Opinion ID: 4547352
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Remedial Nature of 2017 Wis. Act 369

Text: ¶141 Guidance documents explain agencies' interpretations of provisions in statutes and administrative agency rules. They explain how the agency that created the guidance document likely will apply the law, often giving factual examples in the guidance document. Guidance documents include such things as handbooks, how to instructions for meeting various agency requirements and many other suggestions for successful interactions with the agency. Even though guidance documents do not have the force of law as rules of administrative agencies do, employees of agencies apply them to the public's interaction with the agency. Sometimes those interactions result in litigation when a person against whom a guidance document is Sections 104–05 address 1 the initial applicability and effective date of § 33. 3 No. 2019AP614-LV & 2019AP622.pdr being enforced objects to enforcement. Newcap, Inc. v. DHS, 2018 WI App 40, ¶3, 383 Wis. 2d 515, 916 N.W.2d 173. ¶142 Guidance documents can have a practical effect similar to an unpromulgated rule. To explain, [a]gency guidance . . . can have similar effect to an enforcement action or regulation——imposing norms on regulated entities or the beneficiaries of regulatory programs. Moreover, the individual interests subject to agency guidance frequently are no less important than those interests regulated through administrative enforcement actions and regulations. Jessica Mantel, Procedural Safeguards for Agency Guidance: A Source of Legitimacy for the Administrative State, 61 Admin. L. Rev. 343, 345 (2009). ¶143 Given the rule-like practical effects of guidance documents, we should not be surprised that, historically, administrative agencies have relied on guidance documents to circumvent rulemaking. Andrew C. Cook, Extraordinary Session Laws: New Limits on Governor and Attorney General, 92 Wis. Law. 26, 27 (2019) (discussing the problem created when guidance documents contain new interpretations that operate essentially as administrative rules but without going through the proper rulemaking process); Written Testimony of Senator David Craig on Senate Bill 745 Before the Senate Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform (Feb. 6, 2018), https://docs.legis. wisconsin.gov/misc/lc/hearing_testimony_and_materials/2017/sb745 /sb0745_2018_02_06.pdf (explaining that guidance documents have been used to avoid the deliberative process of rulemaking) 4 No. 2019AP614-LV & 2019AP622.pdr (last visited June 25, 2020); Floor Speech by Andre Jacque Floor Session on 2017 Assembly Bill 1072 (2017 Wis. Act 369), at 3:25, https://wiseye.org/2018/12/05/assembly-floor-session-part- 2-8/ (last visited June 25, 2020) (explaining the assemblyman frequently heard from constituents, small businesses [and] local government about how guidance documents have been abused as a vehicle to actually change the law and how they are sometimes hidden from sight or dusted off after decades). ¶144 Wisconsin's troublesome history with guidance documents is not unique.2 The D.C. Circuit summarized the problem well in 2000: The phenomenon we see in this case is familiar. Congress passes a broadly worded statute. The agency follows with regulations containing broad language, open-ended phrases, ambiguous standards and the like. Then as years pass, the agency issues circulars or guidance or memoranda, explaining, interpreting, defining and often expanding the commands in the regulations. One guidance document may yield another and then another and so on. Several words in a regulation may spawn hundreds of pages of text as the agency offers more and more detail regarding what its regulations demand of regulated entities. Law is made, without notice and comment, without public participation, and without publication in the Federal Register of the Code of Federal Regulations. Appalachian Power Co. v. E.P.A., 208 F.3d 1015, 1020 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (emphasis added). Hale Melnick, Comment, Guidance Documents and Rules: 2 Increasing Executive Accountability in the Regulatory World, 44 B.C. Environmental Affairs L. Rev. 357, 364 (2017) (By issuing guidance documents, agencies circumvent the costly and timeconsuming——but democratically important——notice-and-comment requirements.). 5 No. 2019AP614-LV & 2019AP622.pdr ¶145 Justice Kelly ignores the remedial nature of 2017 Wis. Act 369. He argues that should an administrative agency employee treat a guidance document as a source of authority, that employee would be making a mistake, not defining the nature of a guidance document. . . . [T]heir mistakes are subject to judicial review. Justice Kelly's majority op., ¶134. ¶146 I cannot ignore the history that led to the enactment of 2017 Wis. Act 369 simply because judicial review is available. Recently, we explained that judicial review is, by itself, an inadequate protection against the deprivation of the people's liberty. Wis. Legislature v. Palm, 2020 WI 42, ¶¶32– 35, 391 Wis. 2d 497, 942 N.W.2d 900. As we explained, [j]udicial review does not prevent oppressive conduct from initially occurring. Id., ¶35. The legislature has a legitimate interest in providing effective procedural safeguards. Id. Justice Kelly should not be so quick to dismiss the history that led to the enactment of 2017 Wis. Act 369.