Opinion ID: 511951
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Decision for Review.

Text: 21 While maintaining the inadequacy of the Commission's written decision issued in August, 1987, LOSAC asserts that the decision for our review is in fact the transcript of the February 24, 1987, conference. At that publicly-conducted conference, the same majority of commissioners who later joined fully in the published decision voted to deny relief, and the same two commissioners who later dissented in part voted against the majority on some questions. LOSAC argues that the vote at this public conference was the decision and that we must, therefore, scrutinize the transcript and disregard the subsequent published decision as a post hoc rationalization. 22 This we decline to do. The ICC's formal opinion is its decision because the commissioners retained full authority to approve, disapprove, or modify it until published. LOSAC does not contradict this assertion or contend that the February 24 vote had immediate effect. This is, however, the critical difference between this case and our decision, cited by petitioner, in Pan American World Airways, Inc. v. CAB, 684 F.2d 31 (D.C.Cir.1982) (per curiam). 23 In Pan Am the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), after an unlawfully closed board meeting, issued an emergency order that lacked statutorily required findings of fact. Those followed twelve days later. On review of the order, this Court considered both the subsequently issued findings and a transcript of the preceding board meeting. Id. at 36 & n. 12. The majority and dissenter both distinguished the case there from a hypothetical case in which a decision, although made, had not been irreversibly made. Id. at n. 12 (emphasis original); see also id. at 51 (Wilkey, J., dissenting). The situation before us now is the Pan Am hypothetical, and very closely resembles that in Kansas State Network, Inc. v. FCC, 720 F.2d 185, 191-92 (D.C.Cir.1983). In Kansas State, the FCC had ruled against a party in a published decision. On review, the party submitted a transcript of an open meeting to demonstrate that it was the victim of agency unfairness. We struck the transcript from the record as part of protected pre-decisional processes. While we recognized in that case that Pan Am had involved our review of a transcript, we noted that the agency in Pan Am had not supplied a contemporaneous statement of reasons necessitating a review of the transcript in order to dispose of the issue of whether the agency had complied with the Sunshine Act. Kansas State Network, 720 F.2d at 192. We further noted that the agency's failure in Pan Am to provide a written decision made it impossible for us to assess the reasonableness of the board's action without an examination of the transcript. None of these factors prevails here. Following in the footsteps of Kansas State, we limit our review to reasons given in the ICC's published decision and, absent a compelling indication of error, we must defer to the Commission's interpretation of the statute, with the administration of which it is charged. Black v. ICC, 762 F.2d 106, 114-15 (D.C.Cir.1985). 24