Opinion ID: 3009075
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Discretion in the EVP’s Authorizing Statute

Text: In order to assess whether the court has a “meaningful standard against which to judge the agency’s exercise of discretion[] . . . we first look at the statute itself.” Helgeson, 153 F.3d at 1003 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The authorizing statute vests the State Department with discretion to create and fund exchange programs to the extent that the Department “considers that [they] would strengthen international cooperative relations.” 22 U.S.C. § 2452(a). The decision whether to establish a particular exchange program lies purely within the Department’s discretion and is a policy question as to which there is no law for us to review. See id. §§ 2451, 2452(a). If all we were asked to review was the decision to create the EVP, there would be “no law to apply,” Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592, 599 (1988) (internal quotations omitted), because we would have “no meaningful standard against which to judge the agency’s exercise of discretion,” Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 830 (1985). But ASSE has not asked us to review the decision to create the EVP. Rather, it has asked us to measure the State Department’s administration of the EVP against the Department’s own regulations. This we can do without 14 ASSE INT’L V. KERRY infringing any of the State Department’s prerogatives under the statute. “Even where statutory language grants an agency ‘unfettered discretion,’ its decision may nonetheless be reviewed if regulations or agency practice provide a ‘meaningful standard by which this court may review its exercise of discretion.’” Spencer Enters., Inc. v. United States, 345 F.3d 683, 688 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Socop–Gonzalez v. INS, 208 F.3d 838, 844 (9th Cir. 2000)). Accordingly, we “will find jurisdiction to review allegations that an agency has abused its discretion by exceeding its legal authority or by failing to comply with its own regulations.” Abdelhamid v. Ilchert, 774 F.2d 1447, 1450 (9th Cir. 1985) (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court offered a second reason why we cannot review the State Department’s actions: because “the issues involved here squarely implicate foreign relations.” Quoting the Third Circuit, the State Department argues that all “cases involving the [EVP] necessarily implicate foreign policy concerns and involve an agency exercising its discretionary powers in that respect.” Chong v. Dir., U.S. Info. Agency, 821 F.2d 171, 177 (3d Cir. 1987). The Department thus claims that we are treading in “an area of executive action in which the courts have long been hesitant to intrude,” and that judicial review will undermine the foreign policy goals of the statute. Helgeson, 153 F.3d at 1003 (internal quotation marks omitted). But a weak connection to foreign policy is not enough to commit an agency action to the agency’s discretion. See Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 211 (1962) (“[I]t is error to suppose that every case or controversy which touches foreign relations lies beyond judicial cognizance.”); see also, e.g., Singh v. Clinton, 618 F.3d 1085, 1092 (9th Cir. 2010) ASSE INT’L V. KERRY 15 (reversing State Department’s decision to terminate immigrant’s visa registration). The Department’s reliance on Chong is misguided and the quotation taken out of context. Dr. Chong came to the United States to participate in an EVP for graduate medical training. Chong, 821 F.2d at 173. At the end of his program, Dr. Chong was expected to return to Hong Kong, but Dr. Chong feared that he would not be permitted to practice medicine there and requested a § 212(e) hardship waiver, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(e), so that he and his family could remain in the United States. Id. at 174. The State Department denied his request and Chong filed suit. The government, as it has in this case, claimed that the federal courts could not review the waiver denial under the APA because there was “no law to apply.” Id. at 175. The Third Circuit rejected the government’s position, finding that the State Department had “adopted regulations which delineate the procedure it must use to review waiver requests.” 821 F.2d at 176. The court recognized that its “scope of review of the [State Department’s] recommendation function under section 1182(e) is severely limited because the statute and the [Department’s] regulations vest rather broad discretion in the Director of the USIA,” and reviewed the Department’s decision for an abuse of discretion. Id. at 176–77. In the course of its opinion, the Third Circuit commented that “cases involving the Exchange Visitor Program necessarily implicate foreign policy concerns and involve an agency exercising its discretionary powers . . . .” Id. at 177. But that statement was an explanation for why the court would not demand “a more particularized explanation” from the State Department, not a justification for why it could not review the State Department’s decision. Id. Moreover, the 16 ASSE INT’L V. KERRY Department’s regulations here are far more detailed than the statute and regulations at issue in Chong, which addressed decisions to grant or deny hardship waivers. Chong does not help the government’s case. In addition, although the Department claims that “serious foreign policy consequences . . . could result from judicial review,” it never explains how judicial review of a sanctions decision against a U.S.-based program sponsor could undermine foreign relations or national security in any way. Cf. Webster, 486 U.S. at 601 (CIA hiring decisions are unreviewable in part because the “Nation’s security depend[s] . . . on the reliability . . . of the Agency’s employees”). As ASSE points out, it is difficult to imagine how Japan would be offended by federal court review of the State Department’s decision to impose sanctions on ASSE. In sum, the statute authorizing the EVP only gives the State Department the absolute discretion to create or not to create exchange programs for foreign students, and that decision is not challenged here. Additionally, we cannot see that in this instance, judicial review would undermine the EVP’s foreign policy goals and purposes. We thus turn to whether the Department’s own regulations erect a standard by which we may judge its actions.