Opinion ID: 197562
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Retroactivity Claim

Text: 12 Pine Tree argues that Congress has not granted the Secretary the power to issue retroactive rules. Certainly, in the absence of an express statutory grant of authority to promulgate retroactive regulations, the retroactive application of an agency rule is disfavored. Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hosp., 488 U.S. 204, 208, 109 S.Ct. 468, 471, 102 L.Ed.2d 493 (1988). However, in this case Pine Tree places undue significance on the act of filing an application with an administrative agency. It argues that by applying criteria that were issued after it had filed a MUP application, the HHS has created a retroactivity problem of the kind discussed in Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994). See Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 280, 114 S.Ct. at 1505 (stating that a statute wields retroactive effect where it would impose new duties with respect to transactions already completed). We agree with the district court that the mere filing of an application is not the kind of completed transaction in which a party could fairly expect stability of the relevant laws as of the transaction date. The concern that retroactive laws threaten stability and impair the ability of entities to coordinate their actions with respect to the law surely is not implicated where what is at issue is the analysis of certain poverty levels in a geographic location. Pine Tree obviously could not have adjusted poverty levels in Farmington in due regard to the change in MUP guidelines. We therefore affirm the district court's finding that Pine Tree had no right to have the guidelines that existed at the time they submitted a MUP application applied to their application rather than new guidelines adopted prior to the review of their application. 13 Only one case has been called to our attention that suggests that the act of filing an application with an agency can trigger retroactivity concerns. See Boston Edison Co. v. Federal Power Comm'n, 557 F.2d 845 (D.C.Cir.1977). In that case, it was held that an agency could not apply new requirements for application filing to applications filed before those requirements were issued. See id. at 849 (Federal Power Commission could not apply new rule barring data over four months old in rate application to application filed before new rule was issued). Boston Edison is readily distinguishable from the instant case. There is an obvious difference between rejecting an application because it fails to meet a new regulation governing the proper format or preparation of applications that was promulgated after that application was filed, and rejecting an application because the substantive standards for granting the application on the merits have changed in the period between filing and review. Whereas in the former case, parties have been deprived of fair notice as to the application method, and indeed have taken an action--the filing of a certain kind of application--to which the regulation retroactively applies, in the latter, as discussed above, fair notice and retroactivity concerns are not raised. Pine Tree thus has mustered no support, nor can we find any support, for the proposition that filing an application with an agency essentially fixes an entitlement to the application of those substantive regulations in force on the filing date. 14 It is worth noting that this is not a case in which new MUP criteria have been applied so as to retroactively overturn a prior grant of MUP status for a period in the past. Cf. Association of Accredited Cosmetology Schs. v. Alexander, 979 F.2d 859, 865 (D.C.Cir.1992) (holding that schools' expectation for future eligibility for a program is not a vested right triggering retroactivity concerns but noting that there may be retroactivity problems were new rules applied to undo past determination of eligibility). Rather, HHS applied the 1995 Guidelines prospectively, to applications for future MUP designations.