Opinion ID: 660991
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Medina's Authority

Text: 32 Congress has authorized the Attorney General of the United States (USAG) to empower DEA employees and state and local police officers to carry out certain types of law enforcement functions, including making arrests and carrying firearms. See 21 U.S.C. Sec. 878. Pursuant to this power, the USAG has delegated to the DEA Administrator his power to enlist the assistance of state and local police. See 28 C.F.R. Sec. 0.100(b). Furthermore, the DEA Administrator may redelegate his deputation power to his subordinates. See id. Sec. 0.104. 33 Here the appellants assert that Medina had not been delegated this authority from the DEA Administrator, John Lawn. The United States presented evidence in the form of affidavits, an internal DEA memorandum, and testimony to support its position that Lawn had given Medina this deputation authority. The memorandum, 13 which was dated October 3, 1989, provided: 34 [a]dditionally, emergency verbal approvals for deputization can now be granted by the Chief, DEA Task Force Section, thereby bypassing, for timesaving reasons, the heretofore additional step of approval from the Administrative Director of ODCETF at the Department of Justice. 35 J.A. 307. The district court found beyond any doubt whatsoever that the delegation from Lawn to Medina, who was the Chief, DEA Task Force Section, had taken place. J.A. 376. The appellants continue to assert though that this memorandum was insufficient to constitute delegation because it had not appeared in the Federal Register and came from a subordinate of the Administrator (Westrate), not the Administrator himself. Congress, through the Administrative Procedure Act generally requires that an agency publish certain information in the Federal Register, including a description of its organization, its methods, its rules of procedure, and its substantive rules. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)(1). Courts have interpreted this section to require publication of matters which if not published would adversely affect a member of the public. Hogg v. United States, 428 F.2d 274, 280 (6th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 910 (1971) (citing legislative history); see also United States v. Fitch Oil Co., 676 F.2d 673 (Temp. Emer. Ct.App.1982); United States v. Goodman, 605 F.2d 870, 887-88 (5th Cir.1979). In both Hogg and Fitch Oil, the courts addressed whether the failure to publish internal delegations of authority adversely affected a member of the public; in both instances they held that it did not. We are in agreement with these precedents and therefore hold that DEA's failure to timely publish this delegation in the Federal Register did not have an adverse impact upon the appellants. 36 Likewise, we find without merit the appellants' suggestion that the delegation was improper because it came from a memorandum written by Westrate instead of the Administrator himself since the memorandum was obviously announcing a policy that the DEA Administrator knew of and had approved. Therefore, we find no error in the district court's determination that the DEA Administrator had delegated his authority to deputize local police officers to Medina.