Opinion ID: 149671
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Pattern and Practice Challenge

Text: Having concluded that the district court had jurisdiction to consider GE's pattern and practice claim, we can quickly dispose of its merits. Although GE's briefs are less than clear, we understand the company to be arguing that the way in which EPA implements CERCLA's UAO provisions increases the frequency of UAOs and decreases their accuracy, thus tipping the Mathews v. Eldridge balance toward a finding that the process is constitutionally defective. For example, GE points to EPA's enforcement first policy, by which the agency issues UAOs whenever settlement negotiations fail, as well as to the agency's delegation of authority to subordinate regional employees who allegedly issue UAOs in time to comply with internal agency reporting deadlines. Appellant's Br. 45-46. GE argues that by encouraging EPA to issue UAOs more frequently, and by increasing the risk that those UAOs will be erroneous, these and other policies targeted in the company's briefs make it more likely that PRPs will suffer pre-hearing deprivations in the form of damage to their stock price, brand value, and credit rating. As GE's counsel conceded at oral argument, however, if such harms are insufficient to trigger due process protection, then this argument must fail. See Oral Arg. Tr. 21-23. Thus, because we have held that these consequential effects do not qualify as constitutionally protected property interests, see supra at 15-19, we need notindeed, we may notapply Mathews v. Eldridge to determine what process is due. In other words, even if GE is correct that EPA's implementation of CERCLA results in more frequent and less accurate UAOs, the company has failed to identify any constitutionally protected property interest that could be adversely affected by such errors. See Roth, 408 U.S. at 570-71, 92 S.Ct. 2701 ([T]o determine whether due process requirements apply in the first place, we must look not to the `weight' but to the nature of the interest at stake.). In a few sentences in its opening brief, GE also contends that even if CERCLA is not facially coercive, EPA administers the statute in a way that intimidate[s] PRPs from exercising the purported option of electing not to comply with a UAO so as to test an order's validity, giving rise to an independent due process violation under Ex Parte Young. Appellant's Br. 49. To the extent GE makes this argument, it urges us to infer coercion from the fact that the vast majority of PRPs elect to comply with UAOs. Id. at 49-50. As GE's amicus puts it, [t]he dearth of non-complying PRPs reflects the exceptional coerciveness of UAOs and strongly supports GE's argument that the regulatory scheme amounts to a violation of due process under Ex Parte Young. Chamber of Commerce Amicus Br. 20. Rejecting this argument, the district court began by explaining, properly in our view, that the pattern and practice claim added little to GE's facial Ex Parte Young challenge: regardless of EPA's policies for example, GE alleges that the agency coerces PRPs into compliance by threatening to seek multiple penalties for violations at a single UAO sitea judge ultimately decides what, if any, penalty to impose. GE IV, 595 F.Supp.2d at 18. As noted above, moreover, CERCLA's sufficient cause and willfulness defenses protect PRPs from unwarranted fines and damages. See supra at 118-19. As to GE's argument that the high incidence of UAO compliance evidences coercion, the district court found that GE's own expert ... demonstrate[d] that instances of noncompliance are sufficiently numerous to suggest that PRPs are not, in fact, forced to comply. GE IV, 595 F.Supp.2d at 28-29 (GE's expert found that of the 1,638 PRPs who have been issued UAOs most recently, there were 75 instances of noncompliancea rate of 4.6 percent.). And for our part, we observe that in light of the extensive procedures CERCLA requires EPA to follow before issuing a UAO, including notice and comment, supra at 114-15, recipients may be complying in large numbers not because they feel coerced, but because they believe that UAOs are generally accurate and would withstand judicial review. In any event, given that GE squarely challenges neither the district court's factual findings, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a)(6), nor its legal conclusions, we have no basis for second-guessing the district court's resolution of this issue.