Opinion ID: 70274
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Accommodation of Consumer Choice

Text: 83 In a related argument, the manufacturers contend that because hurricane risks cannot be eliminated completely, consumers must be given the informed option to sacrifice some hurricane protection in exchange for lower housing costs. According to the manufacturers, by including cost and geographic reasonableness criteria in the Manufactured Housing Act, Congress indicated that consumer choice should be accommodated. Citing Chrysler Corp. v. Department of Transportation, 472 F.2d 659 (6th Cir.1972), the manufacturers analogize the new wind standards to the regulation of convertibles and sports cars under the automobile safety standards of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. In Chrysler, the Sixth Circuit observed that soft top convertible cars were inherently incapable of meeting certain safety standards, such as rollover requirements, imposed on the automobile industry by that legislation. Finding that the legislation was not intended to eliminate sports cars and convertibles from the market, the court remanded the case to the agency for reconsideration of the safety standard. Id. at 679-80. The Chrysler decision, the manufacturers assert, means that HUD should be prevented from the kind of governmental paternalism that denies consumers the ability to choose to live more cheaply and less safely. Because the new standards foreclose the cheap and dangerous option, they are arbitrary and capricious, the argument goes. 84 We find this argument unpersuasive for three reasons. First, the Manufactured Housing Act is not analogous to the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, because the safety standards at issue under the two acts have different purposes. The regulations under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act that were challenged in Chrysler concerned passive restraint devices designed to protect occupants of an automobile. Id. at 664. In contrast, the wind standards promulgated under the Manufactured Housing Act are designed to protect not only the occupants of manufactured homes, but also other members of the public who could be affected by flying debris during high winds. See Final Rule, 59 Fed.Reg. at 2457-58. HUD quoted in the Final Rule a Federal Emergency Management Agency study that found the disintegration of siding and roofs of manufactured homes  'contributed significantly to the generation of airborne debris'  during Hurricane Andrew. Id. at 2462. Potential victims of flying debris from manufactured housing, unlike the purchasers of convertibles, do not have the opportunity to choose between cost and safety. What the manufacturers propose would be the equivalent of allowing automobile purchasers to buy at a discount automobiles with unsafe brakes, a consumer choice option that would sacrifice the safety of innocent people who would be given no choice in the matter. 85 A second difference between the Chrysler decision and this case is that convertibles and sports cars were found to be inherently incapable of complying with some of the requirements in the Motor Vehicle Act that hard top vehicles could meet. Chrysler, 472 F.2d at 679. There is no suggestion in this case that the technology does not exist for the industry to comply with the Manufactured Housing Act. In the Chrysler decision, a convertible could not comply with the automobile rollover standard and still remain a convertible. In this case, a manufactured home that conforms to the new wind standards is still a manufactured home, albeit a safer and more expensive one. 86 Finally, and most fundamentally, the consumer's right to choose is not a criterion for decisionmaking under the Manufactured Housing Act. Allowing consumers to knowingly assume the risk of unsafe housing may or may not be a good idea, but it is not one Congress included in the statutory scheme. If the manufacturers want the statutory criteria for promulgating manufactured home standards changed, they should direct their arguments to Congress.