Opinion ID: 2569468
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Government interest and justification for the delay

Text: The third factor clearly favors Brandal. Although he does not give a detailed account of the procedure that he would substitute for the present method of adjudicating applications, he does state that he would have experienced much less hardship [h]ad CFEC promptly adjudicated and rejected his application. If the additional or substitute procedural requirement [40] suggested by Brandal is simply that the CFEC process applications promptly, the government has virtually no interest in avoiding this requirement. Although we recognize that the fiscal and administrative burdens [41] of adjudicating cases may affect the promptness of decisions, no conceivable burden could justify sitting on a simple permit application for over two decades. CFEC's justification ... for [the] delay and its relation to the underlying government interest [42] is profoundly unpersuasive. The CFEC's claim that [t]he time when Brandal's complete application record came before the Commission coincided with a time when the Commission was unable to devote sufficient time to its review might excuse a delay of weeks or months, but not of decades. As the D.C. Circuit observed in the context of a far more complex administrative proceeding, nine years should be enough time for any agency to decide almost any issue. [43] A permit application should take a fraction of that time. The traditional remedy for such a delay, however, has generally been a court order compelling the agency to reach a decision. [44] At no point during the twenty-two years after 1982 did Brandal seek an order compelling the CFEC to reach a decision.