Opinion ID: 425934
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the limits imposed on the administrator's discretion

Text: 54 The consent decree at issue in this case is a judicial act. 1 It is not a contractual settlement agreement 2 or a tentative projection of agency policy. The court shaped it, scrutinizing and even altering its terms. 3 The court will be called upon to enforce it, should the agency have a change of heart. 4 55 In undertaking this, or any other, judicial act, the court must heed the limits on the power of an Article III court. 5 The court's power to adopt a consent decree is limited by the terms of the statute it seeks to enforce. 6 The court cannot prescribe rules of procedure to an administrative agency, 7 nor may it enlarge upon the statute's substantive requirements. 8 In short, the court can only enter as a consent decree such relief as would have been within its jurisdictional power had the case gone to trial. 9 56 The case law makes perfectly clear that one sort of judicial relief--commanding the Executive Branch to exercise its administrative discretion in a particular way--exceeds the reach of the federal court. Case after federal case has established that federal courts may not tell the Executive or Legislative Branches how to exercise their discretion. 10 As one court has explained the doctrine: 57 This self-imposed limitation on judicial power stems from the doctrine of separation of powers; courts cannot invade the jurisdiction of the other departments of government in matters of policy, and for a court to substitute its judgment or discretion for that of a member of the executive branch would amount to such an invasion. 11 58 The consent decree at issue here cannot be reconciled with this principle. All parties agree on the dispositive issue: the decree does restrict the discretion of the Administrator of the EPA. 12 The consent decree constrains the agency in two basic ways. It requires the agency to apply criteria and standards not found in the Clean Water Act, and it requires the agency to undertake programs that are not required by the statute. 59 These constraints are not de minimis. This is obvious, of course, from the fact that the legitimacy of these restraints is worth litigating. They impose duties on the Administrator that differ in kind as well as in scope from those duties imposed by the Act.
60 Paragraph 4(c) of the agreement, for example, requires the agency to identify and study additional pollutants to be subject to future pretreatment standards. 13 The decree specifies with great particularity the methods by which the Administrator must identify a list of pollutants that are candidates for national regulation, the grounds upon which he may then remove pollutants from this list of candidates, and then concludes by requiring the Administrator to undertake regulatory action for those pollutants remaining on the list. 61 The Clean Water Act, by way of contrast, requires no such precisely delineated regulatory program. Section 307(b) of the Act requires only that the EPA promulgate standards for incompatible pollutants within a specified time period after the enactment of the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972 and from time to time thereafter. 14
62 Paragraph 8 of the decree similarly sets forth requirements and criteria for removing substances from the list of toxic pollutants. 15 The statutory provision 16 requires the EPA to take into account toxicity of the pollutant, its persistence, degradibility, the usual or potential presence of the organisms in any waters, the importance of the affected organisms, and the nature and effect of the toxic pollutant on such organisms. So long as the Administrator does not act arbitrarily and capriciously, the court cannot vacate his decision. Even if his action is arbitrary and capricious, the court's power is limited by statute to ordering a redetermination. 17 63 Paragraph 8 of the consent decree sets forth a different set of criteria for the Administrator to follow. The court decree replaces the considerations set forth by the statute with specifically defined circumstances under which the Administrator may choose not to regulate specific pollutants. The Administrator must regulate the pollutants unless they fit within the alternative categories decreed by the court. 18
64 Paragraph 12 requires the EPA to establish a specific and substantial program to determine if more stringent effluent standards are necessary to protect water quality. 19 The decree defines the required program with precision: the Administrator must identify navigable waters which are seriously contaminated by toxic pollutants, identify toxic pollutants for which more stringent limitations may be necessary, and publish a strategy for reducing or eliminating discharges of such pollutants. No such program can be found anywhere in the Act. 20 65 In at least these provisions, the judicial decree imposes duties on the Administrator which are not imposed by the Act itself. The decree thus differs not in degree but in kind from the decree the court might have issued if the case had been tried. At most, the court could have declared that the agency's actions were inconsistent with the statute; at most, the court could have required the agency to perform those functions mandated by the statute. In no circumstances could the court have obliged the agency to take discretionary action which differed from that required by the statute. 66 The duties imposed by the court's decree may not be inconsistent with the Act; each action taken by the Administrator under the decree might also conform with the Act. But the Administrator's discretion clearly is fettered--under the Act alone, he could choose to switch to another equally reasonable mode of compliance with the Act; under the consent decree he may not swerve from his judicially appointed course without risking contempt of court charges. 67