Opinion ID: 184942
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Housekeeping versus program records

Text: According to Public Citizen, GRS 20 is contrary to lawbecause it ... authorizes destruction of all types of wordprocessing and electronic mail records without regard tocontent. More specifically, Public Citizen claims s 3303a(d)applies only to an agency's housekeeping records--that is,records that relate to routine administrative chores such aspersonnel and procurement--and that the Archivist exceededhis statutory authority by promulgating a general recordsschedule covering program records, which document anagency's substantive functions.
We begin the interpretive enterprise, as always, with thetext of the statute. See Republican Nat'l Comm. v. FEC, 76F.3d 400, 405 (D.C. Cir. 1996). As the Archivist observes,s 3303a(d) makes no reference either to program or to housekeeping records; rather, it authorizes him to schedule fordisposal records of a specified form or character. Becausethis term is nowhere defined in the RDA, our task is toconstrue it in accord with its ordinary or natural meaning. Director, Office of Workers' Comp. Pgms., Dep't of Labor v.Greenwich Collieries, 512 U.S. 267, 272 (1994). Ands 3303a(d) is naturally read to authorize the Archivist toschedule records in the form of word processing and electronic mail files. See Webster's New Int'l Dictionary Unabridged 992 (2d ed. 1942) (In general, form is the aspectunder which a thing appears, esp. as distinguished fromsubstance (emphasis in original)). Moreover, as the Archivist observes, elsewhere in the RDA form is used to describe the physical attributes of a record rather than itscontent. See s 3301 ( 'records' includes all books, papers,maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or otherdocumentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics). Indeed, we notice that in 1976 the Congressamended s 3301 to provide that records may be in theform of machine readable materials. Federal RecordsManagement Amendments of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-575,s 4(c)(2), 90 Stat. 2723, 2727. Although Public Citizen would have us read s 3303a(d) soas not to authorize the Archivist to schedule a record in theform of a word processing or electronic mail file if its contentrelates to a program function of the agency, it offers nointerpretation of the statutory term form. On the contrary,Public Citizen concedes that the phrase ['of a specified formor character'] in isolation includes program records. Apparently, then, it means to suggest either that the term formreally means content or that it should be ignored. We cannot accept either suggestion. See Edison Elec. Inst. v. EPA,996 F.2d 326, 335 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (elementary canon ofconstruction that court will not read word out of statute). Public Citizen tries to overcome the plain meaning of thestatute--which seems to reject rather than to compel theproffered distinction between program and housekeeping records--exclusively by resort to the legislative history of theRDA. As Judge Easterbrook has explained, however: The political branches adopt texts through prescribed procedures; what ensues is the law. Legislative history may show the meaning of the texts--may show, indeed, that a text plain at first reading has a strikingly different meaning--but may not be used to show an intent at variance with the meaning of the text. In re Sinclair, 870 F.2d 1340, 1344 (7th Cir. 1989) (enforcingstatute prohibiting conversion of bankruptcy case from chapter 11 to chapter 12 despite conference report saying conversion possible and describing circumstances in which it shouldoccur); see also Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Theory of LegalInterpretation, 12 Harv. L. Rev. 417, 419 (1899) (We do notinquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what thestatute means). In any case, we do not think the passages in the legislativehistory to which Public Citizen refers us suggest that theCongress intended only housekeeping records to be subject todisposal under the RDA. The primary concern of the Congress was to reduce the unnecessary retention of records. Agencies were retaining too many records, not too few, and itis unsurprising that the Congress especially contemplated thedisposal of many housekeeping records. See H.R. Rep. No.79-361, at 1 (1945) (The primary purpose of this bill is toprevent the United States Government from incurring largeand unnecessary expenses resulting from the failure of manyagencies to schedule for disposal routine 'housekeeping' records such as those relating to the hiring of personnel, procurement of supplies, and fiscal management, that are common to many or all agencies); S. Rep. No. 79-447, at 1 (1945)(same). As the Supreme Court has observed, however, statutes often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonablycomparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of ourlaws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed. Oncale v. Sundowner OffshoreServs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 79 (1998) (holding prohibition ofdiscrimination because of sex in Title VII of Civil RightsAct of 1964 applies to same-sex harassment, though that wasassuredly not the principal evil [with which] Congress wasconcerned). Public Citizen also notes that in 1978, when the Congressmade the Archivist's use of general records schedules bindingupon agencies subject to the RDA, see Pub. L. No. 95-440, 92Stat. 1063, 1063 (codified as amended at s 3303a(b)), thecommittee reports not only expressed concern with the unnecessary retention of housekeeping records, but also statedthat if the records are unique to an agency, rather thansimply of a general nature, they would not be affected by thisbill. H.R. Rep. No. 95-1263 at 2 (1978), reprinted in 1978U.S.C.C.A.N. 2623, 2624; S. Rep. No. 95-711 at 2 (1978). Public Citizen claims the 1978 amendment thus reaffirmedthe limitation of s 3303a(d) to housekeeping records originally evinced in the 1945 committee reports, inasmuch as program records could be of a type unique to the agency thatadministers the particular program. As the Archivist pointsout, however, the amendment made the use of general records schedules mandatory by substituting a new s 3303a(b)so providing, but did not in any way change s 3303a(d). Ifthe latter section did not mean what Public Citizen claims itmeant in 1945, then it still does not because nothing in the1978 amendment changed its meaning. Even if, however, wewere to assume the statement in the 1978 reports demonstrates the committees' understanding that s 3303a(d) hadbeen limited from the outset to housekeeping records, wewould be reluctant to rely upon it; the views of one Congress as to the meaning of an Act passed by an earlierCongress are not ordinarily of great weight. United Statesv. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U.S. 64, 77 n.6 (1994); see alsoRepublican Nat'l Comm., 76 F.3d at 405 (holding that wheresubsequent legislation merely carried over earlier provisionwithout substantial change, the House report is essentiallypost-enactment history, carrying little probative weight). In sum, we cannot accept Public Citizen's invitation to uselegislative history to supplant rather than to interpret thestatute.
We now proceed under step two of Chevron to examinewhether the Archivist's interpretation is reasonable in lightof the language, legislative history, and policies of the statute. Republican Nat'l Comm., 76 F.3d at 406. PublicCitizen asserts that it would be irrational to construes 3303a(d) in such a way as to give the Archivist the powerto authorize the destruction of all records stored on a givenmedium or created by a given technology, without regard tothe records' purposes [or] content. This argument is based upon a misunderstanding of GRS20 and the Archivist's rationale for adopting it. Unders 3303a(d) the Archivist must assess the administrative,legal, research, or other value of a record before authorizingits disposal--which is inherently a content-based judgment. As the district court reasoned, there must be a relationshipbetween the commonality of records covered by a generalschedule and their diminished value. Carlin I, 2 F. Supp. 2dat 12. We agree, for if there were little or no relationbetween the features common to a set of records and theirvalue, then they could not be scheduled for disposal pursuantto a general records schedule because no categorical assessment could logically be made of their value. The district court concluded from this that the commonfeature of the records scheduled under GRS 20--the fact thatthey have been generated by electronic technology--has norelation to each record's value. Id. That captures only halfthe matter, however. GRS 20 does not authorize disposal ofelectronic records per se; rather, such records may be discarded only after they have been copied into an agencyrecordkeeping system. Therefore, GRS 20 seems to us to __________  One might say, tracking the statute, that the records share boththe form of being electronic and the character of having beenduplicated and placed in an agency recordkeeping system. embody a reasoned approach to accomplishing the potentiallyconflicting goals of the Congress: [j]udicious preservationand disposal of records. s 2902(5). We note also that in a neighboring part of the RDA theCongress codified the very approach that Public Citizenclaims it prohibited in s 3303a(d). Section 3303(1) requiresthe head of each agency to submit to the Archivist lists of any records in the custody of the agency that have been photographed or microphotographed under the regulations and that, as a consequence, do not appear to have sufficient value to warrant their further preservation by the Government. Analogously, GRS 20 authorizes disposal of electronic mailand word processing files that have been copied to a recordkeeping system and, as a consequence, id., lack sufficientvalue to warrant their continued preservation. The technology of duplication may be different but the principle is thesame. We think this provision highly persuasive in demonstrating that the Archivist's approach in GRS 20 does notreflect an unreasonable interpretation of the statute. Public Citizen also claims that the Archivist's unexplaineddeparture from prior statements that general schedules arelimited to administrative records ... requires that [GRS 20]be set aside. The prior statements to which Public Citizenrefers, however, apparently concerned authorizations to discard the only extant version of a record, not a record that hadbeen copied to a recordkeeping system; at the least, PublicCitizen has directed our attention to no prior statement of theArchivist concerning an approach analogous to that in GRS20. Moreover, the Archivist claims, and Public Citizen doesnot dispute, that GRS 23, the predecessor to GRS 20, appliedto program records at the same time Public Citizen claims theArchivist's policy limited general schedules to housekeepingrecords. See GRS 20, 60 Fed. Reg. at 44,644/1 (The GRS 23that was approved in 1988 authorized deletion of word processing and e-mail records from [personal computers] afterthey had been copied to paper or microform. This authorityhas now been moved to GRS 20 and is extended to authorize deletion of [such records] after they have been copied to anelectronic recordkeeping system). When a general scheduleauthorizes disposal of an uncopied record, it is obvious whythe Archivist would wish to exclude program records, for anerror means the loss of a record; when a record is discardedpursuant to GRS 20, however, it has already been copied tothe agency's recordkeeping system, and there is no risk thatinformation will be lost to future users. We conclude, therefore, that Public Citizen has identified no policy of the Archivist with which GRS 20 is inconsistent. See Bush-Quayle '92Primary Comm. v. FEC, 104 F.3d 448, 454 (D.C. Cir. 1997)(We may permit agency action to stand without elaborateexplanation where distinctions between the case under reviewand the asserted precedent are so plain that no inconsistencyappears). In sum, we hold under Chevron step one that s 3303a(d)does not preclude the Archivist from including program records in a general schedule because the statutory source of hisauthority draws no distinction between program and housekeeping records. Under Chevron step two we hold that theArchivist permissibly construed the statute to allow the disposal of program records the contents of which have beenpreserved in a recordkeeping system. Accordingly, we uphold the Archivist's interpretation against this challenge.