Opinion ID: 108715
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: applicability of administrative procedure act

Text: In United States v. Allegheny-Ludlum Steel Corp., supra , we held that the language of § 1 (14) (a) of the Interstate Commerce Act authorizing the Commission to act after hearing was not the equivalent of a requirement that a rule be made on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing as the latter term is used in § 553 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act. Since the 1966 amendment to § 1 (14) (a), under which the Commission was here proceeding, does not by its terms add to the hearing requirement contained in the earlier language, the same result should obtain here unless that amendment contains language that is tantamount to such a requirement. Appellees contend that such language is found in the provisions of that Act requiring that: [T]he Commission shall give consideration to the national level of ownership of such type of freight car and to other factors affecting the adequacy of the national freight car supply, and shall, on the basis of such consideration, determine whether compensation should be computed . . . . While this language is undoubtedly a mandate to the Commission to consider the factors there set forth in reaching any conclusion as to imposition of per diem incentive charges, it adds to the hearing requirements of the section neither expressly nor by implication. We know of no reason to think that an administrative agency in reaching a decision cannot accord consideration to factors such as those set forth in the 1966 amendment by means other than a trial-type hearing or the presentation of oral argument by the affected parties. Congress by that amendment specified necessary components of the ultimate decision, but it did not specify the method by which the Commission should acquire information about those components. [5] Both of the district courts that reviewed this order of the Commission concluded that its proceedings were governed by the stricter requirements of §§ 556 and 557 of the Administrative Procedure Act, rather than by the provisions of § 553 alone. [6] The conclusion of the District Court for the Middle District of Florida, which we here review, was based on the assumption that the language in § 1 (14) (a) of the Interstate Commerce Act requiring rulemaking under that section to be done after hearing was the equivalent of a statutory requirement that the rule be made on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing. Such an assumption is inconsistent with our decision in Allegheny-Ludlum, supra . The District Court for the Eastern District of New York reached the same conclusion by a somewhat different line of reasoning. That court felt that because § 1 (14) (a) of the Interstate Commerce Act had required a hearing, and because that section was originally enacted in 1917, Congress was probably thinking in terms of a hearing such as that described in the opinion of this Court in the roughly contemporaneous case of ICC v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 227 U. S. 88, 93 (1913). The ingredients of the hearing were there said to be that [a]ll parties must be fully apprised of the evidence submitted or to be considered, and must be given opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, to inspect documents and to offer evidence in explanation or rebuttal. Combining this view of congressional understanding of the term hearing with comments by the Chairman of the Commission at the time of the adoption of the 1966 legislation regarding the necessity for hearings, that court concluded that Congress had, in effect, required that these proceedings be on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing within the meaning of § 553 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act. Insofar as this conclusion is grounded on the belief that the language after hearing of § 1 (14) (a), without more, would trigger the applicability of §§ 556 and 557, it, too, is contrary to our decision in Allegheny-Ludlum, supra . The District Court observed that it was rather hard to believe that the last sentence of § 553 (c) was directed only to the few legislative sports where the words `on the record' or their equivalent had found their way into the statute book. 318 F. Supp., at 496. This is, however, the language which Congress used, and since there are statutes on the books that do use these very words, see, e. g., the Fulbright Amendment to the Walsh-Healey Act, 41 U. S. C. § 43a, and 21 U. S. C. § 371 (e) (3), the regulations provision of the Food and Drug Act, adherence to that language cannot be said to render the provision nugatory or ineffectual. We recognized in Allegheny-Ludlum that the actual words on the record and after . . . hearing used in § 553 were not words of art, and that other statutory language having the same meaning could trigger the provisions of §§ 556 and 557 in rulemaking proceedings. But we adhere to our conclusion, expressed in that case, that the phrase after hearing in § 1 (14) (a) of the Interstate Commerce Act does not have such an effect.