Opinion ID: 494108
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: court of appeals jurisdiction without final agency action

Text: 37 It does not follow automatically that, if the district court lacks jurisdiction, then it must lie in this court, for both courts have just so much jurisdiction as Congress has provided by statute. Congress in section 307(b)(1) has granted this court jurisdiction only to review any ... nationally applicable regulations promulgated, or final action taken under the Act. Sierra Club complains, however, that EPA has not yet promulgated a rule under section 302(j) that finally determines whether strip mines are to be listed as a source of fugitive emissions. As TRAC indicates, though, our jurisdiction under a final agency action review provision is not limited to situations in which final action, as it is commonly understood, has indeed been taken. Under such provisions, we also have jurisdiction to review agency inaction, which may take any of three forms, all of which relate, one way or the other, to our ability to provide effective review of final action. 38
39 First, agency inaction may represent effectively final agency action that the agency has not frankly acknowledged: when administrative inaction has precisely the same impact on the rights of the parties as denial of relief, an agency cannot preclude judicial review by casting its decision in the form of inaction rather than in the form of an order denying relief. 67 In such a situation, the court can undertake review as though the agency had denied the requested relief and can order an agency to either act or provide a reasoned explanation for its failure to act. 68 In the instant case, Sierra Club does not allege, nor does our review of the ongoing October 1984 rulemaking suggest, that EPA's failure as yet to issue a final rule reflects an acknowledged EPA decision to exclude strip mines from the list of section 302(j) sources.
40 Second, agency inaction may represent agency recalcitrance ... in the face of a clear statutory duty ... of such magnitude that it amounts to an abdication of statutory responsibility. 69 Examples of such clear duties to act include provisions that require an agency to take specific action when certain preconditions have been met. 70 When an agency violates such a duty through inaction, the court has the power to order the agency to act to carry out its substantive statutory mandates. 71 41 This court may have jurisdiction to review claims alleging inaction in this type of case for either or both of two reasons. If the withheld agency action would be reviewable under the APA, then this type of inaction represents action that has been unlawfully withheld; 72 the agency might forever evade our review and thus escape its duties if we awaited final action before reviewing this claim. Even as to those actions not covered by the APA, it is apparent that, if an agency is under an unequivocal statutory duty to act, failure so to act constitutes, in effect, an affirmative act that triggers final agency action review. 42 In either case, pursuant to a final agency action review provision and our decision in TRAC, this court would normally exercise jurisdiction over such a claim. 73 Under the Clean Air Act's unusual, bifurcated jurisdictional scheme, however, a claim of agency recalcitrance ... in the face of a clear statutory duty would in most instances represent a claim that EPA has failed to perform a nondiscretionary duty. As we have indicated, such a claim must be brought in the district court, under section 304(a)(2). As explained above, Sierra Club does not here claim that EPA has violated such a nondiscretionary duty.
43 Third, we may review agency inaction that is alleged to work an unreasonable delay of final action. The gravamen of Sierra Club's complaint in this case is that EPA is taking an unreasonably long time to reach a decision on whether to include strip mines in the list. Unlike claims alleging agency recalcitrance in the face of a clear statutory duty, the petitioner alleging unreasonable delay does not contend that agency inaction violates a clear duty to take a particular action by a date certain. Instead, as in those cases involving unacknowledged final action, the claim is that while the agency may have discretion over whether to act at all, it has exercised that discretion by deciding that it would determine what action, if any, to take, and that it must now do so. 74 What differentiates unreasonable delay from unacknowledged final action is that the petitioner who pleads the former concedes that the agency is still analyzing the matter, but complains that the process is taking too long. To phrase it differently, the claim is that the pace of the agency decisional process ... lags unreasonably. 75 44 As we indicated in TRAC, unreasonable delay claims may be further differentiated into two types based upon the harm allegedly inflicted: 45 1. Right to a timely decision. The first type of claim is that agency delay deprives the petitioner of a statutory [r]ight to [t]imely [d]ecisionmaking. 76 It thus resembles to some extent claims involving agency recalcitrance ... in the face of a clear statutory duty, except that the statutory duty involved here does not specify what course of action shall be taken. Rather, regardless of what course it chooses, the agency is under a duty not to delay unreasonably in making that choice. 46 As our previous decisions indicate, agencies most often fall under this duty of timeliness as a result of the APA's broad prohibition against unreasonable delay. 77 In other situations, the substantive statute itself may impose the obligation. This arises either because the statute expressly imposes a deadline 78 or otherwise exhorts timely behavior, 79 or because the statutory scheme implicitly contemplates final action within a reasonable amount of time. 80 In all these situations, a final agency action review provision confers jurisdiction upon this court to review the inaction claim for the same reason that justifies review of action unlawfully withheld--viz. without such review, the agency could effectively evade its statutory duty of timeliness. 81 47 2. Other rights abridged by delay. The second group of unreasonable delay claims presents a different type of harm. The petitioner here does not contend that the agency, in delaying final action, has violated a statutory [r]ight to [t]imely [d]ecisionmaking, 82 but that the delay will work to deprive it of a different right granted it by Congress. The classic example of this latter type of harm is the undue length of rate proceedings conducted by the Federal Communications Commission. In Nader v. FCC, 83 MCI v. FCC, 84 and TRAC itself, we held that the FCC was under a rule of reason as to the length of rate proceedings. This rule of reason was, in part, implicit in the statute itself, which required only that rates be just and reasonable, not that they be perfect. 85 In addition to this implicit duty of timeliness, however, we found that unreasonable delay by the FCC in setting just and reasonable rates would effectively deprive ratepayers of their statutory right to such rates, because the refund remedy established by the statute--under which the utility could charge its proposed rate during the course of the proceedings, but would have to refund any amount received in excess of the rate eventually determined to be just and reasonable--will not provide effective relief in situations where proceedings have extended for too long a period of time. 86 In this situation, just as in the case of a duty to make a timely decision, this court may review agency delay because it jeopardizes our future review of the final [agency] decision if review may come so late that no effective relief will be available. 87 If we find that the agency has unreasonably delayed, then we have the authority, under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1651, to issue a writ of mandamus to compel the agency to take final action. 88 48 To summarize, for this court to have jurisdiction over Sierra Club's claim alleging unreasonable delay of a rulemaking proceeding, we must find that Sierra Club has a right the denial of which we would have jurisdiction to review upon final agency action but the integrity of which might be irreversibly compromised by the time such review would occur. As our discussion has indicated, this may be the right to timely decisionmaking itself or some other interest that will be irreparably harmed through delay.
49 Sierra Club asserts a right to timely decisionmaking under the APA. Claiming that EPA has unreasonably delayed promulgating a final rule, Sierra Club petitions us to compel the agency to conclude the rulemaking it began in October 1984 in order to determine whether fugitive emissions from strip mines are to be included in deciding what are major emitting facilities for the PSD program. In opposing this request, EPA contends that it is under no duty to avoid unreasonable delay because section 307(d)(1)(I) of the Act 89 excludes PSD rulemakings (Part C of the Act) from the coverage of the APA. EPA points out that Congress, after it displaced the APA at large, then expressly reincorporated many of the APA standards, section 307(d)(9)(A)-(D), but did not reimpose the prohibition against unreasonable delay found in section 706(1) of the APA. 90 According to EPA Congress suspended this generally applicable prohibition in favor of providing specific deadlines for particular actions required by the Act. Because Congress did not impose any such deadline on the PSD rulemaking before us, EPA would have us infer that it is not subject to any duty of timeliness here. 50 Although superficially quite plausible, upon closer inspection, we find EPA's argument unpersuasive. In accordance with this court's holding in Alabama Power Co. v. Costle, even though the October 1984 rulemaking relates to PSD regulation under Part C, it in fact directly involves whether strip mines should be listed as sources of fugitive emissions for the purposes of the Act's generic definitions of major stationary source and major emitting facility in section 302(j) of the Act. 91 Section 307(d)(1) does not exclude rulemakings under section 302(j) from the coverage of the APA. Furthermore, the generic definitions in section 302(j) apply to both the PSD program (Part C of the Act) and to the nonattainment program (Part D of the Act), 92 as EPA conceded in the October 1984 rulemaking proposals and in its brief before us. 93 Section 307(d)(1) does not exclude Part D rulemakings from coverage of the APA. If the October 1984 rulemaking were exempted from the coverage of the APA merely because it implements the PSD program, therefore, the exemption for Part C rulemakings would affect a rulemaking that also implements the nonattainment program, which would be contrary to the intent of Congress. 51 Although the practical effect of the rulemaking proposal may be limited to that of subjecting strip mines to PSD regulation, the proposal itself directly involves whether they should be listed under section 302(j). Because neither section 302(j) nor Part D, to which it applies, have been excluded from coverage of the APA, we conclude that the APA's duty of reasonable timeliness applies to this rulemaking. Accordingly, we have jurisdiction over Sierra Club's claim, and we must determine whether EPA has unreasonably delayed reaching a final decision on whether to list strip mines.