Opinion ID: 6938518
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Improper Data.

Text: Plaintiffs also contend that the 1979 study relied on stale and incomplete data. Plaintiffs, however, offer no evidence for their theory that the three-year-old data was not sufficient to support the Secretary’s finding that the overwhelming majority of food-stamp recipients owned automobiles with equity of $1500 or less in 1982. More convincing is plaintiffs’ claim that the data from the food-stamp survey is incomplete. Plaintiffs note that in the 1979 study about 35% of the recipients surveyed did not know the value of the equity they had in their automobiles. Therefore, in concluding that 96% of food-stamp recipients who owned automobiles had equity of $1500 or less, the Secretary must have assumed that the individuals who did not know the amount of equity in their automobiles mirrored that of the survey participants who did know the amount of equity they had. But there is no evidence in the record to support this assumption. The Secretary also included in the 96% figure people who did not own any cars at all. Plaintiffs cite St. James Hosp. v. Heckler, 760 F.2d 1460, 1468 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 902, 106 S.Ct. 229, 88 L.Ed.2d 228 (1985), for the proposition that an agency cannot rely on inadequate data when it makes a rule. While the data used by the Secretary in fashioning the $1500 limit may have been incomplete, the Secretary did not commit “a clear error of judgment” in relying on the incomplete data in setting the $1500 figure. Id. at 1468.