Opinion ID: 587688
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Availability of APA Relief

Text: 19 We agree with the government that the plaintiffs in this case are exactly the ones envisioned by the APA: persons suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action. 5 U.S.C. § 702. Because the APA was designed to unify and simplify grievance procedures, it is presumptively an appropriate vehicle with which to challenge agency action. 20 [G]iven the vast number of federal laws, government agencies, and potential legal disputes, it makes sense to try to maintain a clear, orderly procedural way for injured persons to bring their claims against federal agencies before the courts. The APA was intended to provide just such a single uniform method for review of agency action. The APA was designed to supplant a variety of pre-existing methods for obtaining review that differed from one agency to another and sometimes hindered the efforts of injured persons to obtain relief. 21 Cousins v. Secretary of U.S. Department of Transportation, 880 F.2d 603, 605-06 (1st Cir.1989) (en banc) (citations omitted). 22 Section 504 contemplated that federal agencies themselves should take primary responsibility for compliance and directed them to promulgate such regulations as may be necessary to carry out its non-discrimination directive. 29 U.S.C. § 794. The Department of Health and Human Services, of which SSA is a part, responded by creating the administrative procedures outlined in 45 C.F.R. § 85. The mere existence of these procedures, however, does not necessarily determine whether their exhaustion is a prerequisite for judicial review in all cases. The doctrine of administrative exhaustion should be applied with a regard for the particular administrative scheme at issue. Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 765, 95 S.Ct. 2457, 2467, 45 L.Ed.2d 522 (1975). See also McCarthy v. Madigan, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1081, 117 L.Ed.2d 291 (1992) (examining specific statutory scheme). The decision whether to require exhaustion should also be guided by the policies underlying the exhaustion requirement. Bowen v. City of New York, 476 U.S. 467, 484, 106 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 90 L.Ed.2d 462 (1986). Exhaustion is generally required as a matter of preventing premature interference with agency processes, so that the agency may function efficiently and so that it may have an opportunity to correct its own errors, to afford the parties and the courts the benefit of its experience and expertise, and to compile a record which is adequate for judicial review. Weinberger, 422 U.S. at 765, 95 S.Ct. at 2467. 23 The present case is exactly the kind of complaint that would best lend itself to a solution developed by the agency rather than imposed upon it by a court. Plaintiffs charge that SSA's application procedures themselves have the effect of discriminating against the mentally handicapped, and that systemic change is necessary to eliminate the discrimination. The agency is in a far better position to determine how best to formulate and implement systemic change than is a court. If a court's intervention is required in the form of an APA suit, a Rehabilitation Act suit or both, its decision should be informed by a considerable body of information about the administration of the SSI program and SSA's internal organization and operations. If the plaintiffs present the problem to the agency in the first instance, an adequate record for decision will be generated. We recognize that plaintiffs' civil suit was halted at the complaint stage. Consequently we cannot know what information might be made available to the district court at later stages in the litigation. Nonetheless we believe that the type of information the court needs is more likely to be generated in useful form through an administrative proceeding than through the adversarial clash of deposition and discovery. 24 A careful reading of the Rehabilitation Act reveals that APA review of agency action is an appropriate vehicle to address allegations of discrimination by the government. The remedial section of the Rehabilitation Act explicitly adopts the remedies [and] procedures ... set forth in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Section 505(a)(2), 29 U.S.C. § 794a(a)(2). 6 Title VI, in turn, provides for judicial review of agency actions in accordance with chapter 7 of title 5 [the APA]. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2. This series of incorporations makes clear that Congress intended that the remedies and procedures of the APA would be available to correct agency action alleged to discriminate on the basis of handicap. Sending these plaintiffs back to the agency with the option of judicial review under the APA if administrative remedies are unavailing is therefore consistent with the broad remedial purpose of the Rehabilitation Act. 25 Plaintiffs may have framed their complaint exclusively under the Rehabilitation Act due to their perception that APA review would be unavailable to them. They cite our decision in Cleghorn v. Herrington, 813 F.2d 992 (9th Cir.1987) for the proposition that the court's power under the APA to enjoin agency action otherwise not in accordance with law, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), extends only to agency actions that conflict with the agency's own enabling statute, not with other substantive laws. The plaintiff in Cleghorn claimed that Department of Energy regulations requiring minimum physical fitness requirements for armed security guards at nuclear facilities violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). That statute adopts the procedures of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Cleghorn held that the plaintiff's attempt to use the APA to assert what is in effect a Title VII claim must fail because it would allow him to circumvent, in direct contravention of congressional intent, the numerous procedural and substantive requirements of Title VII. Id. at 995. In reaching that conclusion, Cleghorn remarked that the plaintiff's argument--that APA review was the appropriate vehicle to challenge an agency action alleged to violate an entirely different statutory regime (the ADEA)--was a novel theory. Id. at 994. Understandably, plaintiffs here were concerned that APA review might be unavailable to them. We conclude that Cleghorn is not the bar they fear. Cleghorn specifically left open the question of whether any agency violation of a substantive statute or regulation can be the basis of a claim pursuant to the APA. Id. at 994-95. No subsequent Ninth Circuit cases have addressed the issue, but considerable out-of-circuit authority provides guidance. 26 Recent cases from other circuits suggest that the plaintiff's theory left undecided in Cleghorn is no longer novel. Cousins v. Secretary of U.S. Department of Transportation, 880 F.2d 603, 605 (1st Cir.1989) (en banc) is the first of a series of cases with explicit holdings on this point. In considering the court's power under the APA to set aside agency actions that are otherwise not in accordance with law, the court remarked, These words are general in their meaning; they do not restrict the courts to consideration of the agency's own enabling statute. Cousins, 880 F.2d at 608. Cousins rejected the view of Cleghorn advanced by plaintiffs here. 27 [W]e agree with the Cleghorn court that the APA cannot be used to circumvent the specific procedural requirements of other substantive federal statutes. But we do not agree with the broader view, suggested in Cleghorn and explicitly adopted in Davidson [v. United States Department of Energy, 838 F.2d 850 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 487 U.S. 1207, 108 S.Ct. 2849, 101 L.Ed.2d 886 (1988) ], that a challenge to agency action on the ground that it conflicts with a substantive federal statute (such as the Rehabilitation Act) must always be brought under that statute, and not under the APA. Such a view seems contrary to the APA's language and intent[.] 28 Id. at 609. Accord, Ward v. Skinner, 943 F.2d 157, 160 (1st Cir.1991) (the fact that agency action is challenged under the APA would not prevent us from reviewing other claims of illegality--such as a claim that the Department's [action], say, rested on unconstitutional racial discrimination, or ... violated the Rehabilitation Act (emphasis omitted)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1558, 118 L.Ed.2d 207 (1992); Clark v. Skinner, 937 F.2d 123 (4th Cir.1991) (APA review is a suitable method to challenge a Department of Transportation decision on the grounds that it violated the Rehabilitation Act). See also Japan Whaling Association v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U.S. 221, 231 n. 4, 106 S.Ct. 2860, 2866 n. 4, 92 L.Ed.2d 166 (1986) (A separate indication of congressional intent to make agency action reviewable under the APA is not necessary; instead, the rule is that the cause of action for review of such action is available absent some clear and convincing evidence of legislative intention to preclude review.) The recent cases explicitly stating this principle build on the many prior cases that have simply assumed without discussion that a plaintiff may challenge agency action under the APA on the grounds that it conflicts with a federal statute other than the agency's enabling statute. See cases collected in Cousins, 880 F.2d at 609. 7 29 In Davidson, the case criticized by Cousins, the Sixth Circuit examined the same DOE regulations challenged in Cleghorn against a claim that they discriminated on the basis of sex and age in violation of Title VII and the ADEA. Unlike Cleghorn, the plaintiffs in Davidson also asserted an independent claim of discrimination on the basis of handicap under the Rehabilitation Act. Davidson adopted Cleghorn's reasoning that Title VII procedures may not be evaded by framing the complaint as arising under the APA, but explicitly extended it to the Rehabilitation Act. 838 F.2d at 854. In doing so, unfortunately, it ignored crucial differences between ADEA's Title VII remedies and the Rehabilitation Act's Title VI remedies. As explained above, the Rehabilitation Act explicitly incorporates the remedies and procedures of Title VI, which incorporates the APA. Plaintiffs who protest Rehabilitation Act violations by seeking APA review do not evade Congress's statutory scheme; they follow it. We decline to adopt the rule in Davidson so far as it purports to preclude APA review of agency actions alleged to violate the Rehabilitation Act. 30 Plaintiffs also appear to believe that APA review, even if available, would be inadequate to their needs. First, plaintiffs suggest that were they to sue under the APA, they would face the more difficult burden of showing that SSA's actions were arbitrary, capricious [or] an abuse of discretion, rather than simply meeting the familiar preponderance of the evidence standard of civil litigation. Plaintiffs would have a point if we were looking solely at an agency's factual findings or its choice of one among many otherwise lawful methods of implementing a statute. But their argument neglects the court's power under the APA to set aside agency actions that are otherwise not in accordance with law or are in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C). Even though the court's power to compel or strike down agency action derives from the APA, the threshold determination--whether agency action or inaction violates a substantive law--is a question of law determined de novo once the plaintiffs reach the court for review of a final agency determination. Plaintiffs who present proof that an agency has violated a statute have perforce shown that it has acted not in accordance with law and in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority or limitation. Phrased alternately, SSA has no discretion to violate the Rehabilitation Act. Cf. Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 2461, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990) (with regard to the standard of appellate review in Rule 11 cases, [a] district court would necessarily abuse its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law). 31 This reading in no way alters our deferential standard of review over actions within an agency's discretion or over reasonable agency interpretations of statutes it is charged with administering. While SSA's exercise of its discretion within, and its interpretations of, the Social Security Act are accorded extra weight, the question that would be presented in an APA challenge in this case is whether SSA has complied with the Rehabilitation Act, a statute over which it claims no special expertise. See, e.g., Cousins, 880 F.2d at 609-610 (Department of Transportation had no special expertise in interpreting Rehabilitation Act; it must comply with whatever legal requirements § 504 places upon it); Federal Labor Relations Authority v. Department of the Treasury, 884 F.2d 1446, 1451 (D.C.Cir.1989) (FLRA has no special expertise with regard to the Privacy Act or Freedom of Information Act). 32 Second, plaintiffs contend that the record compiled in an administrative proceeding would be inferior to the one that would be created through discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Like the First and Fourth Circuits, we see no reason why plaintiffs would not be able to create a record every bit as persuasive in an administrative proceeding as they could in civil litigation. See Clark, 937 F.2d at 126 (The administrative record developed could well include all of the grounds and arguments presented to the district court); Cousins, 880 F.2d at 610 (plaintiff can submit to DOT all the evidence and legal arguments that he would like to include in the record for judicial review). 33 Third, plaintiffs contended at oral argument that the scope of the court's injunctive power is less in the APA context than in a civil discrimination suit. The APA grants the federal judiciary the power to compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed. 5 U.S.C. § 706(1). Nothing in this language, or in our cases, limits a court's capacity to fashion an appropriate injunction if plaintiffs are able to prove that SSA has illegally discriminated on the basis of handicap. 34 To summarize, the APA is both available and adequate to review plaintiffs' claims for injunctive and declaratory relief. Whether this suit is characterized as review of agency action under the APA or a private suit directly under the Rehabilitation Act should not make a significant difference to [plaintiffs'] chances for success on the merits. Cousins, 880 F.2d at 605.