Source: http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/2012/02/use-and-abuse-of-consent-decrees-in-federal-rulemaking
Timestamp: 2014-11-25 21:58:22
Document Index: 177355048

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 112', '§ 7412', '§ 112', '§ 112', '§ 112', '§ 113', '§ 7413']

As a policy device, government by consent decree serves no necessary end. It opens the door to unforeseeable mischief; it degrades the institutions of representative democracy and augments the power of special interest groups. It does all of this in a society that hardly needs new devices that emasculate representative democracy and strengthen the power of special interests. — Citizens for a Better Environment v. Gorsuch, 718 F.2d 1117, 1137 (Wilkey, J., dissenting)
The Subcommittee is to be commended for focusing its attention on the subject of this hearing, abuses of consent decrees in institutional reform and agency litigation, and for giving serious consideration to practical solutions to this problem. “Government by decree” is contrary to the principles of democratic self-governance. It takes power from the people’s elected representatives and places it in the least accountable of the branches of government, the judiciary. Our federal courts are excellent at deciding the “cases and controversies” to which their jurisdiction is limited under the Constitution. But the judiciary lacks the institutional competence, resources, and mandate to oversee institutions and make government policy. As with any deviation from the constitutional separation of power, when the courts stray from their proper role, the consequences are myriad, from lack of transparency, to reduced governmental accountability, to bad public policy results. These observations apply equally to consent decrees that bind federal agencies and limit their exercise of discretion as to consent decrees in institutional reform litigation regarding state programs. Especially in recent years, such consent decrees have been used to short-circuit normal agency rulemaking procedures, to accelerate rulemaking in ways that constrain the public’s ability to participate in a meaningful fashion, and to do an end-run around the inherently political process of setting governmental priorities. In some cases, these decrees appear to be the result of collusion, where an agency shares the goals of those suing it and takes advantage of litigation to achieve those shared goals in ways that would be difficult or impossible outside of court. In these and other cases, consent decrees allow political actors to disclaim responsibility for agency actions that are unpopular and thereby evade accountability. And as with consent decrees in institutional reform litigation, previous administrations have, in several instances, abused such consent decrees in an attempt to bind their successors and limit their policy discretion. For these reasons, and more, consent decrees are often contrary to the public interest. More than that, consent decrees that limit discretion, if they are at all binding on the Executive Branch, also raise serious constitutional concerns.
There are solutions. The best, in my opinion, is for the Executive Branch itself to preserve its powers and discretion by declining to enter into consent decrees that compromise either. But this takes fortitude and the willingness to pass up short-term gain for longer-term benefits that are less tangible, such as greater public participation in rulemaking and robust democratic accountability. It should come as little surprise that the Reagan Administration was willing to make this trade-off, and that its policy was spearheaded by Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who is now Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. As I will explain, the principles that Attorney General Meese laid out in a 1986 memorandum setting Department of Justice Policy on consent decrees and settlements remain vital today and should form the backbone of any attempt to address this problem. Although the ultimate decision on whether to enter into any given consent decree should be left to high-ranking and accountable Executive Branch officials, such as the Attorney General and agency heads, Congress can and should act to provide for greater transparency and public participation and to ensure that consent decrees are entered into and carried out in the public interest, rather than as a means to circumvent usual rulemaking procedures or to evade accountability. Background
In the abstract, consent decrees serve a useful, beneficial purpose by allowing parties to settle claims without the expense and burden of litigation, while providing for ongoing judicial oversight of their settlement agreement. But litigation seeking to compel the government to undertake certain future acts is not the usual case, and the federal government is not the usual litigant. Consent decrees (and settlements) that bind the federal government present special challenges that do not arise in private litigation. This happens in all manner of litigation, and is not confined to a particular subject matter. Consent decrees binding federal actors have been considered in cases concerning environment policy, civil rights, federal mortgage subsidies, national security, and many others. Basically, consent decrees may become an issue in any area of the law where federal policymaking is routinely driven by litigation. These special challenges arise when parties attempt to use consent decrees to do more than to mimic the results of litigation by simply stipulating the rights and obligations of the parties under law, as a court might rule if the case were to proceed to trial. Although a decree is regarded as a judgment for most purposes, its basis is not the application of the law by a disinterested arbiter, but the consent of the parties. Accordingly, parties may agree to terms that would be unavailable to a court issuing its own judgment on a case, and yet have those terms “blessed” by the court through its adoption of the decree. In this way, parties can use the court to adopt terms that may affect the rights of third parties or have consequences beyond the dispute between the parties. While third parties may be able to directly challenge, or at least contract around, consent decrees that affect their rights in litigation among private parties, the public may have little or no recourse when its rights are traded away.
Judge Easterbrook also observes—correctly, in my view—that the existing law does not thoughtfully address the possibility of consent decrees based on collusion or primarily intended for their external effects, rather than merely to resolve the dispute before the court. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) allows for the modification of judgments, but underlying it is the assumption that a judgment accurately reflects parties’ entitlements under law—something that may not be true in the case of a consent decree where the parties’ interests are not opposed, but aligned. Based on this assumption, courts typically require a strong showing of changed circumstances to justify revision of a consent decree. They also typically disfavor challenges by third parties. The result is that the public’s rights and interests may go unrepresented in legal proceedings that incorrectly assume an adversarial posture and only minor externalities. All of this implicates rights, under the Constitution and otherwise. Jeremy Rabkin and Neal Devins argue persuasively that some consent decrees may intrude on the rights and prerogatives of the Executive Branch and thereby violate the separation of powers.[2] Entry of a decree gives the court the power to enforce its terms, on par with any normal judgment, but the federal government—and the Executive Branch, in particular—is not an ordinary litigant who may be subject to the judiciary’s powers in every instance. Rather, it is a co-equal branch of government, with its own powers that it may not trade or share with the other branches. The Supreme Court has made clear, repeatedly, that it lacks that authority.[3] It is clear from this case law, for example, that those powers assigned by the Constitution to the President are inalienable. He may not, for example, agree to be bound in his exercise of the veto power or, most likely, in his power to recommend legislation to Congress.[4]
And, of course, the Executive’s discretion is limited by the guarantees of rights contained in the Constitution and its amendments. No one would seriously argue that it has the authority to enter into a consent decree that abrogates a third party’s speech rights or requires it to seize, without due process or compensation, a third party’s property. Finally, the bulk of rights are not constitutional in nature, but flow from statutory guarantees. Even the Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”), which takes a narrow view of limits on Presidential power (even limits that prevent the President from trading away his powers), recognizes that “the Attorney General ordinarily may not settle litigation on terms that would transgress valid, otherwise applicable, statutory restrictions on agency conduct.”[11] Thus, an agency may not agree to ignore, in a rulemaking, a particular factor that it is bound by the statute to consider, or to consider another factor that the statute requires it to ignore. It must also abide by all procedural requirements, including, where applicable, those of the Administrative Procedure Act. Thus, an agency may not agree to dispense with notice and comment in most circumstances. And even OLC, which does not believe that the Constitution bars the President from trading away his discretion, argues that the APA may, in effect, do so, by requiring that agencies adhere to certain procedures in reaching substantive outcomes.[12] In sum, consent decrees (and in some instances, settlement agreements) that bind the federal government to undertake particular future actions present special risks and concerns that are simply not present in litigation between private parties. Nonetheless, they receive no greater scrutiny than consent decrees in cases that concern private parties’ rights, that do not present issues of great public interest, and that do not predominantly effect third parties’ rights.
Having sketched the problem, it is useful to fill in greater detail by surveying experience. In an attempt to distance this issue from the political and policy controversies of today, this discussion will, with one exception, discuss cases that arose in the 1970s and 1980s but which remain typical, in their essential points, of cases today. National Audubon Society v. Watt (1982).[13] The court describes the history of this case crisply:
The Reagan Administration argued that the consent decree was invalid because “one Administration may not constitutionally bind its successors in the exercise of policymaking discretion, and that the judiciary may not command the Executive Branch to exercise its discretionary powers in any particular manner.”[14] But the court ducked the “novel and far-reaching constitutional issues involved,” instead finding within the consent decree an “implied condition subsequent,” consistent with the government’s limited authority under NEPA to delay implementation of an authorized project, that, “[i]f Congress fails to act after having had a reasonable opportunity to reconsider the 1965 authorizing legislation, the parties shall no longer be bound by the stipulation.”[15] Accordingly, the court vacated the injunction entered by the district court. Environmental Defense Fund v. Costle
(1980) / Citizens for a Better Environment v. Gorsuch (1983).[16] The D.C. Circuit’s punt in National Audubon Society was consistent with the Court’s treatment of EDF v. Costle two years prior, when it pointedly declined to address the issue of restrictions on a federal official’s discretion to enter into a consent decree and remanded the case for further proceedings on that issue. Three years after that, the case returned, under a new title, and the constitutional issue could not be easily avoided. The court summarized the case’s posture:
(1984).[22] A sure sign that judicial overreach follows is an opinion that opens with a statement of this sort: “Congress has declared as a policy ‘the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.’”[23] Ferrell delivers. Rabkin and Devins summarize the case’s posture:
The Reagan Administration appealed, urging the Seventh Circuit “to read the Amended Stipulation as not governing TMAP in order to avoid ‘difficult constitutional issues’” regarding the scope of an executive official’s discretion “to bind his or her successors in office to substantive policy interpretations of a not-as-yet enacted statute.”[25] The court dismissed the argument for its “novelty” and found it waived regardless.[26] As Judge Coffey explained in dissent, the result of this decision was to require substantial federal expenditures where Congress had designed and enacted an alternative, “an unprecedented infringement upon the legislative process.”[27] United States v. Board of Education of Chicago
(1984).[28] In September 1980, the Carter Administration’s Department of Justice entered into a consent decree to resolve claims regarding its funding to support desegregation of the Chicago school district by requiring it “to make every good faith effort to find and provide every available form of financial resources (sic) adequate for the implementation of the desegregation plan.” The district court ruled in 1983 that the Reagan Administration had failed to satisfy this obligation and ordered it “to provide presently available funds, to find every available source of funds, to support specific legislative initiatives to meet the obligations of the Board, and ‘not [to] fail[] to seek appropriations that could be used for desegregation assistance to the Board.’”[29] The Seventh Circuit vacated the district court’s order, taking care to interpret the consent decree narrowly on the ground that “a government’s attempts to remedy its noncompliance with a consent decree are to be preferred over judicially-imposed remedies.”[30] But as to the government’s argument that its legislative activities are unreviewable by the judiciary, the Court allowed that the district court, rather than impose a penalty for the government’s lobbying activities, should instead have entered a civil contempt citation that “ordered the government either to refrain from specific efforts to make desegregation funds unavailable to the Board or to inform Congress about the funding obligations of the government under the Decree” and that, if the government persisted, “criminal contempt charges might have been appropriate.”[31] It also chastised the government for actions, “while perhaps within constitutional limits, cannot enhance the respect to which this Decree is entitled and do not befit a signatory of the stature of the United States Department of Justice.”[32]
(2011). Finally, let’s conclude with a more recent example. A coalition of environmental organizations sued EPA in December 2008, shortly after the presidential election that year, faulting the agency’s failure to issue emissions standards for certain “hazardous air pollutants” issued by power plants under § 112 of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7412. In its final months in office, the Clinton EPA had issued a predicate finding that such regulations were “appropriate and necessary,” but the George W. Bush Administration subsequently attempted to reverse that finding. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, a coalition of industry members was granted leave to intervene. There was little movement of the case until October 2009, when the plaintiffs and EPA concluded their private negotiations and lodged a proposed consent decree with the court. The decree stipulated that EPA had failed to perform a mandatory duty under the Clean Air Act by failing to issue a “maximum achievable control technology” (“MACT”) rule for power plants under Clean Air Act § 112(d). It further specified that EPA would sign a proposed rule by March 16, 2011, and would then sign a final rule no later than November 16, 2011—just eight months later. EPA leaders, far from adverse to the plaintiffs who had initiated the suit, publicly touted the rulemaking as a signal achievement of the Obama EPA. The interveners challenged the proposed consent decree, which the plaintiffs and EPA had negotiated without any industry participation. The agreement unduly constrained executive discretion, the interveners argued, because it required EPA to conclude that § 112(d) standards would be required and thereby blocked the agency from either declining to issue standards[33] or implementing standards based, in whole or in part, on health-based thresholds rather than the more onerous MACT standard. Further, the proposed decree, they argued, all but guaranteed violations of the Administrative Procedure Act due to the vast complexity of the task before EPA, which could not possibly be completed in such a short period under the Administrative Procedure Act’s “arbitrary and capricious” standard.[34] As the interveners explained, the schedule contemplated by the proposal was far shorter than EPA had employed in less-complicated rulemakings that did not require the agency, as in this instance, to evaluate its proposed rule’s impact on the nation’s electric generating fleet. The public interest, it concluded, required at least twelve months for the industry and interested parties to undertake this task.
Unfortunately, it appears that the interveners’ claims were, as the court acknowledged, “not insubstantial.” EPA’s proposed rule, rushed out in a matter of months, contained numerous errors—one emission standard, for example, was off by a factor of 1,000—was lacking technical support documents necessary for interested parties to assess it, and was, in some places, sufficiently vague that regulated entities were unable to determine their compliance obligations. EPA had also, in its haste, declined to assess the implications of its rule on electric reliability or to provide sufficient time for industry and regulators to do so, despite a statutory requirement that EPA take account of “energy requirements” and the possibility that the rule could conflict with requirements under the Federal Power Act. Several preliminary assessments—by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation— suggested that the rule would force enough shutdowns to threaten reliability in some areas.[36] Those assessments, as well as industry evaluations, also raised the prospect that significant numbers of sources would be unable to come into compliance with the proposed standards within the three-year compliance window, even with the possibility of an additional year to achieve compliance.[37] Late in 2011, industry interveners brought these concerns to the district court, seeking relief from the consent decree on the basis of changed circumstances—specifically, the unforeseen circumstance that, faced with overwhelming evidence that more time was necessary to craft a rule that complied with all procedural and substantive requirements, EPA would not avail itself of the consent decree’s provision to seek the time needed to carry out its legal obligations. Although EPA signed a final rule in late December, the court has yet to rule on the interveners’ motion.[38] The Meese Memorandum
These categories corresponded closely to the arguments that the Department of Justice had raised, with varying degrees of success, in National Audubon Society v. Watt, Ferrell, and Chicago Board of Education. Accordingly, the Meese Policy propounded policy guidelines prohibiting the Department of Justice, whether on its own behalf or on behalf of client agencies and departments, from entering into consent decrees that limited discretionary authority in any of three manners:
The new policy was announced at a press conference by Charles Cooper, then head of Department’s Office of Legislative Counsel. Cooper stated that the Government had, over the years, entered into “scores, perhaps hundreds, of consent decrees,” and that the Reagan Administration had felt hamstrung as a result in a number of cases.[44] He described and cited Ferrell, Citizens for a Better Environment v. Gorsuch, and Chicago Board of Education.[45] Going by news reports, the reaction among activist groups that sue to effect changes in government policy was negative. Ralph Neas, for example, told the Washington Post, “It appears that Justice once again is abandoning enforcement policies used by previous Democratic and Republican administrations.” “The net result,” he predicted, “would be a narrowing of remedies that would be available to victims of unlawful discrimination” and more “prolonged and costly legal proceedings.”[46] A former Reagan Department of Justice official complained that the Administration was, in effect, “tying its own hands.”[47]
Special-Interest-Driven Priorities. Consent decrees can undermine presidential control of the executive branch, empowering activists and subordinate officials to set the federal government’s policy priorities. Regulatory actions are subject to the usual give and take of the political process, with Congress, outside groups, and the public all influencing an administration’s or an agency’s agenda, through formal and informal means. This include, for example, congressional policy riders or pointed questions for officials at hearings; petitions for rulemaking filed by regulated entities or activists; meetings between stakeholders and government officials; and policy direction to agencies from the White House. Especially when they are employed collusively, consent decrees short-circuit these political processes. In this way, agency officials can work with outside groups to force their agenda in the face of opposition—or even just reluctance, in light of higher priorities—from the White House, Congress, and the public. When this happens, the public interest—as distinct from activists’ or regulators’ special interests—may not have a seat at the table as the agency reorganizes its agenda by committing to take particular regulatory actions at particular times, in advance or to the exclusion of other rulemaking activities that may be of greater or broader benefit. Rushed Rulemaking. The public interest may also be sacrificed when officials use consent decrees to accelerate the rulemaking process by insulating it from political pressures that may reasonably require an agency to achieve its goals at a more deliberate speed. In this way, officials may gain an advantage over other officials and agencies that may have competing interests, as well as over their successors, by rushing out rules that they otherwise may not have been able to complete or would have had to scale back in certain respects.In some instances, aggressive consent decree schedules, as in American Nurses, may provide the agency with a practical excuse (albeit not a legal excuse) to play fast and loose with Administrative Procedure Act and other procedural requirements, reducing the opportunity for public participation in rulemaking and, substantively, likely resulting in lower-quality regulation. Although a consent decree deadline does not excuse an agency’s failure to observe procedural regularities, courts are typically deferential in reviewing regulatory actions and are reluctant to vacate rules tainted by procedural irregularity in all but the most egregious cases, where agency misconduct and party prejudice are manifest. In practical terms, members of the public and regulated entities whose procedural rights are compromised by overly-aggressive consent decree schedules can rarely achieve proper redress.
Practical Obscurity. Consent decrees are often faulted as “secret regulation,” because they occur outside of the usual process designed to guarantee public notice and participation in policymaking.[49] As one recent article argues, “[W]hen the government is a defendant, the public has an important interest in understanding how its activities are circumscribed or unleashed by a decree,” but too often these settlements are not subject to any public scrutiny.[50] And even when the public is technically provided notice, that notice may be far less effective than would ordinarily be required under the Administrative Procedure Act. The result is that the agency may make very serious policy determinations that affect the rights of third parties in serious ways without subjecting its decisionmaking process to the public scrutiny and participation that such an action would otherwise entail. This is so despite that a consent decree may be more binding on an agency than a mere regulation, which it may alter or abandon without a court’s permission. Eliminating flexibility. As the Reagan Administration learned, abusive consent decrees may reduce the government’s flexibility to alter its plans and to select the best policy response to address any given problem. The Supreme Court has recently clarified that agencies need not provide any greater justification for a change in policy than for adopting a new policy, recognizing the value of flexibility in administering the law.[51] It is unusual, then, that when an agency acts pursuant to a consent decree, it has substantially less discretion to select other means that may be equally effective in satisfying its statutory or constitutional obligations. In effect, consent decrees have the potential to “freeze the regulatory processes of representative democracy.”[52]
In an ideal world, the Executive Branch would take full responsibility for the exercise of its powers and would refuse to cede its authority to the courts and to private-party litigants, despite the promise of some short-term gain from doing so. Barring settlements that restrain executive discretion by statute would itself raise constitutional and policy questions and would be, in any case, incongruous with the many provisions of law that afford private parties license to compel the government to take future actions. But Congress can and should adopt certain common-sense policies that provide for transparency and accountability in consent decrees that compel future government action. Any legislation that is intended to address this problem in a comprehensive fashion should include the following features, with respect to consent decrees that commit the government to undertake future action of a generally-applicable quality:
Transparency. Proposed consent decrees should be subject to the usual notice and comment requirements, as is generally the case under the Clean Air Act.[54] In addition, to aid Congress and the public in its understanding of this issue, the Department of Justice should be required to make annual reports to Congress on the government’s use of consent decrees. Robust Public Participation. As in any rulemaking, an agency or department should be required to respond to the issues raised in public comments on a proposed consent decree, justifying its policy choices in terms of the public interest; failure to do so would prevent the court from approving the consent decree. These comments, in turn, would become part of the record before the court when it rules on the consent decree. Parties who would have standing to challenge an action taken pursuant to a consent decree should have the right to intervene in a lawsuit where a consent decree may be lodged. As described below, these interveners should have the opportunity to demonstrate to the court that a proposed decree is not in the public interest. Sufficient Time for Rulemaking. The agency should bear the burden of demonstrating that any deadlines in the proposed decree will allow it to satisfy all applicable procedural and substantive obligations and further the public interest. A Public Interest Standard. Especially for consent decrees that concern future rulemaking, those parties in support of the decree should bear the burden of demonstrating that it is in the public interest. In particular, they would have to address (1) how the proposed decree would affect the discharge of all other uncompleted nondiscretionary duties; and (2) why taking the regulatory actions required under the consent decree, to the delay or exclusion of other actions, is in the public interest. The court, in turn, before ruling on the supporters’ motion to accept the consent decree, would have to “satisfy itself of the settlement’s overall fairness to beneficiaries and consistency with the public interest”[55] which supporters of the consent decree would be required to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence..
Flexibility. Finally, Congress should act to ensure that consent decrees do not freeze into place a particular official’s or administration’s policy preferences, but afford the government reasonable flexibility, consistent with its constitutional prerogatives, to address changing circumstances. To that end, if the government moves to terminate or modify a consent decree on the grounds that it is no longer in the public interest, the court should review that motion de novo, under the public interest standard articulated above. Conclusion
No less than in institutional-reform litigation, consent decrees that govern the federal government’s future actions raise serious constitutional and policy questions and are too often abused to circumvent normal political process and evade democratic accountability. Congress can and should address this problem in a comprehensive, yet targeted, fashion to ensure that such consent decrees are employed only in circumstances where they advance the public interest, as determined by our public institutions, not special interests. Show references in this report
[3] See, e.g., Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) (executive may not give away power to execute the laws); Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983) (executive may not give away veto power). [4] Memorandum from Randolph Moss, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, to Raymond Fisher, Associate Attorney General, regarding Authority of the United States To Enter Settlements Limiting the Future Exercise of Executive Branch Discretion (June 15, 1999), available at http://www.justice.gov/olc/consent_decrees2.htm [hereinafter “OLC Memorandum”].
[8] United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 693 (1971). [9] Constitutional Limits at 241 (footnotes omitted). [10] Massachusetts v. EPA, 127 S.Ct. 1438, 1462 (2007).
[11] OLC Memorandum. [12] Id. [13] 678 F.3d 299 (D.C. Cir. 1982).
[14] Id. at 305. [15] Id. at 310. [16] 636 F.2d 1229 (1980); 718 F.2d 1117 (1983). [17] 718 F.2d at 1120-21.
[21] Id. at 1136. [22] 743 F.2d 454 (7th Cir. 1984).
[25] 743 F.2d at 462-63. [26] Id. at 463 (“Even if the constitutional issue were properly before us, we doubt that it would be so substantial as to require us to ignore the plain language of the consent decree.”).
[29] Id. at 1301. [30] Id. at 1306. [31] Id. at 1308.
[33] See New Jersey v. EPA, 517 F.3d 574, 582 (EPA may delist power plants under Clean Air Act § 112(d)(9)). [34] See Motor Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association v. State Farm Insurance, 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) (action is arbitrary and capricious where agency “entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem” before it). [35] Memorandum Opinion, American Nurses Assoc. v. Jackson, No. 1:08-cv-02198-RMC (Apr. 15, 2010). [36] FERC, Office of Electric Reliability, Potential Retirement of Coal Fired Generation and its Effect on System Reliability, Oct. 27, 2010; NERC, 2011 Long-Term Reliability Assessment 73, 76 (2011).
[38] On behalf of several non-profit groups, I filed an amicus curiae brief in support of that motion. Amicus Brief by Americans for Prosperity, Cause of Action, Center for Rule of Law, Institute for Liberty, and the National Black Chamber of Commerce in Support of Motion for Relief from Judgment, American Nurses Assoc. v. Jackson, No. 1:08-cv-02198-RMC (Dec. 1, 2011). In addition, 21 states and Guam also filed a brief supporting the request for additional time for the rulemaking. [39] Memorandum from Edwin Meese III Regarding Department Policy Regarding Consent Decrees and Settlement Agreements, Mar. 13, 1986, at 1 [hereinafter Meese Policy]. [40] Id. at 1-2.
[42] Id. at 4. [43] Id. [44] Robert Pear, Meese Restricts Settlements in Suits Against Government, N.Y. Times, Mar. 22, 1986, at A1. [45] Id. [46] Howard Kurtz, Attorney General Reduces Scope of Consent Decrees, Wash. Post, Mar. 22, 1986, at A2.
[49] See, e.g., Margo Schlanger, Against Secret Regulation: Why and How We Should End the Practical Obscurity of Injunctions and Consent Decrees, 59 DePaul L. Rev. 515 (2010). Such concerns may be overblown, however, when they concern settlements between private parties or settlements with the government that predominantly affect private rights. [50] Id. at 516. [51] FCC v. Fox Television Stations, 129 S.Ct. 1806 (2009). [52] Citizens for a Better Environment, 718 F.2d at 1136 (Wilkey, J., dissenting). [53] Id. at 1136-37.
[54] Clean Air Act § 113(g), 42 U.S.C. § 7413(g). Note that this provision, however, does not require EPA to respond to comments, only that, “as appropriate,” it “shall promptly consider” them. [55] United States v. Trucking Employers, Inc., 561 F.2d 313, 317 (D.C.Cir.1977) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).