Opinion ID: 431653
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the ripeness standard

Text: 14 The purpose of the ripeness doctrine is to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties. 11 Ripeness is determined by evaluating both the fitness of the issue for judicial decision and the hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration. 12 15 If no substantial hardship to the parties will result from deferral, a court generally will review an order only when it can be tested in a concrete factual setting. Judicial appraisal of a question stands on a much surer footing in the context of a specific application ... than could be the case in the framework of the generalized challenge. 13 If, however, the issue tendered is a purely legal one, 14 in which no further facts need be developed to facilitate a proper judicial decision, a final agency action 15 may be fit for judicial review even though it has never been applied or enforced by the agency in a concrete setting. 16 A case may lack ripeness, however, even when it involves a final agency action presenting a purely legal question. 16 The second prong of the ripeness test requires that the contested action impose an impact on the parties sufficiently direct and immediate as to render the issue appropriate for judicial review at this stage. 17 In Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 18 the Supreme Court found such an impact where an agency action imposed on the parties a serious dilemma:  'Either they must comply with every time requirement and incur the costs of changing over their promotional material and labeling or they must follow their present course and risk prosecution.'  19 The mere potential for future injury, however, is insufficient to render an issue ripe for review. For example, in Toilet Goods Association v. Gardner, 20 the Court found unfit for review a challenge to a regulation authorizing an agency to suspend the certification of any person refusing to permit agency inspections. Although the case involved final agency action and presented the purely legal question of the statutory authority of the Food and Drug Commission, 21 the Court declined review of the regulation because no specific inspections had yet been ordered. No immediate response to the regulation was required of manufacturers, nor would any irremediable adverse consequences flow from deferring review until a specific inspection had been ordered by the agency and refused by a manufacturer. 22 Thus, to be ripe for review an administrative action must impose an actual, not a prospective, hardship by creating a dilemma in which a party must choose between disadvantageous compliance and risking serious penalties for noncompliance. 23