Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/514/122/case.html
Timestamp: 2020-01-23 14:32:36
Document Index: 326394136

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 944', '§ 908', '§402', '§ 660', '§816', '§402', '§ 402', '§ 702', '§ 921', '§ 152', '§ 902', '§ 944', '§ 551', '§ 932', '§4', '§ 939', '§ 919', '§ 921', '§ 939', '§ 701', '§ 36', '§ 701']

DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF WORKERS' COMPENSATION PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR v. NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING & DRY DOCK CO. ET AL. - Volume 514 - Full Text - US Supreme Court Center - USSC Cases - Nolo
US Supreme Court Center > Volume 514 > DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF WORKERS' COMPENSATION PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR v. NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING & DRY DOCK CO. ET AL. > Full Text
1 The court found that, as administrator of the § 944 special fund, the Director did have standing to appeal the Board's decision to grant respondent relief under § 908(f). That ruling is not before us, and we express no view upon it.
The phrase "person adversely affected or aggrieved" is a term of art used in many statutes to designate those who have standing to challenge or appeal an agency decision, within the agency or before the courts. See, e. g., federal Communications Act of 1934,47 U. S. C. §402(b)(6); Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 29 U. S. C. § 660(a); Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, 30 U. S. C. §816. The terms "adversely affected" and "aggrieved," alone or in combination, have a long history in federal administrative law, dating back at least to the federal Communications Act of 1934, §402(b)(2) (codified, as amended, 47 U. S. C. § 402(b)(6)). They were already familiar terms in 1946, when they were embodied within the judicial review provision of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. § 702, which entitles "[a] person ... adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute" to judicial review. In that provision, the qualification "within the meaning of a relevant statute" is not an addition to what "adversely affected or aggrieved" alone conveys; but is rather an acknowledgment of the fact that what constitutes adverse effect or aggrievement varies from statute to statute. As the United States Department of Justice, At-
2 In addition to not reaching the § 921 (c) question, Perini also took as a given (because it had been conceded below) the answer to another question: whether the Director (rather than the Benefits Review Board) is the proper party respondent to an appeal from the Board's determination. See 459 U. S., at 304, n. 13. Obviously, an agency's entitlement to party respondent status does not necessarily imply that agency's standing to appeal: The National Labor Relations Board, for example, is always the party respondent to an employer or employee appeal, but cannot initiate an appeal from its own determination. 29 U. S. C. §§ 152(1), 160(f). Indeed, it can be argued, as amici in this case have done, that if the Director is the proper party respondent in the court of appeals (as her
3 United States v. ICC accorded the United States standing despite the facts that (1) the Interstate Commerce Act contained no specific judicial review provision, and (2) the AP A's general judicial review provision ("person adversely affected or aggrieved") excludes agencies from the definition of "person." See infra, at 129. It would thus appear that an agency suing in what might be termed a nongovernmental capacity escapes that definitional limitation. The LHWCA likewise contains a definition of "person" that does not specifically include agencies. 33 U. S. C. § 902(1). We chose not to rely upon that provision in this opinion because it seemed more likely to sweep in the question of the Director's authority to appeal Board rulings that are adverse to the § 944 special fund, which deserves separate attention. It is possible that the Director's status as manager of the privately financed fund removes her from the "person" limitation, just as it may remove her from the more general limitation that agencies qua agencies are not "adversely affected or aggrieved." We leave those issues to be resolved in a case where the Director's relationship to the fund is immediately before us.
That an agency in its governmental capacity is not "adversely affected or aggrieved" is strongly suggested, as well, by two aspects of the United States Code: First, the fact that the Code's general judicial review provision, contained in the AP A, does not include agencies within the category of "person adversely affected or aggrieved." See 5 U. S. C. § 551(2) (excepting agencies from the definition of "person"). Since, as we suggested in United States v. ICC, the APA provision reflects "the general legislative pattern of administrative and judicial relationships," 337 U. S., at 433-434, it indicates that even under specific "adversely affected or aggrieved" statutes (there were a number extant when the APA was adopted) agencies as such normally do not have standing. And second, the United States Code displays throughout that when an agency in its governmental capacity is meant to have standing, Congress says so. The LHWCA's silence regarding the Secretary's ability to take an appeal is significant when laid beside other provisions of law. See, e. g., Black Lung Benefits Act (BLBA), 30 U. S. C. § 932(k) ("The Secretary shall be a party in any proceeding
The LHWCA assigns four broad areas of responsibility to the Director: (1) supervising, administering, and making
First, the Director claims that because the LHWCA "has many of the elements of social insurance, and as such is designed to promote the public interest," Brief for Petitioner 17, she has standing to "advance in federal court the public interest in ensuring adequate compensation payments to claimants," id., at 18. It is doubtful, to begin with, that the goal of the LHWCA is simply the support of disabled workers. In fact, we have said that, because "the LHWCA represents a compromise between the competing interests of disabled laborers and their employers," it "is not correct to interpret the Act as guaranteeing a completely adequate remedy for all covered disabilities." Potomac Elec. Power Co. v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, 449 U. S. 268, 282 (1980). The LHWCA is a scheme for fair and efficient resolution of a class of private disputes, managed and arbitered by the Government. It represents a "quid pro quo between employer and employee. Employers relinquish certain legal rights which the law affords to them and so, in turn, do the employees." 1 M. Norris, The Law of Maritime Personal Injuries §4.1, p. 106 (4th ed. 1990) (emphasis added).
The Director argues that her standing to pursue the public's interest in adequate compensation of claimants is supported by our decisions in Heckman v. United States, 224 U. S. 413 (1912), Moe v. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Flathead Reservation, 425 U. S. 463 (1976), Pasa-
The second category of interest claimed to be affected by erroneous Board rulings is the Director's ability to fulfill "important administrative and enforcement responsibilities." Brief for Petitioner 18. The Director fails, however, to identify any specific statutory duties that an erroneous Board ruling interferes with, reciting instead conjectural harms to abstract and remote concerns. She contends, for example, that "incorrect claim determinations by the Board frustrate [her] duty to administer and enforce the statutory scheme in a uniform manner." Id., at 18-19. But it is impossible to
If the correctness of adjudications were essential to the Director's performance of her assigned duties, Congress would presumably have done what it has done with many other agencies: made adjudication her responsibility. In fact, however, it has taken pains to remove adjudication from her realm. The LHWCA Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 1251, assigned administration to the Director, 33 U. S. C. § 939(a); assigned initial adjudication to ALJ's, § 919(d); and created the Board to consider appeals from ALJ decisions, § 921. The assertion that proper adjudication is essential to proper performance of the Director's functions is quite simply contrary to the whole structure of the Act. To make an implausible argument even worse, the Director must acknowledge that her lack of control over the adjudicative process does not even deprive her of the power to resolve legal ambiguities in the statute. She retains the rulemaking power, see § 939(a), which means that if her problem with the present decision of the Board is that it has established an erroneous rule of law, see Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), she has full power to alter that rule. See Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., 505 U. S. 469, 476 (1992) ("[T]he [Board] is not entitled to any special deference"). Her only possible complaint, then, is that she does not agree with the outcome of this particular case. The Director also claims that precluding her from seeking review of erroneous Board rulings "would reduce
Significantly, however, the Court observes that our precedent "certainly establish[es] that Congress could have con-
1 In contrast, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit raised the standing issue in this case on its own motion because it feared that judicial review initiated by the Director would "strik[e] at the core of the constitutional limitations placed upon thEe] court by Article III of the Constitution." 8 F.3d 175, 180, n. 1 (1993); see also Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Perini North River Associates, 459 U. S. 297, 302-305 (1983) (noting but not deciding Article III issue).
220 CFR §§ 701.301(a)(7), 702.105 (1994).
3 The law-presentation role OWCP's Director seeks to play might be compared with the role of an advocate general or ministere public in civil law proceedings. See generally M. Glendon, M. Gordon, & C. Osakwe, Comparative Legal Traditions 344 (2d ed. 1994); R. David, French Law 59 (1972).
Even if this passage cannot force an uncommon reading of the LHWCA words "person adversely affected or aggrieved," see ante, at 130, it strongly indicates that Congress considered vital to sound administration of the Act the administrator's access to court review.
6 This law "applies to all claims for injuries or deaths based on employment events that occurred prior to July 2[4], 1982, the effective date of the District of Columbia Workers' Compensation Act [36 D. C. Code Ann. § 36-301 et seq. (1981)]." 20 CFR § 701.101(b) (1994).
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