Opinion ID: 544587
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jurisdiction Over Petitioners' Claims

Text: 27 The jurisdictional issue that confronts us arises from the pendency of petitions before EPA by three of the petitioners. The Aluminum Association and the Ferroalloys Association filed petitions with EPA requesting administrative reexamination of the 1988 Rule; then, while these petitions were pending, these same parties filed petitions for review of the 1988 Rule in this court. 5 The American Mining Congress filed a petition for judicial review of the 1988 Rule, and then filed a petition with EPA seeking administrative reexamination. 6 Observing the posture of these three petitioners, we directed the parties to file supplemental briefs on the question whether this court has jurisdiction over a petition for review when the petitioner has submitted an administrative petition for reconsideration of the agency action prior to or after filing its petition for judicial review, and the petition for reconsideration has not been acted on by the agency. 28 In United Transp. Union v. ICC, 871 F.2d 1114 (D.C.Cir.1989), we concluded that it was plain that a pending petition for rehearing must render the underlying agency action nonfinal (and hence unreviewable) with respect to the filing party. Id. at 1116. Thus, if the Aluminum Association and the Ferroalloys Association filed petitions for rehearing or reconsideration with EPA that were pending at the time they sought review in this court, then under UTU their petitions in this court would be untimely. Although the American Mining Congress filed its petition for review with this court before petitioning for administrative reexamination, if that administrative petition was also a petition for reconsideration, then our cases raise the question whether that subsequent administrative petition renders the petition in this court incurably premature. See TeleSTAR v. FCC, 888 F.2d 132, 133 (D.C.Cir.1989) (petition for review made unripe under UTU by pendency of request for agency reconsideration does not ripen so as to vest court with jurisdiction once agency issues final decision on reconsideration); see also id. at 134 n. 1 (declining to consider case in which petitioner first seeks court review of a final agency action and then subsequently requests consideration before the agency). 29 On the record of this case, we conclude that UTU and TeleSTAR are inapplicable. In the 1988 Rule, EPA asserted that it would treat any post-1980 submissions as a petition for rulemaking to reconsider these listings. 53 Fed.Reg. at 35,417. We see no good reason to take the agency other than at its word, and so we must consider the three administrative petitions as petitions for new rulemaking. Such petitions do not, of course, pose any problem for our subject-matter jurisdiction, for UTU and TeleSTAR do not bar petitions for judicial review in the face of petitions for new rulemaking. Cf. American Petroleum Inst. v. EPA, 906 F.2d 729, 740 (1990) ([A]n agency always retains the power to revise a final rule through additional rulemaking. If the possibility of unforeseen amendments were sufficient to render an otherwise fit challenge unripe, review could be deferred indefinitely.). 30