Opinion ID: 780241
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Has OSHA's Delay Been Excessive?

Text: 30 In 1993, OSHA acknowledged that the existing hexavalent chromium standard is inadequate and that there is clear evidence that exposure to Cr VI at the current PEL of 100 µg/m 3 can result in an excess risk of lung cancer and other CrVI-related illnesses. (Dear Letter at 2.) That was fully nine years ago, and its first target date for a proposed rule — March 1995 — is now more than seven years past. OSHA has missed all ten of its self-imposed deadlines, including the September 1999 target it offered to this Court in Oil Workers. Far from drawing closer to a rulemaking, all evidence suggests that ground is being lost. OSHA's December 2001 regulatory agenda demoted the rulemaking from a high priority to a long term action with a timetable to be determined. In fact, at oral argument, OSHA's counsel admitted the possibility that another ten or even twenty years might pass before it issues a rule, if it ever does. 31 OSHA responds that Public Citizen's concerns about the missed deadlines and recent reclassification are misconceived. It explains that under the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. § 602, agencies must publish regulatory agendas that include all rules the agency intends to propose or promulgate that are likely to have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. A rule's inclusion in an agency's agenda does not, however, require the agency to consider or act on that item. See 5 U.S.C. § 602(d). The Secretary of Labor has recently stated her belief that it is inappropriate to routinely set target dates that the agency cannot meet and intends to list only realistic target dates in future regulatory agendas, Daily Labor Report (BNA, Apr. 22, 2002), but OSHA represents that this is an act of grace, not necessity: [B]ecause an item's listing in the regulatory agenda does not mean that the agency must consider or act on that item, the listing of unrealistic or unachieved target dates cannot be a basis for compelling the agency to act. [OSHA Br. at 33.] 32 Regarding hexavalent chromium's recent downgrade to a long-term project, OSHA clarifies that this is a reflection of whether the rulemaking will be completed in a short period of time and represents that the designation carries no implication about a rulemaking's relative importance to other matters OSHA is considering. [OSHA Br. at 31.] The items listed as high priority in the December 2001 agenda, it says, were simply those on which OSHA intended to take action in fiscal 2002. See 66 Fed. Reg. 61221 (Dec. 3, 2001). It therefore contends that the priority downgrade was more a clarification than a change in the agency's priorities. 33 We find neither of these explanations satisfactory. We agree with OSHA insofar as its failure strictly to follow its published agenda is not actionable, but this defense misses the point: OSHA's persistent failure to meet deadlines is not the disease itself, but rather a symptom of its dilatory approach to the hexavalent chromium rulemaking process. Similarly, even if OSHA's decision to downgrade the project's priority truly represents a clarification rather than a change, it still gives clear evidence that at least another year will pass before OSHA takes even the first formal step toward promulgating a rule. Incidentally, we are skeptical of OSHA's reassurance that the reclassification has no substantive implications, for five years ago it represented to this Court that it intended to issue a proposed rule in September 1999. Not only did it fail to issue a rule in 1999, it concedes even now that it is far from doing so. 34 Section 6(b) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires the Secretary of Labor to set the standard which most adequately assures, to the extent feasible, on the basis of the best available evidence, that no employee will suffer material impairment of health or functional capacity even if such employee has regular exposure to the hazard dealt with by such standard for the period of his working life. 29 U.S.C. § 655(b). The Supreme Court has found that this language compels action: [B]oth the language and structure of the Act, as well as its legislative history, indicate that it was intended to require the elimination, as far as feasible, of significant risks of harm. Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO v. American Petroleum Institute, 448 U.S. 607, 641, 100 S.Ct. 2844, 65 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1980). As such, the agency's priorities are judicially reviewable, and this Court and others have compelled OSHA to take action to address significant risks. See, e.g., United Steelworkers of America v. Pendergrass, 819 F.2d 1263 (3d Cir.1987); In re International Chemical Workers Union, 958 F.2d 1144 (D.C.Cir.1992); Public Citizen Health Research Group v. Brock, 823 F.2d 626 (D.C.Cir.1987). Indeed, OSHA itself does not seriously contest the existence of a private cause of action compelling it to proceed with a rulemaking. 35 We find extreme OSHA's nine-year (and counting) delay since announcing its intention to begin the rulemaking process, even relative to delays other courts have condemned in comparable cases. Indeed, in no reported case has a court reviewed a delay this long without compelling action. In Chemical Workers Union, 958 F.2d at 1144, for example, petitioners had first requested that OSHA promulgate a rule for cadmium in 1986. Similar to this case, the court had denied an initial petition to compel OSHA to act, based in part on OSHA's prediction that it would issue a proposed rule later that year. When it failed to issue a proposed rule until 1990 and estimated that a final rule would not be forthcoming until 1992, the court said: 36 [E]ven if finally completed by August 31, 1992, the cadmium rulemaking will have taken over six years. This is an extraordinarily long time, in light of the admittedly serious health risks associated with the current permissible levels of cadmium exposure under the twenty-year-old standards still in place.... Under the circumstances, we do not see how any further delay ... — resulting in continued exposure of workers to dangerous levels of cadmium — could be excusable. 37 Id. at 1150 (citations omitted). It therefore granted petitioner's motion to impose a deadline for completion of the cadmium rulemaking. Id. The length of the delay here is already two-and-a-half years longer than the delay the D.C. Circuit found unacceptable, and no proposed rule is in sight. 38 Similarly, in Public Citizen Health Research Group v. Auchter, 702 F.2d 1150 (D.C.Cir.1983), OSHA had been petitioned in 1981 for a new exposure standard for ethylene oxide (EtO), a carcinogenic substance to which an estimated 75,000 hospital workers were exposed. As in the case at bar, the agency refused to issue an emergency temporary standard, but acknowledged the current standard's insufficiency and began the rulemaking process. It issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in 1982, but it had not issued the proposed rule as of 1983, and it estimated that a final rule would not be issued until the fall of 1984. The court found the anticipated three-year delay unacceptable, stating that: 39 Three years from announced intent to regulate to final rule is simply too long given the significant risk of grave danger EtO poses to the lives of current workers and the lives and well-being of their offspring. Delays that might be altogether reasonable in the sphere of economic regulation are less tolerable when human lives are at stake.... This is particularly true when the very purpose of the governing Act is to protect those lives. 40 Id. at 1154. See also Brock, 823 F.2d at 628, 629 (With lives hanging in the balance, six years is a very long time, and any delay whatever beyond the proposed schedule is unreasonable.); Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union v. Zegeer, 768 F.2d 1480, 1487 (D.C. Cir.1985) (addressing a delay of over five years in issuing a proposed rule for exposure to radioactive gases, and stating that a reasonable time may encompass months, occasionally a year or two, but not several years or a decade). 41 OSHA contends that among these cases, only in Auchter did a court compel the agency to issue a proposed rule; the others dealt with situations where the agency had issued a proposed rule but was allegedly dilatory in issuing a final regulation. It further notes that the D.C. Circuit later characterized Auchter as one of the exceptionally rare cases where this court has actually issued an order compelling an agency to press forward with a specific project. In re Barr Laboratories, Inc. 930 F.2d 72, 76 (D.C.Cir.1991). OSHA also points out that in Auchter, the court had been persuaded, largely by agency concessions, that the project backed by plaintiff was plainly more `urgent' than any that the project's acceleration might retard, id., and it emphasizes that no similar concession exists here. 42 While we acknowledge that Auchter, Chemical Workers Union, and the other cases are in some ways distinguishable from this one, we nonetheless regard them as valuable precedent. For example, in Auchter, even though OSHA admitted that the plaintiff's project was the most urgent on its agenda, the case at bar is not ultimately distinguishable because the extremity of delay more than overcomes the fact that hexavalent chromium does not dominate OSHA's list of priorities. We also note that although the D.C. Circuit termed cases in which courts order agencies to press forward with a specific project exceptionally rare, the initial decision to make hexavalent chromium a high priority came from OSHA itself, not this Court. It was also OSHA's decision to announce in 1993 that it was beginning a ... rulemaking for occupational exposure to Cr VI, and that it anticipate[d] that Notice of Proposed Rulemaking will be published ... not later than 1995. (Lurie Dec. ¶ 9.) At all events, we think it exceptionally rare that an agency would for years classify an action as a high priority, only to demote it to a long term project upon the release of a study that provides more convincing evidence of the danger than had previously existed. 43 We are satisfied that OSHA's delay in this case is objectively extreme, and we find its regression alarming in the face of its own 1996 statement that [t]here appears to be no dispute that the current PEL is too high. We therefore conclude that, absent a scientific or policy-based justification for its delay, we must compel it to act. 44