation. A comprehensive enforcement chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
84 Stat. 1687, as added, 42 U.S.C. § 1857c-9(a). Unlike §§ 111 and 112, § 114 is doubly permissive. First, although the Administrator "shall" publish § 111 new source standards of performance and § 1 12 hazardous air pollutant emission standards, under § 114(a), the Administrator "may," but need not, require operators chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
42 U.S.C. § 1857h-2. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
When the Conference Committee eliminated this subsection from the Senate amendment, it retained the definition of "person," which included a "State" in § 302(e), and added § 304(f) with the parenthetical phrase "including a requirement applicable by reason of section 118." This made clear that § 118 was to be enforced through § 304, and § 304 is the only provision in the Act for state enforcement of the duties of a federal installation under § 118. In short, § 118 establishes the duty of federal installations to comply with state "requirements," and § 304 provides the means of enforcing that duty in federal court. In light of this chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The argument is defective on another count. Even if, standing alone, § 304 could be read to require federal facilities to comply with the matters within § 304(f), the assumption that the two sections independently impose duties on federal installations conflicts with the legislative history. Section 304(a) was first extended to apply to federal sources of pollution in Conference, at the same point at which the express provision for enforcement authority over federal installations was removed from § 118. [Footnote 62] Given this relationship between chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In view of the undoubted congressional awareness of the requirement of clear language to bind the United States, [Footnote 63] our conclusion is that with respect to subjecting federal installations to state permit requirements, the Clean Air Act does not satisfy the traditional requirement that such intention be evinced with satisfactory clarity. Should this nevertheless be the desire of Congress, it need only amend the Act to make its intention manifest. [Footnote 64] Absent such amendment, we can only conclude that, to the extent it considered the matter in enacting § 118, Congress has fashioned a compromise which, while requiring federal installations to abate their pollution to the same extent as any other air contaminant source and under standards which the States have prescribed, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 330 U. S. 272 (1947) (footnote omitted). See 87 U. S. 263 (1874); 39 U. S. 315 (1840).
(Emphasis added.) Although the meaning of the italicized phrase in this section, which was added by the Conference Committee, see H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 91-1783, p. 48 (1970), 1 Leg.Hist.198, is not entirely clear, it seems plain that as employed in § 116 the phrase is not synonymous with "emission standards and limitations." As the Fifth Circuit observed in Alabama v. Seeber, 502 F.2d 1245, the use of "or' in § 116 is clearly disjunctive." Yet it is agreed that, as used in § 118, the phrase does embrace such standards and limitations; indeed the EPA argues the two are synonymous.
Brief for Petitioner 33, quoting Alabama v. Seeber, 502 F.2d 1244.