Opinion ID: 494108
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Recalcitrance in the face of duty

Text: 40 Second, agency inaction may represent agency recalcitrance ... in the face of a clear statutory duty ... of such magnitude that it amounts to an abdication of statutory responsibility. 69 Examples of such clear duties to act include provisions that require an agency to take specific action when certain preconditions have been met. 70 When an agency violates such a duty through inaction, the court has the power to order the agency to act to carry out its substantive statutory mandates. 71 41 This court may have jurisdiction to review claims alleging inaction in this type of case for either or both of two reasons. If the withheld agency action would be reviewable under the APA, then this type of inaction represents action that has been unlawfully withheld; 72 the agency might forever evade our review and thus escape its duties if we awaited final action before reviewing this claim. Even as to those actions not covered by the APA, it is apparent that, if an agency is under an unequivocal statutory duty to act, failure so to act constitutes, in effect, an affirmative act that triggers final agency action review. 42 In either case, pursuant to a final agency action review provision and our decision in TRAC, this court would normally exercise jurisdiction over such a claim. 73 Under the Clean Air Act's unusual, bifurcated jurisdictional scheme, however, a claim of agency recalcitrance ... in the face of a clear statutory duty would in most instances represent a claim that EPA has failed to perform a nondiscretionary duty. As we have indicated, such a claim must be brought in the district court, under section 304(a)(2). As explained above, Sierra Club does not here claim that EPA has violated such a nondiscretionary duty.