Opinion ID: 714803
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Statutory Argument

Text: 15 The issue of standing in the case at hand is, in the first instance, one of statutory construction. The question is whether the term chief law enforcement officer used in § 922(s)(2) of the Act includes state as well as local officers. If so, the government points out, Sheriff Frank's assumption of the CLEO duties in Orange County was voluntary because the Vermont State Police had said it would discharge the duties in any jurisdictions in which local law enforcement agencies did not want to act. If the government is correct and Sheriff Frank's injury is self-inflicted, he lacks standing for Article III purposes. See Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 70, 106 S.Ct. 1697, 1707-08, 90 L.Ed.2d 48 (1986) (assessment for attorney's fees resulted from litigant's intervention and could not fairly be traced to statute whose constitutionality was at issue); Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 41, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1925-26, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976) (injury at the hands of a non-party is insufficient); Petro-Chem Processing, Inc. v. EPA, 866 F.2d 433, 438 (D.C.Cir.) (potential liability incurred voluntarily cannot fairly be traced to challenged conduct of defendant), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1106, 109 S.Ct. 3157, 104 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1989). 16 Plaintiff insists the Act does not permit state officials to be CLEOs. Had Congress meant CLEO to include only local law enforcement officials, then the state safety commissioner's offer to perform the background checks would have had no effect on Sheriff Frank's duties as the CLEO of Orange County and plaintiff's statutory argument would carry the day. We are unable to adopt plaintiff's restrictive understanding of CLEO. 17 To begin, by defining CLEO as the chief of police, the sheriff, or an equivalent officer or the designee of any such individual, 18 U.S.C. § 922(s)(8), Congress did not expressly exclude state officials from performing background checks. Although, as plaintiff points out, Congress knew how to say State when it wanted to, see, e.g., § 922(t)(6) (limiting liability for employees of the Federal Government or of any State or local government), it also knew how to say local when that is what it meant, see id., and it said neither in the definition of CLEO. Instead, it used the more adjustable term equivalent officer. 18 Further, the structure of the Brady Act does not support an interpretation of CLEO restricted to local officers. A broader construction of the term is consistent with the flexible background check responsibility: CLEOs are required only to make a reasonable effort to ascertain the legality of a proposed transfer. § 922(s)(2). To make the waiting period and background check effective as an interim measure, the words or equivalent officer were used by Congress to reflect the reality that background checks can be performed best in different locales by different agencies. The legislature explicitly recognized the vast differences between different local areas by exempting altogether certain sparsely-populated areas from the requirement, see § 922(s)(1)(F); it also accomplished this by using the inclusive term equivalent officer within the definition of CLEO. Hence, the Vermont State Police, whose powers over criminal matters are identical to sheriffs' under Vermont law, see Vt.Stat.Ann. tit. 20, § 1914 (1987), fall within the definition of CLEO. 19 Moreover, to the extent the statute is ambiguous, we defer to the Bureau's reasonable interpretation of the term because it is the agency charged with administering the Gun Control Act and the Brady Act. See Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 843, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-82, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1983) (where statute silent or ambiguous, the question is whether the agency's resolution is based on permissible construction of the statute). Plaintiff asserts that deference is not warranted because equivalent officer was not included in the definition of CLEO to resolve conflicting policies. See Chevron, 467 U.S. at 844, 104 S.Ct. at 2782-83. Although policy questions are quite clearly implicated, we believe the essential question is not whether there are conflicting policies, but whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. Id. at 842, 104 S.Ct. at 2781. 20 It has not so spoken. Neither the Act's text nor its legislative history contains a definition of equivalent officer, and the Bureau's Open Letter and its compilation of the CLEOs in various jurisdictions, see, e.g., 59 Fed.Reg. 37,532 (1994), make plain that it views CLEO as including state officials. Given the language and purpose of the Act, the Bureau's construction is certainly a permissible one. Consequently, plaintiff's standing may not rest on the scope of the term CLEO.