Source: http://www.fcc.gov/print/node/50030
Timestamp: 2014-08-01 01:13:30
Document Index: 696452248

Matched Legal Cases: ['§332', '§201', '§332', '§201', '§332', '§201', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§337', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§332', '§3', '§18', '§12']

Supreme Court Decision - City of Arlington v. FCC
Word Document [1]PDF Document [2]Text Document [3]	Released: May 20, 2013
(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2012 1 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus CITY OF ARLINGTON, TEXAS, ET AL. v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 11–1545. Argued January 16, 2013—Decided May 20, 2013* The Communications Act of 1934, as amended, requires state or local governments to act on siting applications for wireless facilities “with-in a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed.” 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B)(ii). Relying on its broad authority to implement
the Communications Act, see 47 U. S. C. §201(b), the Federal Com-munications Commission (FCC) issued a Declaratory Ruling conclud-
ing that the phrase “reasonable period of time” is presumptively (but rebuttably) 90 days to process an application to place a new antennaon an existing tower and 150 days to process all other applications.
The cities of Arlington and San Antonio, Texas, sought review of the Declaratory Ruling in the Fifth Circuit. They argued that the Com-mission lacked authority to interpret §332(c)(7)(B)’s limitations. The Court of Appeals, relying on Circuit precedent holding that Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, applies to an agency’s interpretation of its own statutory juris-
diction, applied Chevron to that question. Finding the statute am-
biguous, it upheld as a permissible construction of the statute the FCC’s view that §201(b)’s broad grant of regulatory authority em-
powered it to administer §332(c)(7)(B). Held: Courts must apply the Chevron framework to an agency’s inter-
pretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of the agency’s statutory authority (i.e., its jurisdiction). Pp. 4–17. —————— * Together with No. 11–1547, Cable, Telecommunications, and Tech-
nology Committee of New Orleans City Council v. Federal Communica-
tions Commission, also on certiorari to the same court. 2 ARLINGTON v. FCC Syllabus
(a) Under Chevron, a reviewing court must first ask whether Con-
gress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue; if so, thecourt must give effect to Congress’ unambiguously expressed intent.
467 U. S., at 842–843. However, if “the statute is silent or ambigu-
ous,” the court must defer to the administering agency’s constructionof the statute so long as it is permissible. Id., at 843. Pp. 4–5.
(b) When a court reviews an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers, the question is always, simply, whether the agency hasstayed within the bounds of its statutory authority. There is no dis-
tinction between an agency’s “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional”
interpretations. The “jurisdictional-nonjurisdictional” line is mean-ingful in the judicial context because Congress has the power to tell the courts what classes of cases they may decide—that is, to define
their jurisdiction—but not to prescribe how they decide those cases.But for agencies charged with administering congressional statutes,
both their power to act and how they are to act is authoritatively pre-
scribed by Congress, so that when they act improperly, no less thanwhen they act beyond their jurisdiction, what they do is ultra vires.
Because the question is always whether the agency has gone beyond what Congress has permitted it to do, there is no principled basis forcarving out an arbitrary subset of “jurisdictional” questions from the Chevron framework. See, e.g., National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., Inc. v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U. S. 327, 333, 339. Pp. 5–10.
(c) This Court has consistently afforded Chevron deference to agen-
cies’ constructions of the scope of their own jurisdiction. See, e.g., Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833; United States v. Eurodif S. A., 555 U. S. 305, 316. Chevron applies to
statutes designed to curtail the scope of agency discretion, see Chem-ical Mfrs. Assn. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 470 U. S. 116, 123, and even where concerns about agency self-aggrandizement
are at their apogee—i.e., where an agency’s expansive construction of the extent of its own power would have wrought a fundamental change in the regulatory scheme, see FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 132. Pp. 10–14. (d) The contention that Chevron deference is not appropriate here because the FCC asserted jurisdiction over matters of traditionalstate and local concern is meritless. These cases have nothing to do
with federalism: The statute explicitly supplants state authority, so
the question is simply whether a federal agency or federal courts will draw the lines to which the States must hew. P. 14. (e) United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, requires that, for Chevron deference to apply, the agency must have received congres-sional authority to determine the particular matter at issue in the
particular manner adopted. But Mead denied Chevron deference to Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 3 Syllabus action, by an agency with rulemaking authority, that was not rule-
making. There is no case in which a general conferral of rulemaking or adjudicative authority has been held insufficient to support Chev-
ron deference for an exercise of that authority within the agency’s substantive field. A general conferral of rulemaking authority vali-dates rules for all the matters the agency is charged with administer-
ing. It suffices to decide this case that the preconditions to deference under Chevron are satisfied because Congress has unambiguouslyvested the FCC with general authority to administer the Communi-
cations Act through rulemaking and adjudication, and the agency in-terpretation at issue was promulgated in the exercise of that authori-
ty. Pp. 14–16. 668 F. 3d 229, affirmed. SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. BREYER, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which KENNEDY and ALITO, JJ., joined. Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 1 Opinion of the Court NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 11–1545 and 11–1547 _________________ CITY OF ARLINGTON, TEXAS, ET AL., PETITIONERS 11–1545 v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION ET AL. CABLE, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE OF THE NEW ORLEANS CITY COUNCIL, PETITIONER 11–1547 v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION ET AL. ON WRITS OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT [May 20, 2013] JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court. We consider whether an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of its regula-tory authority (that is, its jurisdiction) is entitled to defer-ence under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). I Wireless telecommunications networks require towers
and antennas; proposed sites for those towers and anten-
2 ARLINGTON v. FCC Opinion of the Court nas must be approved by local zoning authorities. In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress “impose[d] specific limitations on the traditional authority of state and local governments to regulate the location, construc-tion, and modification of such facilities,” Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U. S. 113, 115 (2005), and incorpo-rated those limitations into the Communications Act of 1934, see 110 Stat. 56, 151. Section 201(b) of that Actempowers the Federal Communications Commission to“prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessaryin the public interest to carry out [its] provisions.” Ch. 296, 52 Stat. 588, codified at 47 U. S. C. §201(b). Of course, that rulemaking authority extends to the subse-quently added portions of the Act. See AT&T Corp. v. Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U. S. 366, 377–378 (1999). The Act imposes five substantive limitations, which are
codified in 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B); only one of them,§332(c)(7)(B)(ii), is at issue here. That provision requiresstate or local governments to act on wireless siting appli-cations “within a reasonable period of time after the re-quest is duly filed.” Two other features of §332(c)(7) are relevant. First, subparagraph (A), known as the “saving clause,” provides that nothing in the Act, except those limitations provided in §332(c)(7)(B), “shall limit or affect the authority of a State or local government” over sitingdecisions. Second, §332(c)(7)(B)(v) authorizes a person who believes a state or local government’s wireless-sitingdecision to be inconsistent with any of the limitations in §332(c)(7)(B) to “commence an action in any court of com-petent jurisdiction.”
In theory, §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) requires state and local
zoning authorities to take prompt action on siting applica-tions for wireless facilities. But in practice, wireless pro-viders often faced long delays. In July 2008, CTIA—The Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 3 Opinion of the Court Wireless Association,1 which represents wireless service providers, petitioned the FCC to clarify the meaning of§332(c)(7)(B)(ii)’s requirement that zoning authorities act on siting requests “within a reasonable period of time.” In November 2009, the Commission, relying on its broad statutory authority to implement the provisions of theCommunications Act, issued a declaratory ruling respond-ing to CTIA’s petition. In re Petition for Declaratory Rul-ing, 24 FCC Rcd. 13994, 14001. The Commission found that the “record evidence demonstrates that unreasonable delays in the personal wireless service facility siting process have obstructed the provision of wireless services” and that such delays “impede the promotion of ad-vanced services and competition that Congress deemed critical in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” Id., at 14006, 14008. A “reasonable period of time” under§332(c)(7)(B)(ii), the Commission determined, is presump-tively (but rebuttably) 90 days to process a collocationapplication (that is, an application to place a new antennaon an existing tower) and 150 days to process all other applications. Id., at 14005. Some state and local governments opposed adoption of
the Declaratory Ruling on the ground that the Commis-sion lacked “authority to interpret ambiguous provisions ofSection 332(c)(7).” Id., at 14000. Specifically, they argued that the saving clause, §332(c)(7)(A), and the judicialreview provision, §337(c)(7)(B)(v), together display a con-gressional intent to withhold from the Commission author-ity to interpret the limitations in §332(c)(7)(B). Assertingthat ground of objection, the cities of Arlington and San Antonio, Texas, petitioned for review of the Declaratory —————— 1 This is not a typographical error. CTIA—The Wireless Association was the name of the petitioner. CTIA is presumably an (unpronounce-
able) acronym, but even the organization’s website does not say what it
stands for. That secret, known only to wireless-service-provider insid-ers, we will not disclose here. 4 ARLINGTON v. FCC Opinion of the Court Ruling in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Relying on Circuit precedent, the Court of Appeals held that the Chevron framework applied to the threshold question whether the FCC possessed statutory authority to adopt the 90- and 150-day timeframes. 668 F. 3d 229, 248 (CA5 2012) (citing Texas v. United States, 497 F. 3d 491, 501 (CA5 2007)). Applying Chevron, the Court of Appeals found “§332(c)(7)(A)’s effect on the FCC’s author-ity to administer §332(c)(7)(B)’s limitations ambiguous,” 668 F. 3d, at 250, and held that “the FCC’s interpretationof its statutory authority” was a permissible constructionof the statute. Id., at 254. On the merits, the court upheldthe presumptive 90- and 150-day deadlines as a “permis-sible construction of §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) and (v) . . . entitled to Chevron deference.” Id., at 256. We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), limited to
the first question presented: “Whether . . . a court should apply Chevron to . . . an agency’s determination of its own jurisdiction.” Pet. for Cert. in No. 11–1545, p. i. II
A As this case turns on the scope of the doctrine enshrined in Chevron, we begin with a description of that case’s now-canonical formulation. “When a court reviews an agency’s construction of the statute which it administers, it is confronted with two questions.” 467 U. S., at 842. First, applying the ordinary tools of statutory construction, the court must determine “whether Congress has directlyspoken to the precise question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unam-biguously expressed intent of Congress.” Id., at 842–843. But “if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect tothe specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 5 Opinion of the Court the statute.” Id., at 843. Chevron is rooted in a background presumption of con-
gressional intent: namely, “that Congress, when it left ambiguity in a statute” administered by an agency, “un-derstood that the ambiguity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess whatever degree of discretionthe ambiguity allows.” Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740–741 (1996). Chevron thus pro-vides a stable background rule against which Congresscan legislate: Statutory ambiguities will be resolved, within the bounds of reasonable interpretation, not by the courts but by the administering agency. See Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U. S., at 397. Congress knows to speak in plain terms when it wishes to circumscribe, and in capaciousterms when it wishes to enlarge, agency discretion. B The question here is whether a court must defer under Chevron to an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambi-guity that concerns the scope of the agency’s statutory authority (that is, its jurisdiction). The argument againstdeference rests on the premise that there exist two distinctclasses of agency interpretations: Some interpretations—the big, important ones, presumably—define the agency’s“jurisdiction.” Others—humdrum, run-of-the-mill stuff— are simply applications of jurisdiction the agency plainlyhas. That premise is false, because the distinction be-tween “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional” interpreta-tions is a mirage. No matter how it is framed, the question a court faces when confronted with an agency’s inter- pretation of a statute it administers is always, simply, whether the agency has stayed within the bounds of its statutory authority. The misconception that there are, for Chevron purposes,
separate “jurisdictional” questions on which no deference 6 ARLINGTON v. FCC Opinion of the Court is due derives, perhaps, from a reflexive extension to agen- cies of the very real division between the jurisdictionaland nonjurisdictional that is applicable to courts. In the judicial context, there is a meaningful line: Whether thecourt decided correctly is a question that has different consequences from the question whether it had the power to decide at all. Congress has the power (within limits) totell the courts what classes of cases they may decide, see Trainmen v. Toledo, P. & W. R. Co., 321 U. S. 50, 63–64 (1944); Lauf v. E. G. Shinner & Co., 303 U. S. 323, 330 (1938), but not to prescribe or superintend how they decide those cases, see Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995). A court’s power to decide a case isindependent of whether its decision is correct, which iswhy even an erroneous judgment is entitled to res judicataeffect. Put differently, a jurisdictionally proper but sub-stantively incorrect judicial decision is not ultra vires. That is not so for agencies charged with administering
congressional statutes. Both their power to act and how they are to act is authoritatively prescribed by Congress, so that when they act improperly, no less than when theyact beyond their jurisdiction, what they do is ultra vires. Because the question—whether framed as an incorrect application of agency authority or an assertion of author-ity not conferred—is always whether the agency has gonebeyond what Congress has permitted it to do, there is noprincipled basis for carving out some arbitrary subset ofsuch claims as “jurisdictional.”
An example will illustrate just how illusory the pro- posed line between “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional”agency interpretations is. Imagine the following validly-enacted statute: COMMON CARRIER ACT SECTION 1. The Agency shall have jurisdiction to pro-hibit any common carrier from imposing an unreason-
Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 7 Opinion of the Court able condition upon access to its facilities. There is no question that this provision—including the terms “common carrier” and “unreasonable condition”— defines the Agency’s jurisdiction. Surely, the argument goes, a court must determine de novo the scope of that jurisdiction.
Consider, however, this alternative formulation of the statute: COMMON CARRIER ACT SECTION 1. No common carrier shall impose an un-reasonable condition upon access to its facilities.SECTION 2. The Agency may prescribe rules and regu-lations necessary in the public interest to effectuateSection 1 of this Act. Now imagine that the Agency, invoking its Section 2 authority, promulgates this Rule: “(1) The term ‘commoncarrier’ in Section 1 includes Internet Service Providers. (2) The term ‘unreasonable condition’ in Section 1 includes unreasonably high prices. (3) A monthly fee greater than$25 is an unreasonable condition on access to Internet service.” By this Rule, the Agency has claimed for itselfjurisdiction that is doubly questionable: Does its authority extend to Internet Service Providers? And does it extend to setting prices? Yet Section 2 makes clear that Con-gress, in petitioners’ words, “conferred interpretive poweron the agency” with respect to Section 1. Brief for Peti-tioners in No. 1545, p. 14. Even under petitioners’ theory,then, a court should defer to the Agency’s interpretation of the terms “common carrier” and “unreasonable condi-tion”—that is to say, its assertion that its “jurisdiction” extends to regulating Internet Service Providers and setting prices. In the first case, by contrast, petitioners’ theory would accord the agency no deference. The trouble with this is that in both cases, the underlying question is exactly the 8 ARLINGTON v. FCC Opinion of the Court same: Does the statute give the agency authority to regu-late Internet Service Providers and cap prices, or not?2 The reality, laid bare, is that there is no difference, insofar as the validity of agency action is concerned, between anagency’s exceeding the scope of its authority (its “jurisdic-tion”) and its exceeding authorized application of authoritythat it unquestionably has. “To exceed authorized applica-tion is to exceed authority. Virtually any administrativeaction can be characterized as either the one or the other, depending on how generally one wishes to describe the‘authority.’ ” Mississippi Power & Light Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Moore, 487 U. S. 354, 381 (1988) (SCALIA, J., con-curring in judgment); see also Monaghan, Marbury and the Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 29 (1983) (“Administrative application of law is administrative formulation of law whenever it involves elaboration of the statutory norm.”). This point is nicely illustrated by our decision in Na-
tional Cable & Telecommunications Assn., Inc. v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U. S. 327 (2002). That case considered whether the FCC’s “jurisdiction” to regulate the rents utility-pole owners charge for “pole attachments” (definedas attachments by a cable television system or provider of telecommunications service) extended to attachments thatprovided both cable television and high-speed Internet access (attachments for so-called “commingled services”). Id., at 331–336. We held, sensibly, that Chevron applied.534 U. S., at 333, 339. Whether framed as going to the —————— 2 The dissent’s non-answer to this example reveals the hollowness of
its theory. It “might,” the dissent claims, be “harder” to interpret thefirst Act, because it is (somehow) less “clear” than the second Act. Post, at 15–16 (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.). That it is even possible that the two could come out differently under the dissent’s test (whatever it is)
shows that that test must be wrong. The two statutes are substantively identical. Any difference in outcome would be arbitrary, so a soundinterpretive approach should yield none. Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 9 Opinion of the Court scope of the FCC’s delegated authority or the FCC’s appli-cation of its delegated authority, the underlying questionwas the same: Did the FCC exceed the bounds of its statu-tory authority to regulate rents for “pole attachments”when it sought to regulate rents for pole attachments providing commingled services? The label is an empty distraction because every new application of a broad statutory term can be reframed as aquestionable extension of the agency’s jurisdiction. One of the briefs in support of petitioners explains, helpfully, that“[j]urisdictional questions concern the who, what, where, and when of regulatory power: which subject matters mayan agency regulate and under what conditions.” Brief for IMLA Respondents 18–19. But an agency’s application of its authority pursuant to statutory text answers the same questions. Who is an “outside salesman”? What is a “pole attachment”? Where do the “waters of the United States” end? When must a Medicare provider challenge a reim-bursement determination in order to be entitled to an administrative appeal? These can all be reframed as ques-tions about the scope of agencies’ regulatory jurisdiction— and they are all questions to which the Chevron framework applies. See Christopher v. SmithKline Bee-cham Corp., 567 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 2, 8); National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., supra, at 331, 333; United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., 474 U. S. 121, 123, 131 (1985); Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 1, 11).
In sum, judges should not waste their time in the men-
tal acrobatics needed to decide whether an agency’s inter-pretation of a statutory provision is “jurisdictional” or “nonjurisdictional.” Once those labels are sheared away, itbecomes clear that the question in every case is, simply, whether the statutory text forecloses the agency’s asser-tion of authority, or not. See H. Edwards & L. Elliott, 10 ARLINGTON v. FCC Opinion of the Court Federal Standards of Review 146 (2007) (“In practice, it does not appear to matter whether delegated authority is viewed as a threshold inquiry.”). The federal judge as haruspex, sifting the entrails of vast statutory schemesto divine whether a particular agency interpretation qualifies as “jurisdictional,” is not engaged in reasoned decisionmaking. C Fortunately, then, we have consistently held “that Chevron applies to cases in which an agency adopts a con- struction of a jurisdictional provision of a statute it admin-isters.” 1 R. Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise §3.5, p. 187 (2010). One of our opinions explicitly says that no“exception exists to the normal [deferential] standard of review” for “ ‘jurisdictional or legal question[s] concerningthe coverage’ ” of an Act. NLRB v. City Disposal Systems, Inc., 465 U. S. 822, 830, n. 7 (1984). A prime example of deferential review for questions of jurisdiction is Commod-ity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986). That case involved a CFTC interpretation of 7U. S. C. §18(c), which provides that before the Commissiontakes action on a complaint, the complainant must file abond to cover “any reparation award that may be issued bythe Commission against the complainant on any counter-claim by respondent.” (Emphasis added.) The CFTC, pursuant to its broad rulemaking authority, see §12a(5),interpreted that oblique reference to counterclaims as granting it “the power to take jurisdiction over” not justfederal-law counterclaims, but state-law counterclaims as well. Schor, supra, at 844. We not only deferred under Chevron to the Commission’s “eminently reasonable . . .interpretation of the statute it is entrusted to administer,”but also chided the Court of Appeals for declining to afford def- erence because of the putatively “ ‘statutory interpretation-jurisdictiona