Opinion ID: 777743
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Drake's Request for the Release of Information

Text: 26 Drake contends that the FAA has provided no reasoned basis for its refusal to apply 49 C.F.R. § 40.37 to his requests for documents gathered or generated during the agency's investigation of Delta. If this regulation does not apply, then the issue is now moot. On May 9, 2000, the FAA informed Drake that because its investigation of Delta was over, FOIA no longer barred the release of the information gathered during that inquiry. Thus, the bulk of what Drake had requested, including the FAA's Enforcement Investigation Report and documentation relating to his 1993 drug test, was released to him. 27 In light of this disclosure, Drake's claim is moot, unless he can show that § 40.37 entitles him to certain documents that he has requested but not yet received. This he is unable to do, because the FAA reasonably interpreted that regulation as not applying to Drake's requests. The FAA asserts that Drake's demands for documents based on § 40.37 must fail, because the regulation is addressed to laboratories, not the agency, and, in any event, the regulation is limited to test and laboratory certification results, not agency investigatory materials. Therefore, according to the FAA, Drake was obliged to rely on FOIA, not § 40.37, in his quest for documents from the FAA. We agree. 28 In the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) issued to amend Part 40, the FAA indicated that the existing regulations require[] laboratories to provide certain information about, among other things, their HHS certifications. Procedures for Transportation Workplace Drug and Alcohol Testing Programs, 64 Fed. Reg. 69,076, 69,085 (Dec. 9, 1999) (emphasis added). This suggested that any disclosure obligation imposed by § 40.37 was on the laboratories that conducted the actual drug testing, or on the employers for whom the tests were conducted, not the FAA. Neither the NPRM nor the rule itself states that an employee may rely on § 40.37 to obtain information amassed by the FAA in the course of its investigation of a carrier or laboratory. Moreover, since the NPRM was aimed at laboratories, this suggested that the regulation applied only to laboratory results and not to documents relating to FAA investigations of carriers. 29 This interpretation of the regulation was never expressly advanced by the FAA when it rejected Drake's request for documents. Agency officials merely advised Drake that he was bound to use FOIA, not § 40.37, in his quest for documents. Drake also points out that § 40.37 does not expressly foreclose his claim and, further, that the regulation can be plausibly read to support his position. We agree with Drake that the regulation, on its face, is ambiguous. However, this is not fatal to FAA's position. Recent decisions of this court make it clear that we owe deference to an agency's interpretation advanced during litigation regarding the meaning of an ambiguous regulation, if the position is not inconsistent with the agency's prior statements and actions regarding the disputed regulation. See Bigelow v. Dep't of Defense, 217 F.3d 875, 878 (D.C.Cir.2000); Akzo Nobel Salt, Inc. v. Fed. Mine Safety and Health Review Comm'n, 212 F.3d 1301, 1304-05 (D.C.Cir.2000). The FAA's interpretation here is consistent with the position the agency took in its NPRM and offers a perfectly reasonable interpretation of § 40.37, one to which we defer. 30 In support of its interpretation, the FAA first points to § 40.1. This provision provides that Part 40 applies to transportation employers (including self-employed individuals) conducting drug urine testing programs pursuant to regulations issued by agencies of the Department of Transportation and to such transportation employers' officers, employees, agents and contractors. Thus, according to the FAA, the mandate of § 40.37 — like the rest of Part 40 — was directed to regulated carriers, such as Delta, and not to the FAA itself. See Br. of Appellee 19. The agency finds further support for this view in § 40.37's title, which refers only to test and laboratory certification results. The FAA claims that information generated during an agency investigation of the kind mounted by the FAA here does not fit within the confines of this title. See id. at 18. 31 We accede to this interpretation of § 40.37. The Supreme Court's seminal decision in Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., 325 U.S. 410, 65 S.Ct. 1215, 89 L.Ed. 1700 (1945), established the basic principle that an agency's interpretation of one of its own regulations commands substantial judicial deference. That interpretation becomes of controlling weight unless it is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation. Id. at 414, 65 S.Ct. at 1217. More recently, in Auer v. Robbins, the Court held that such deference is not to be withheld merely because the agency's reading of the regulation comes in form of a legal brief. See 519 U.S. 452, 462, 117 S.Ct. 905, 911, 137 L.Ed.2d 79 (1997); see also Nat'l Wildlife Federation v. Browner, 127 F.3d 1126, 1129 (D.C.Cir.1997) (The mere fact that an agency offers its interpretation in the course of litigation does not automatically preclude deference to the agency.). 32 There are at least three preconditions for applying this socalled Auer deference. First, the language of the regulation in question must be ambiguous, lest a substantively new rule be promulgated under the guise of interpretation. See Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 588, 120 S.Ct. 1655, 1663, 146 L.Ed.2d 621 (2000). Second, there must be no reason to suspect that the interpretation does not reflect the agency's fair and considered judgment on the matter in question. Auer, 519 U.S. at 462, 117 S.Ct. at 911; see also Bigelow, 217 F.3d at 878. Finally, the agency's reading of its regulation must be fairly supported by the text of the regulation itself, so as to ensure that adequate notice of that interpretation is contained within the rule itself. See Auer, 519 U.S. at 461, 117 S.Ct. at 911. 33 There is no doubt that § 40.37 is ambiguous in its reach. And the interpretation advanced by the FAA, which applies the rule only to test or laboratory certification results, and not to requests presented to the agency itself, resolves that underlying ambiguity quite sensibly. The phrase relating to his or her drug test is plastic, and can plausibly be read either narrowly, particularly in light of the provision's title, or broadly, as referring to any records bearing on or connected to a drug test. By focusing on the title to determine the scope of the text, the FAA has adopted a reasonable construction. 34 The regulation is silent on the question of to whom the employee may present a written request in order to gain access to his or her testing records. It is not inconsistent with the provision — and actually quite consistent with the structure of the Part 40 regulations as a whole — to construe this silence as the agency has now done. Part 40 imposes obligations on regulated carriers and affiliated laboratories, not on the FAA itself. These are the entities that actually conduct the drug testing, and who therefore would generally maintain records relating to such tests. It therefore makes perfect sense to read § 40.37 to allow employees to seek such information from private entities. 35 Accordingly, the interpretation of the regulation advanced by the FAA during this litigation is controlling unless we discern some reason to believe that it is not fair and considered. In conducting this inquiry, we consider whether the agency has ever adopted a different interpretation of the regulation or contradicted its position on appeal. National Wildlife, 127 F.3d at 1129. Where the agency's litigation position is consistent with its past statements and actions, there is good reason for the court to defer, for then the position seems simply to articulate an explanation of longstanding agency practice. Akzo Nobel, 212 F.3d at 1304; see also Ass'n of Bituminous Contractors, Inc. v. Apfel, 156 F.3d 1246, 1252 (D.C.Cir.1998) (distinguishing between explanations of a rationale implicitly adopted by the agency in its prior actions and explanations that offer new explanations for conduct previously defended on other grounds). 36 So it is here. The FAA's litigation position that § 40.37 applies neither to the FAA nor to documents relating to FAA investigations of carriers is in accord with the agency's handling of Drake's information requests solely under FOIA and treating the Part 40 rules as irrelevant. The FAA did not vacillate or reverse itself on this point. See Akzo Nobel, 212 F.3d at 1304-05 (concluding that the flip-flops here mark the Secretary's position as the sort of ` post hoc rationalizations' to which courts will not defer) (quoting Martin v. OSHRC, 499 U.S. 144, 156, 111 S.Ct. 1171, 1178, 113 L.Ed.2d 117 (1991)). Furthermore, Drake can point to no prior situations during which the FAA has followed a practice different from the one it has invoked in this case. See Bigelow, 217 F.3d at 878 (deferring where there were no past practices or pronouncements inconsistent with agency's current interpretation). And, finally, as noted above, the FAA's litigation position finds support in the NPRM issued to amend Part 40. 37 Accordingly, we have no reason to believe that the FAA's reading of § 40.37 represents anything but its fair and considered understanding. Deferring to that reasonable interpretation, we find that § 40.37 does not apply to Drake's request for documents, and that accordingly his claim is moot.