What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations.

Opinion:
MANDEL, GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND, et al. v. BRADLEY et al.
No. 76-128.
Argued February 23, 1977
Decided June 16, 1977
George A. Nilson, Deputy Attorney General of Maryland, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were Francis B. Burch, Attorney General, and Robert A. Zarnoch, Assistant Attorney General.
Jon T. Brown argued the cause and filed a brief for appellees.
Per Curiam.
Candidates for statewide or federal office in Maryland may obtain a place on the general election ballot by filing with the State Administrative Board of Election Laws a certificate of candidacy 70 days before a political party’s primary election and then by winning the primary. Alternatively, under provisions of the Maryland Election Code, a candidate for statewide or federal office may qualify for a position on the general election ballot as an independent by filing, 70 days before the date on which party primaries are held, nominating petitions signed by at least 3% oí the State’s registered voters and a certificate of candidacy. Md. Elec. Code Ann. §7-1 (1976 and Supp. 1976). In Presidential election years this filing date occurs approximately 230 to 240 days before the general election. In other years it occurs about 120 days before the general election. §§1-1 (a)(8), 5-2, 7-1.
Appellee Bruce Bradley decided in the spring of 1975 to run as an independent candidate for the United States Senate in 1976, a Presidential election year. Starting in the fall of 1975 Bradley collected signatures on nominating petitions. The requisite number was 51,155. On March 8, 1976, the deadline for filing, Bradley submitted 53,239 signatures and filed a certificate of candidacy for the Senate seat. However, on April 15, 1976, the State Administrative Board of Election Laws determined that only 42,049 of the signatures were valid and denied him a place on the ballot.
Two weeks later, Bradley and the other appellees — petition signers and other voter supporters of Bradley — filed the instant suit, alleging that the procedures mandated by § 7-1 of the Md. Elec. Code (1976 and Supp. 1976) constitute an unconstitutional infringement of their associational and voting rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. They complained that Maryland’s early filing date made it more difficult for Bradley to obtain the requisite number of signatures than for a party member to win a primary and sought, inter alia, an injunction against future enforcement of the offending provision of Maryland’s election procedures. A three-judge District Court agreed with the appellees that the early filing deadline of § 7-1 (i) (Supp. 1976) was an unconstitutional burden on an independent candidate’s access to the ballot and ordered the appellants to give Bradley 53 days after the party primaries to gather the requisite number of signatures.
The court based its holding on our summary affirmance in Tucker v. Salera, 424 U. S. 959 (1976), aff’g 399 F. Supp. 1258 (ED Pa. 1975). In Salera, a three-judge court declared unconstitutional a Pennsylvania law setting the deadline for an independent candidate to gather signatures to obtain a place on the ballot 244 days before the general election in a Presidential election year. Under the Pennsylvania law, independents had to submit signatures of only 2% of the largest vote cast for any candidate in the preceding statewide general election, but they had to gather the required signatures within a 21-day period prior to the filing deadline. In declaring the Pennsylvania statute invalid, the three-judge court relied, not on the short period for signature gathering (which it thought was valid under Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724 (1974)), but solely on the early deadline for submission of the necessary signatures. The court. found that the deadline substantially burdened ballot access of independents by requiring them to obtain the necessary signatures at a time when the election issues were undefined and the voters were apathetic. It also rejected various countervailing state interests that had been urged. This Court summarily affirmed the judgment of the three-judge court in Salera.
The three-judge court in this case viewed this Court’s summary affirmance in Salera as controlling precedent for the proposition that early filing dates, such as that employed in Maryland, are unconstitutionally burdensome on the independent candidate’s access to the ballot, and therefore decided in favor of the appellees. We noted probable jurisdiction, 429 U. S. 813 (1976).
The District Court erred in believing that our affirmance in Salera adopted the reasoning as well as the judgment of the three-judge court in that case and thus required the District Court to conclude that the early filing date is impermissibly burdensome. Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U. S. 332 (1975), held that lower courts are bound by summary actions on the merits by this Court, but we noted that “[a]scertaining the reach and content of summary actions may itself present issues of real substance.” Id., at 345 n. 14. Because a summary affirmance is an affirmance of the judgment only, the rationale of the affirmance may not be gleaned solely from the opinion below.
“When we summarily affirm, without opinion, ... we affirm the judgment but not necessarily the reasoning by which it was reached. An unexplicated summary affirmance settles the issues for the parties, and is not to be read as a renunciation by this Court of doctrines previously announced in our opinions after full argument.” (Footnote omitted.) Fusari v. Steinberg, 419 U. S. 379, 391-392 (1975) (Burger, C. J., concurring).
Summary affirmances and dismissals for want of a substantial federal question without doubt reject the specific challenges presented in the statement of jurisdiction and do leave undisturbed the judgment appealed from. They do prevent lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions. After Salera, for example, other courts were not free to conclude that the Pennsylvania provision invalidated was nevertheless constitutional. Summary actions, however, including Salera, should not be understood as breaking new ground but as applying principles established by prior decisions to the particular facts involved.
Here, the District Court ruled that legally “Salera decides the issue before us, and as the latest expression of the Supreme Court, we are bound to follow it.” App. to Jurisdictional Statement 12a. The precedential significance of the summary action in Salera, however, is to be assessed in the light of all of the facts in that case; and it is immediately apparent that those facts are very different from the facts of this case. There, in addition to the early filing date, signatures had to be gathered within a 21-day period. This limited time enormously increased the difficulty of obtaining the number of signatures necessary to qualify as an independent candidate.
This combination of an early filing deadline and the 21-day limitation on signature gathering is sufficient to distinguish Salera from the case now before us, where there is no limitation on the period within which such signatures must be gathered. In short, Salera did not mandate the result reached by the District Court in this case.
Because of its preoccupation with Salera, the District Court failed to undertake an independent examination of the merits. The’ appropriate inquiry was set out in Storer v. Brown, supra, at 742:
“[I]n the context of [Maryland] politics, could a reasonably diligent independent candidate be expected to satisfy the [ballot access] requirements, or will it be only rarely that the unaffiliated candidate will succeed in getting on the ballot? Past experience will be a helpful, if not always an unerring, guide: it will be one thing if independent candidates have qualified with some regularity and quite a different matter if they have not. We note here that the State mentions only one instance of an independent candidate’s qualifying . . . but disclaims having made any comprehensive survey of the official records that would perhaps reveal the truth of the matter.”
In Btorer itself, because the District Court had not applied these standards in adjudicating the constitutional issues before it, we remanded the case “to permit further findings with respect to the extent of the burden imposed on independent candidates.” 415 U. S., at 740. There is no reason here for doing any less. The District Court did not sift through the conflicting evidence and make findings of fact as to the difficulty of obtaining signatures in time to meet the early filing deadline. It did not consider the extent to which other features of the Maryland electoral system — such as the unlimited period during which signatures may be collected, or the unrestricted pool of potential petition signers — moderate whatever burden the deadline creates. See Developments in the Law— Elections, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 1111,1142-1143 (1975). It did not analyze what the past experience of independent candidates for statewide office might indicate about the burden imposed on those seeking ballot access. Instead, the District Court’s assumption that the filing deadline by itself was per se illegal- — as well as the expedited basis upon which the case necessarily was decided — resulted in a failure to apply the constitutional standards announced in Storer to the statutory provisions here at issue.
The application of those standards to the evidence in the record is, in the first instance, a task for the District Court. We therefore vacate the judgment, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Bradley successfully gathered the requisite number of signatures, obtained a place on the ballot, ran, and lost. This case is nonetheless not moot. Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724, 737 n. 8 (1974).
In Storer v. Brown, supra, as the District Court noted, the 24-day limitation was not by itself enough to invalidate the statute, but we clearly recognized that the limitation, when combined with other provisions of the election law, might invalidate the statutory scheme. 415 U. S., at 742-743. The District Court in this case erred in reading Storer v. Brown as holding irrelevant the limited period of time in which signatures must be gathered.
The appellees filed this action on April 30, 1976. The three-judge court was convened and heard argument on May 12, and it announced its decision on May 17.
There is evidence in the record that in both 1972 and 1976 — the only years in which the early deadline was effective — no candidate for statewide office succeeded in qualifying for the ballot. There is also evidence tending to substantiate the appellees’ contention that there existed a variety of obstacles in the way of obtaining support for an independent candidate far in advance of the general election. Without intimating any ultimate view on the merits of the appellees’ challenge, we have no doubt that it has sufficient substance to warrant a remand for further proceedings.
The District Court will be free on remand to- consider the appellees’ argument that the “technical and administrative requirements of the petition signing process” are an unconstitutional burden on ballot access — a question never reached in view of the decision for the appellees and Bradley’s ultimate success in qualifying for the ballot.

Question: What is the agency involved in the administrative action?

Choices:
Army and Air Force Exchange Service
Atomic Energy Commission
Secretary or administrative unit or personnel of the U.S. Air Force
Department or Secretary of Agriculture
Alien Property Custodian
Secretary or administrative unit or personnel of the U.S. Army
Board of Immigration Appeals
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Prisons
Bonneville Power Administration
Benefits Review Board
Civil Aeronautics Board
Bureau of the Census
Central Intelligence Agency
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Department or Secretary of Commerce
Comptroller of Currency
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Civil Rights Commission
Civil Service Commission, U.S.
Customs Service or Commissioner or Collector of Customs
Defense Base Closure and REalignment Commission
Drug Enforcement Agency
Department or Secretary of Defense (and Department or Secretary of War)
Department or Secretary of Energy
Department or Secretary of the Interior
Department of Justice or Attorney General
Department or Secretary of State
Department or Secretary of Transportation
Department or Secretary of Education
U.S. Employees' Compensation Commission, or Commissioner
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Environmental Protection Agency or Administrator
Federal Aviation Agency or Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation or Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Farm Credit Administration
Federal Communications Commission (including a predecessor, Federal Radio Commission)
Federal Credit Union Administration
Food and Drug Administration
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Energy Administration
Federal Election Commission
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Federal Housing Administration
Federal Home Loan Bank Board
Federal Labor Relations Authority
Federal Maritime Board
Federal Maritime Commission
Farmers Home Administration
Federal Parole Board
Federal Power Commission
Federal Railroad Administration
Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Federal Reserve System
Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation
Federal Trade Commission
Federal Works Administration, or Administrator
General Accounting Office
Comptroller General
General Services Administration
Department or Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare
Department or Secretary of Health and Human Services
Department or Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Administrative agency established under an interstate compact (except for the MTC)
Interstate Commerce Commission
Indian Claims Commission
Immigration and Naturalization Service, or Director of, or District Director of, or Immigration and Naturalization Enforcement
Internal Revenue Service, Collector, Commissioner, or District Director of
Information Security Oversight Office
Department or Secretary of Labor
Loyalty Review Board
Legal Services Corporation
Merit Systems Protection Board
Multistate Tax Commission
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Secretary or administrative unit or personnel of the U.S. Navy
National Credit Union Administration
National Endowment for the Arts
National Enforcement Commission
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
National Labor Relations Board, or regional office or officer
National Mediation Board
National Railroad Adjustment Board
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
National Security Agency
Office of Economic Opportunity
Office of Management and Budget
Office of Price Administration, or Price Administrator
Office of Personnel Management
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
Office of Workers' Compensation Programs
Patent Office, or Commissioner of, or Board of Appeals of
Pay Board (established under the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970)
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
U.S. Public Health Service
Postal Rate Commission
Provider Reimbursement Review Board
Renegotiation Board
Railroad Adjustment Board
Railroad Retirement Board
Subversive Activities Control Board
Small Business Administration
Securities and Exchange Commission
Social Security Administration or Commissioner
Selective Service System
Department or Secretary of the Treasury
Tennessee Valley Authority
United States Forest Service
United States Parole Commission
Postal Service and Post Office, or Postmaster General, or Postmaster
United States Sentencing Commission
Veterans' Administration or Board of Veterans' Appeals
War Production Board
Wage Stabilization Board
State Agency
Unidentifiable
Office of Thrift Supervision
Department of Homeland Security
Board of General Appraisers
Board of Tax Appeals
General Land Office or Commissioners
NO Admin Action
Processing Tax Board of Review

Answer: 116