Opinion ID: 4116429
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Catskill I and II

Text: In Catskill I and II, we conducted our inquiry under Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), and United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218 (2001). See Catskill I, 273 F.3d at 491; Catskill II, 451 F.3d at 83 n.5.6 Our application of the Skidmore/Mead framework does not imply that we found the Act to be ambiguous. Rather, to the contrary, we concluded in Catskill I and II that the meaning of the Act was plain and unambiguous. 6 While we discussed Mead and Skidmore in Catskill I and II, we rejected EPAʹs position as unpersuasive. In Catskill I we held: [C]ourts do not face a choice between Chevron deference and no deference at all. Administrative decisions not subject to Chevron deference may be entitled to a lesser degree of deference: the agency position should be followed to the extent persuasive. See Mead, 121 S. Ct. at 2175‐76 (citing Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140 (1944)). For the reasons that follow, however, we do not find the EPAʹs position to be persuasive. 273 F.3d at 491. In Catskill II, we observed that because EPAʹs position was not the product of a formal rulemaking, the most EPA could hope for was to persuade the court of the reasonableness of its position under Skidmore, a position we did not accept. Catskill II, 451 F.3d at 83 n.5 (ʺ[W]e do not find the [ʹholisticʹ] argument persuasive and therefore decline to defer to the EPA.ʺ). 21
Under Skidmore, the court applies a lower level of deference to certain agency interpretations and considers ʺthe agencyʹs expertise, the care it took in reaching its conclusions, the formality with which it promulgates its interpretations, the consistency of its views over time, and the ultimate persuasiveness of its arguments.ʺ Community Health Ctr. v. Wilson‐Coker, 311 F.3d 132, 138 (2d Cir. 2002); accord In re New Times Sec. Servs., Inc., 371 F.3d 68, 83 (2d Cir. 2004); see Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140. The appropriate level of deference afforded an agencyʹs interpretation of a statute depends on its ʺpower to persuade.ʺ Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 587 (2000). Unlike Chevron, however, Skidmore does not require a court to make a threshold finding that the statute is ambiguous before considering the persuasiveness of the agencyʹs interpretation. Instead, Skidmore merely supplies the appropriate framework for reviewing agency interpretations that ʺlack the force of law.ʺ Id. As the majority notes, the Supreme Court has never explicitly held that courts must find ambiguity before applying the Skidmore framework. While there is some scholarly authority for the proposition that ʺʹthe Skidmore standard implicitly replicates Chevronʹs first step,ʹʺ Op. at 34 (quoting Kristin E. Hickman 22 & Matthew D. Krueger, In Search of the Modern Skidmore Standard, 107 Colum. L. Rev. 1235, 1247 (2007)), the Supreme Court has decided numerous cases under Skidmore without finding that a statuteʹs language was ambiguous, see, e.g., EEOC v. Arabian American Oil, 499 U.S. 244, 257 (1991) (applying Skidmore without finding ambiguity in statute and noting that agencyʹs interpretation ʺlacks support in the plain language of the statuteʺ); Whirlpool Corp. v. Marshall, 445 U.S. 1, 11 (1980) (applying Skidmore without finding ambiguity in statute and holding that regulation was permissible after considering statuteʹs ʺlanguage, structure and legislative historyʺ); see generally Richard J. Pierce, Jr., I Admin. L. Treatise § 6.4 (5th ed. 2010). Of course, the Supreme Court did not hold, in either Skidmore or Mead, that ambiguity was a threshold requirement to applying the framework. See Mead, 533 U.S. at 235 (An agency ruling is entitled to ʺrespect proportional to its ʹpower to persuade,ʹ . . . . Such a ruling may surely claim the merit of its writerʹs thoroughness, logic, and expertness, and any other sources of weight.ʺ (citations omitted)); Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 164 (ʺThe weight of [an agencyʹs] judgment in a particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later 23 pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.ʺ). Rather, the Skidmore/Mead framework adopts a less rigid, more flexible approach, see U.S. Freightways Corp. v. Commʹr, 270 F.3d 1137, 1142 (7th Cir. 2001) (referring to ʺthe flexible approach Mead described, relying on . . . Skidmoreʺ), as it presents ʺa more nuanced, context‐sensitive rubricʺ for determining the level of deference a court will give to an agency interpretation, Thomas W. Merrill and Kristin E. Hickman, Chevronʹs Domain, 89 Geo. L.J. 833, 836 (2001); see also Pierce, supra, § 6.4, at 444 (ʺThe Court has referred to a variety of factors that can give an agency statement ʹpower to persuade.ʹ . . . [N]o single factor is dispositive . . . .ʺ). Ambiguity in a statute, of course, can be a factor, and in the sliding‐ scale analysis of the Skidmore/Mead framework, the ʺpower to persuadeʺ of an agency determination can be affected by the clarity ‐‐ or lack thereof ‐‐ of the statute it is interpreting. Indeed, upon applying the Skidmore/Mead framework, a court may uphold ‐‐ or reject ‐‐ an agency interpretation because the interpretation is consistent with ‐‐ or contradicts ‐‐ a statute whose meaning is clear. See Pierce, supra, § 6.4, at 443. Here, we did not defer to the agencyʹs 24 interpretation of the Act in Catskill I and II, precisely because the Water Transfers Rule contravened the plain meaning of the Act.
The majority dismisses the notion that we ruled on the plain meaning of the Act in Catskill I and II, asserting that there were only a ʺfew references to ʹplain meaningʹʺ in our decisions. Op. at 36. To the contrary, through both our words and our reasoning, we made clear repeatedly in Catskill I and II that the agencyʹs unitary waters theory was inconsistent with the unambiguous plain meaning of the Act. In Catskill I, we held that defendantsʹ interpretation was ʺinconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the word ʹaddition.ʹʺ 273 F.3d at 493 (emphasis added). Specifically, we held that there is an ʺadditionʺ of a pollutant into navigable water from the ʺoutside worldʺ ‐‐ thus triggering the permitting requirement ‐‐ any time such an ʺadditionʺ is from ʺany place outside the particular water body to which pollutants are introduced.ʺ Id. at 491 (emphasis added). We reasoned that: Given the ordinary meaning of the [Act]ʹs text and our holding in Dague, we cannot accept the Gorsuch and Consumers Power courtsʹ understanding of ʺaddition,ʺ at least insofar as it implies acceptance of what the Dubois 25 court called a ʺsingular entityʺ theory of navigable waters, in which an addition to one water body is deemed an addition to all of the waters of the United States. . . . We properly rejected that approach in Dague. Such a theory would mean that movement of water from one discrete water body to another would not be an addition even if it involved a transfer of water from a water body contaminated with myriad pollutants to a pristine water body containing few or no pollutants. Such an interpretation is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the word ʺaddition.ʺ Id. at 493 (emphases added).7 As a result, we held that ʺthe transfer of water containing pollutants from one body of water to another, distinct body of water is plainly an addition and thus a ʹdischargeʹ that demands an NPDES permit.ʺ Id. at 491 (emphasis added). Accordingly, we clearly were relying on the plain meaning of the Act in reaching our conclusion. We also noted that ʺ[e]ven if we were to conclude that the proper application of the statutory text to the present facts was sufficiently ambiguous to justify reliance on the legislative history of the statute, . . . that source of 7 In Dague v. City of Burlington, 935 F.2d 1343 (2d Cir. 1991), the City of Burlington argued that ʺpollutants would be ʹaddedʹ only when they are introduced into navigable waters for the first time,ʺ id. at 1354, an argument mirroring those raised by defendants here. We rejected the contention, in light of ʺthe intended broad reach of § 1311(a),ʺ noting ʺthat the definition of ʹdischarge of a pollutantʹ refers to ʹany point sourceʹ without limitation.ʺ Id. at 1355 (quoting 33 U.S.C. § 1362(12)). We rejected the assertion that water flowing from a pond to a marsh was not an ʺaddition.ʺ See Catskill I, 273 F.3d at 492. 26 legislative intent would not help the City.ʺ 273 F.3d at 493. That language certainly makes clear we concluded the statutory text was not ambiguous. Finally, in the penultimate paragraph of Catskill I, we made absolutely clear that our holding was based on the plain meaning of the statutory text. We held: In any event, none of the statuteʹs broad purposes sways us from what we find to be the plain meaning of its text. . . . Where a statute seeks to balance competing policies, congressional intent is not served by elevating one policy above the others, particularly where the balance struck in the text is sufficiently clear to point to an answer. We find that the textual requirements of the discharge prohibition in § 1331(a) and the definition of ʺdischarge of a pollutantʺ in § 1362(12) are met here. Id. at 494 (emphases added). 8 Our analysis in Catskill II was similar, as we dismissed defendantsʹ arguments as merely ʺwarmed‐upʺ versions of those rejected in Catskill I, made no more compelling by EPAʹs new ʺholisticʺ interpretation of the statute. 451 8 At least one commentator has agreed that we found in Catskill I that ʺthe statuteʹs plain meaning was clear.ʺ Jeffrey G. Miller, Plain Meaning, Precedent and Metaphysics, Interpreting the ʺAdditionʺ Element of the Clean Water Act Offense, 44 Envtl. L. Rep. News & Analysis 10770, 10792 (2014) (ʺAlthough the Second Circuit did not explicitly employ the two‐step Chevron deference test to EPAʹs water transfer rule, it left no doubt as to how it would have decided the case under Chevron. With regard to the first step, whether the statute is ambiguous, the court in Catskill I held that the statuteʹs plain meaning was clear.ʺ). 27 F.3d at 82. We rejected New York Cityʹs ʺʹholistic arguments about the allocation of state and federal rights, said to be rooted in the structure of the statute,ʺ because, we concluded, they ʺsimply overlook its plain language.ʺ Id. at 84. (emphasis added). We noted our dismissal of the unitary waters theory in Catskill I based on the ordinary meaning of the word ʺadditionʺ: We also rejected the Cityʹs ʺunitary waterʺ theory of navigable waters, which posits that all of the navigable waters of the United States constitute a single water body, such that the transfer of water from any body of water that is part of the navigable waters to any other could never be an addition. We pointed out that this theory would lead to the absurd result that the transfer of water from a heavily polluted, even toxic, water body to one that was pristine via a point source would not constitute an ʺadditionʺ of pollutants and would not be subject to the [Act]ʹs NPDES permit requirements. Catskills I rejected the ʺunitary waterʺ theory as inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the word ʺaddition.ʺ Id. at 81 (emphasis added) (internal citations omitted). Again, we considered the very interpretation of ʺnavigable watersʺ proffered in the current appeal and rejected it based on ʺthe plain meaningʺ of the Actʹs text. Id. at 82.9 9 The majority suggests that we ruled on the meaning of ʺadditionʺ based on the plain meaning of the statute without reaching the meaning of ʺaddition . . . to navigable waters.ʺ Op. at 36‐37 (emphasis added) (ʺWe do not . . . think that by referring to the ʹplain meaningʹ of ʹadditionʹ in Catskill I we were holding that the broader statutory 28 I do not suggest that we are bound by our prior decisions. But in both decisions, we carefully considered the statutory language, and in both decisions, based on the plain wording of the text, we rejected an interpretation of §§ 1311 and 1362 that construes ʺnavigable watersʺ and ʺthe waters of the United Statesʺ to mean a single water body. Hence, we have twice rejected the theory based on the plain language of the Act. That plain language has not changed, and neither should our conclusion as to its meaning.