Opinion ID: 431648
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Mandatory Effective Date

Text: 11 The Department appealed only from that portion of the district court order providing: 12 [T]hat within thirty (30) days of the date of this order the [Treasury] Department shall announce the new date upon which T.D. ATF-66 will be mandatory, the new date not to be any later from one year from the date of this order. 13 Center for Science in the Public Interest, et al. v. Regan, Civ. A. No. 82-00610 (D.D.C. Feb. 8, 1983) (emphasis added). This part of the judgment is now moot. The mandatory effective date, as prescribed by the agency within the court's order, cannot possibly have any future effect. The Department complied with that part of the court's order when it announced that No. 66 would become effective on February 8, 1984, unless further judicial or administrative action intervened. As a result of its new rulemaking proceedings, the Department promulgated No. 150: that rule became effective on November 5, 1983, and thereby displaced both prior rules. As such, No. 150 constitutes future administrative action of the type that Treasury had referred to in its own order complying with the order of the district court. See 48 Fed.Reg. 10309 (1983). 14 As we previously emphasized, the Department was legitimately empowered to initiate further rulemaking to correct the deficiencies that the district court found in No. 94. See Ash II, supra; cf. Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., --- U.S. ----, ----, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2866, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983) (agency has authority to reconsider past rulemakings by appropriate procedures). The district court was without power to preclude such agency reconsideration, and its order cannot be understood to have done so. 3 Whatever obligation Treasury had to reinstitute No. 66 was subject to the agency's discretion to take appropriate further administrative action. 15 Accordingly, the district court's order that, in effect, No. 66 be made effective no later than February 8, 1984, no longer has any prospective force. We therefore vacate that portion of the district court order. We do so in order to make it clear that the Treasury is under no present obligation to make No. 66 effective. 16