Opinion ID: 483233
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: reasonableness of the decision to delay

Text: 156 The Secretary was acutely aware of the health hazards that nonregulation would inflict on farmworkers--it was the acuteness of that perception that led him to modify his predecessor's decision not to promulgate a standard at all. But it was his right (and perhaps his duty) also to consider the possible benefits of delay, including, as he saw it: solving the practical problems deriving from Congress's ten-and-under restriction by using the threat of federal action to improve the lot of all farmworkers, releasing enforcement resources for use against hazards in other industries, and achieving a system of regulation better adapted to the wide variety of conditions on farms throughout the country. All aspects of the decision--the strong element of speculation involved in deciding the issue, the intangible character of the values at stake, and the necessary judicial ignorance of the severity of the competing hazards on the Secretary's agenda--counsel judicial deference. 157 Citing Congress's expression of intent to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 651(b) (1982), the majority seeks to derive judicially manageable restrictions on the Secretary's authority. See Maj.Op. at 630-32. Specifically, it finds that he lacks any discretion to withhold the immediate promulgation of a federal standard unless the states were predispos[ed] to adopt standards reaching close to 100% of all workers on large farms. See id. 158 But this rule of thumb does not readily flow from the language of the OSH Act. Indeed, Congress also expressed its intent that this goal be implemented by developing innovative ... approaches for dealing with occupational safety and health problems, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 651(b)(5) (1982), and by encouraging the States to assume the fullest responsibility for the administration and enforcement of their occupational safety and health laws ..., id. Sec. 651(b)(11). The Secretary interprets these expressions of intent as permitting him to withhold immediate promulgation of a field sanitation standard to secure the benefits already discussed. I do not find this interpretation outside the realm of reason. 159 The majority's generation of mechanical standards depends on a supple use of the legislative preamble's reference to assuring so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 651(b) (1982). It invokes the language as a basis for requiring a sort of universalism, yet it introduces qualifiers not mentioned by Congress in order to deny the Secretary's discretion to consider the welfare of small-farm workers. Compare the language of Sec. 651(b) with the clear standard of uniform nationwide regulation for all workers within OSHA's jurisdiction, Maj.Op. at 631 (emphasis added). In effect the majority reads the restrictive appropriations riders as manifesting unqualified congressional indifference to the welfare of two-thirds of the nation's farmworkers. 160 There is no need to impute to Congress such a mean-spirited view. The Secretary's position, that he may consider their welfare so long as he does not directly regulate, seems fully compatible with the most likely explanation of the riders: that Congress regarded it as unsuitable for Washington officials to decree small-farm working conditions throughout the country. Yet, despite the teaching of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984), the majority rejects the Secretary's interpretation without even canvassing possible congressional purposes, much less assessing their plausibility. 161 Having set mechanical standards for appraising the minimum acceptable state response, the majority relies on the states' earlier inaction, buttressed by hindsight, to conclude that the Secretary could not reasonably have expected adequate favorable action to occur. Maj.Op. at 631-632. Surely the issue of how a state is likely to respond to a novel experiment of this sort is not the type of judgment the courts are well equipped to make. Moreover, the history of limited state action prior to the Secretary's employment of his threat device is hardly relevant to a prediction of how they will respond to that device. And while hindsight indeed reveals that 12 states have told the Secretary they will not adopt standards, Maj.Op. at 633, these states only account for 9% of all farmworkers, Respondents' Letter to this Court (Nov. 13, 1986). Hindsight also shows that six states have since adopted standards, with others actively engaged in rulemaking as of November 13, 1986. Id. 162 Here the Secretary committed himself to promulgation of a federal regulation if state activity during the period of delay fell short of his standard. I would find the decision to withhold immediate promulgation arbitrary and capricious only if the Secretary had no reason to expect state action of any significance to occur. The record provides no basis for such a conclusion. 163 The benefits that the Secretary sought to achieve by his threat device were ones he was entitled to consider and were on their face substantial. Their intelligent comparison with the benefits of immediate action required the expertise of the Secretary. The majority today impermissibly substitutes its judgment for his. 164 Even if the Secretary's delay were an abuse of discretion, the remedy would surely be to remand to the Secretary with an order to accelerate the proceedings. Instead, the court orders him to promulgate immediately a set of regulations that he viewed as only contingently suitable. Thus the court commits the Secretary's enforcement resources to the nation's farms, at the expense of enforcement against lethal hazards elsewhere, without so much as allowing him an opportunity to review the situation under the majority's view of the law. That is not the role of a reviewing court. SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 94-95, 63 S.Ct. 454, 462, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943).