Opinion ID: 446520
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: impermissible agency motives

Text: 107 Petitioner CFAS, noting the circumstances surrounding the promulgation of this rule--the economically hard-hit domestic automobile industry and President Reagan's promises of assistance--advances the argument that NHTSA's decision was based on the impermissible ground of aiding the U.S. automobile industry. Brief for Petitioner CFAS at 42. Petitioner refers to the White House Press Office publication, Actions To Help The U.S. Auto Industry (Apr. 6, 1981) (Press Release), which included a proposal to modify the bumper standard among thirty-four specific proposed regulatory actions. J.A. 2648-2715. Three days after the booklet's release by the White House, petitioner observes, NHTSA published a notice listing seventeen rulemaking actions--identical to those listed by the White House, and including a modification of the bumper standard. Brief for Petitioner CFAS at 44. 108 There seems to us nothing either extraordinary or unlawful in the fact that a federal agency opens an inquiry into a matter which the President believes should be inquired into. Indeed, we had thought the system is supposed to work that way. Nor is there anything remarkable in the fact that NHTSA published its proposals--identical to those listed by the White House--a mere three days after the Press Release (hardly time enough to give them serious consideration). For although they were published in the Federal Register three days later, they were transmitted to the Federal Register the same day as the Press Release, and indeed the forthcoming Federal Register text was attached as an Appendix to the Press Release. J.A. 2685-93. It is obvious, in other words, that the Press Release was the product of the agency's decisions rather than the cause of them. Nor, finally, is it disreputable that, underlying the President's belief that this rule should be reexamined, there lurked a desire to assist the domestic automobile industry--as numerous pieces of legislation, including multi-million dollar subsidized loans, amply show, see Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979, Pub.L. No. 96-185, 93 Stat. 1324 (1980) (codified as amended at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1861-75, 2003, 2512 (1982)). It would be a different matter if the President directed the agency, in the course of its inquiry, to disregard the statutory criteria controlling its actions. That is not even alleged, and could not plausibly be, since the text of the White House Press Release stated that the proposed actions are described in considerable detail in the attachment, Press Release at 4, J.A. 2652, which attachment in turn (the forthcoming Federal Register Notice) began its statement of purpose by announcing that NHTSA has undertaken this review to determine what, if any, modifications to its standards and regulations may be appropriate to reduce regulatory burdens upon the regulated industries without jeopardizing the safety or consumer-related goals and policies established by Congress in its related legislation. Id. at A-33, J.A. 2687. 109 The most petitioner can reasonably make of the Press Release is that it demonstrates [243 U.S.App.D.C. 150] an expectation, on the part of NHTSA officials, that the President would be pleased if the agency ended its rulemaking by reducing the existing standard, and disappointed if it left the current rule in effect. But lawyers and others in public service frequently must take or recommend action that is not what their superiors, in a world of unfettered discretion, would prefer. It is entirely absurd to suggest that a delegated decision is vitiated by the mere knowledge that the superior would have preferred it to come out the way it did. 110 The present regulation was adopted only after the painstaking and intricate analysis described in small part above. It replaced a standard that had been adopted in 1971 on the basis of an assumed connection between low speed accidents and safety having no empirical support, see page 1339, supra, and that had been retained in 1975 (despite agency analysis showing that 2.5 mph rather than 5.0 mph would be the better speed criterion) in part because of [t]he reaction of Congress to the proposed reduction, see Letter from Joan Claybrook, supra, at 1 (quoted at page 1340, supra ). It is unreal to suggest that we should reinstate the old rule because the new one bears evidence that the purity of reason has been distorted by politically derived value judgments.