Opinion ID: 483233
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: errors of law

Text: A. Preference for State Regulation 143 I have no quarrel with Part II.A(1) of the majority opinion insofar as it simply concludes that the Secretary may not delay promulgation of field sanitation standards for farmworkers because he thinks that state regulation is generally preferable to federal regulation. In the area of occupational health and safety, Congress obviously decided otherwise. But the Secretary's reasoning was in fact far narrower. He merely responded in a practical way to special factors operating with regard to farmworkers, most notably Congress 's decision absolutely to forbid federal regulation of farms with fewer than 11 workers. 2 Confining to a footnote a discussion of the verbal surgery by which the majority has travestied the Secretary's reasoning, 3 I pass directly to the points the Secretary in fact made in comparing federal with state action in the context of field sanitation rules. 144 Congress's ten-and-under restriction. The Secretary correctly identified a circumstance that complicates federal regulation of farms as opposed to other worksites: Congress's determination that OSHA not regulate farms employing ten or fewer workers. See, e.g., 99 Stat. 1102, 1106 (1985); 50 Fed.Reg. 42,660, 42,661 (Oct. 21, 1985); 50 Fed.Reg. 15,086, 15,088 (Apr. 16, 1985). The Secretary estimated that such farms employ approximately 64% of all hand laborers. 50 Fed.Reg. at 42,661. Believing that federal regulation of large farms would preempt state regulation of small farms, he concluded that federal promulgation of a standard would actually reduce total farmworker coverage (including those on both large and small farms). 50 Fed.Reg. at 15,092. In Part II.B, I explain why I believe he committed an error of law on this point. But quite apart from any such preemption, (the congressional prohibition strongly colors the case.) The vast majority of farmworkers work on small farms that only the states may regulate. Moreover, regulation of both large and small farms can be done on a unified, coordinated basis only if the states do it. 4 Thus, a deliberate congressional restriction of OSHA authority distinguishes farmworker regulation from safety and health regulation of all other industries. 145 Release of federal resources. The Secretary also argued that reliance on state regulation, in an area where the states had already been extremely active, would free federal resources for use in combating other hazards. 50 Fed.Reg. at 42,661; 50 Fed.Reg. at 15,087-90. He found, and no one disputes the point, that 13 states, encompassing approximately 75% of all person years expended in agricultural production, had already adopted their own field sanitation standards. 50 Fed.Reg. at 42,661. This relatively energetic state activity severely limited the maximum possible increase in protection that a federal standard could supply. Indeed, in his April decision not to promulgate at all the Secretary estimated--and again the estimate is not disputed --that a federal standard could at best increase coverage of farmworkers by an additional 4% to 9%. 5 50 Fed.Reg. at 15,092. 146 As state activity and congressional constraints diminished the maximum possible gain that federal intervention could secure, the Secretary naturally compared that modest gain with the cost in enforcement resources (and thus in the health gains that deployment of those resources elsewhere might achieve). His April decision considered the issue (a consideration that he explicitly renewed in October, as explained below), and described at length some of the areas where possible regulation might save lives on a substantial scale: an asbestos standard that would avoid 8,500 cancer deaths over 45 years; an ethylene-oxide standard that was expected to reduce related deaths from a range of 532 to 1,017 to a range of 75 to 146; an inorganic arsenic standard expected to avert 11 lung cancer deaths per year in copper smelters alone; a benzene standard expected to save 822 deaths over a working lifetime. 50 Fed.Reg. at 15,088-89. He noted the limited number of available inspectors (1200 person years worth). Id. at 15,088. And he argued that inspection of isolated farms would consume inspector driving time disproportionate to the safety and health pay-off, compared to inspector focus on hazardous industries typically located in highly industrialized areas. Id. Thus confronted with a choice between giving priority to lethal industrial hazards and generally non-lethal farm ones, 6 he elected the former. 147 The Secretary said all this in April. In October he noted that OSHA has very limited enforcement resources which it has devoted primarily to protecting workers from life-threatening injuries and illnesses. 50 Fed.Reg. at 42,66 1. He also observed that the policy reasons behind the April decision included the severe limitations on OSHA's resources, OSHA's other priorities, and the appropriateness of state action to protect farmworkers. Id. (emphasis added). Two sentences later he said, While not rejecting the policy reasons set forth in the April 16 determination, the Secretary now finds that a different balance must be struck to give proper weight to the health risks posed. Id. (emphasis added). Besides thus invoking the resource-allocation issue and his April treatment of it, the Secretary in October reargued in detail the closely related point that state activity had already greatly reduced the extent to which a federal standard could increase coverage. 7 Despite his continued concern over resource allocation, he concluded that the health risk tilted the balance in favor of a commitment to federal regulation contingent upon the states' failing to take adequate action in the next 18 months. 148 The Secretary's resource-allocation concern is not undercut by Sec. 18(b) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 667(b) (1982). Section 18(b) permits a state to displace federal enforcement on a specific regulatory issue by adopting an enforcement plan of its own. See infra n. 9. The Secretary could reasonably conclude that his threat device would be more effective in prompting the states to take action and thereby free up federal resources than would promulgating a federal standard and waiting for the states to exercise their Sec. 18(b) option. 149 The majority, seemingly conceding that the issue of how best to allocate his agency's resources is for the Secretary, Maj.Op. at 623, denies that the October decision was based on resource allocation at all, Maj.Op. at 623-624 & n. 11. I confess myself wholly unable to grasp the contention. Apart from slighting his affirmative reliance on the concern, the majority seeks support in the Secretary's commitment to promulgate a standard if the states do not act, saying that The Secretary has already made [the resource-allocation] decision in favor of federal regulation of farmworkers' sanitation needs, based on current conditions. Maj.Op. at 623. But a commitment of resources contingent on state failure to act is altogether different from an absolute one. Had the Secretary made the latter, we would either have no case or be confronted with a complete about-face. Instead, the Secretary took the perfectly sensible decision to threaten the states with future regulation in the hope they would increase farmworker protection adequately and thus enable OSHA to use the released resources to protect workers elsewhere. Of course one can easily caricature the Secretary's effort to balance concern for the farmworkers with concern for other workers by turning language addressed to the former (unacceptable risks) into an absolute that was clearly unintended. But such caricature is not the business of appellate courts. 150 High degree of local variation. Finally, the Secretary argued in favor of his threat device on the ground that states were better able to adopt standards responsive to the vast differences in agricultural conditions. 50 Fed.Reg. at 42,661. He specifically pointed to variations of size, climate, terrain, workforce density and labor intensity that dominate farm work and produce a diversity rarely if ever equaled in other occupations. Id. Because each state's regulations would cover a relatively narrow range of conditions, the states regulating agricultural working conditions enjoy an unusual comparative advantage in providing protection. Under an undifferentiating federal standard, farms would chafe under a regulation designed to be all things to all people, and OSHA would have to expend resources evaluating the predictable deluge of variance requests. See 29 U.S.C. Sec. 655(d) (1982). Cf. 50 Fed.Reg. at 15,090. 151 In short, the Secretary in no way relied on a generalized preference for state regulation inconsistent with congressional intent. Moved by special factors--the most prominent of which had been created by Congress itself--he simply noted that the situation was one where a threat device might enable him to have his cake and eat it: state protection of farmworkers nearly equal to and possibly superior to federal, with a release of federal resources for protection of other workers. B. The Secretary's Preemption Theory 152 One of the Secretary's reasons for attempting to encourage state action was his view that, by virtue of its preemptive effect, the promulgation of a federal field sanitation standard could well result in a decrease in the number of farmworkers protected by field sanitation regulations. 8 Section 18(a) of the OSH Act expressly permits state regulation of any issue with respect to which no [federal] standard is in effect. 9 29 U.S.C. Sec. 667(a) (1982). Evidently regarding field sanitation on large and small farms as a single issue, the Secretary concluded that the promulgation of a federal standard, though necessarily limited to farms with more than ten workers, would preempt state regulation even of farms with ten or fewer workers. That belief is spelled out unequivocally in his April statement, 50 Fed.Reg. at 15,092 (citing New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce v. Hughey, 600 F.Supp. 606 (D.N.J.1985)); the October statement, though less clear, seems to draw upon the same idea, 50 Fed.Reg. at 42,661. If the supposition were true, federal relief for large-farm workers would torpedo state relief for small-farm workers. 153 Such a reading of Sec. 18(a) seems unreasonable and therefore, notwithstanding the deference we owe the Secretary under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984), subject to our correction. Congress declared that its purpose and policy were to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 651(b) (1982). In adopting the ten-and-under restriction in appropriations riders, it clearly qualified that intent: safety and health for the small-farm worker were not to be a subject of direct federal regulation but were to come about through the operation of market forces, state regulation, or other factors. But it would make little sense for Congress with one hand to grant states the exclusive rights to regulate small farms and with the other to subject that grant to divestiture if OSHA promulgated a standard applying to large farms. 154 Section 18(a)'s preemption rule serves the useful function of protecting employers from conflicting standards and a double dose of enforcement agents. But a farm cannot, at the same time, employ both ten-or-fewer and eleven-or-more workers. Thus the conflict and duplication cannot occur--except in the sense that a farm's shift in number of employees will on occasion push it from one side of the ten-and-under line to the other and thereby change its regulator. But the duplication and conflict implicit in such a scenario seem de minimis when compared to Congress's unmistakable intent that every working man and woman in the nation [be assured] safe and healthful working conditions, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 651(b) (1982). 155 Accordingly, I would remand to the Secretary to reconsider his action in light of such an understanding of the law.