Opinion ID: 491638
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: standard of review

Text: 27 The Administrative Procedure Act provides that a reviewing court shall hold unlawful agency action that is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2)(a). The primary question in this case is whether the NRC's backfitting rule is in accordance with the health and safety provisions of the Atomic Energy Act. To decide this question, we must first determine what deference, if any, is due to the Commission's own interpretation of the Act, which is the NRC's organic statute. 28 For several years, Chevron, U.S.A. Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1983), controlled this determination in all situations. Chevron provided an all-purpose two-pronged test for deciding whether to give deference to an agency's interpretation of its organic statute: 29 First, always, is the question whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. If, however, the court determines Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue, the court does not simply impose its own construction on the statute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administrative interpretation. Rather, if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute. 30 Id. at 842-43, 104 S.Ct. at 2781-82 (footnotes omitted). In the recent case of Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Cardoza-Fonseca, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1207, 1220-22, 94 L.Ed.2d 434 (1987), however, the Supreme Court strongly indicated that courts are to apply the Chevron test only in circumstances in which an agency is required to apply a legal standard to a particular set of facts. When the court faces a pure question of statutory construction, the court need not defer to agency opinion, even if the statutory provision at issue admits of some ambiguity. Id.; see International Union, UAW v. Brock, 816 F.2d 761, 764, 765 n. 5 (D.C.Cir.1987). In such instances, the court is to use traditional tools of statutory construction to ascertain congressional intent. 31 The question whether or to what extent the Commission may consider economic costs under the Atomic Energy Act in evaluating the implementation of proposed safety improvements to previously licensed power plants is a question of pure statutory interpretation. We therefore turn to traditional tools of statutory interpretation in order to discover congressional intent. In so doing, we find that the answer to this question of statutory construction is clear-- indeed, so clear that even if we were to apply the Chevron test, we would never reach its second prong. 32