Opinion ID: 206373
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: 44 Fed. Reg. 71,413 (emphasis added).

Text: EIA contends that the 1979 Policy Interpretation and the subsequent clarifications amended the regulations, but it utterly fails to provide support for this contention. As the district court appropriately noted, [a]n interpretive guideline does not ‘become an amendment merely because it supplies crisper and more detailed lines than the authority being interpreted.’ District Court Opinion, 675 F. Supp. 2d at 677 (quoting American Mining Congress v. Mine Safety & Health Admin., 995 F.2d 1106, 1112 (D.C. Cir. 1993)). In NWCA, the D.C. Circuit regarded DOE’s Three-Part Test as interpretive guidelines that the Department was not obligated to issue in the first place. 366 F.3d at 940. As a result, the court there found that the policies were not subject to notice and comment requirements. EIA’s claims regarding procedural flaws due to lack of notice and comment similarly fail here. Presidential Approval EIA also contends that the Three-Part Test is procedurally invalid because it was not approved by the President. As described in Part I supra, 20 U.S.C. § 1682 provides in part that any rule, regulation, or order issued by a federal agency to effectuate Title IX must be approved by the President in order to become effective. Consistent with this requirement, President Ford signed the Title IX regulations promulgated by HEW in 1975. EIA contends that the 1979 Policy Interpretation, including the Three-Part Test, is invalid because it lacked similar presidential approval. The district court correctly rejected this contention as meritless. 24 EQUITY IN ATHLETICS, v. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION As with the APA’s notice and comment requirements, courts have held that the requirement of presidential approval does not apply to the issuance of interpretive guidelines. See, e.g., Cohen v. Brown Univ., 879 F. Supp. 185, 199 (D. R.I. 1995), rev’d in part on other grounds, 101 F.3d 155 (1st Cir. 1996) (holding that the 1979 Policy Interpretation need not be approved by the President in order to become effective, as it is not a rule, regulation, or order). EIA’s efforts, moreover, to corral the full range of agency action into the categories that require presidential approval fail to grasp longstanding conceptions of administrative law and are without merit. See, e.g., United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 228 (2001) (noting that agencies charged with applying a statute necessarily make all sorts of interpretive choices). We find the reasoning of these courts persuasive, and find that EIA’s argument with regard to procedural invalidity of the Three-Part Test due to lack of presidential approval also fails. The district court properly rejected EIA’s procedural claims, and this court finds no reason to disturb that judgment.