Opinion ID: 446761
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Federally Assisted Airports

Text: 63 The Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970, 49 U.S.C. Sec. 1714, as amended, authorized the Secretary of Transportation to make grants for airport development in order to bring about, in conformity with the national airport system plan, the establishment of a nationwide system of public airports adequate to meet the present and future needs of civil aeronautics.... 125 To this end Congress established the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, monies from which are used to construct, acquire, lease and improve facilities and equipment used in civil aviation, currently in the amount of several billion dollars annually. 126 Grants received by airports are not earmarked but are obtained through the use of a single project application to cover all airport improvement projects contained in the airport's annual expenditure program. 127 Typical capital projects undertaken with the substantial federal financial assistance so obtained have been airport land acquisition, runway construction, passenger terminals, airport lighting, airport access and service roads, electronic and visual approach aids, taxiway construction, obstruction removal, and fire/rescue equipment and buildings. 128 It is undisputed that this extensive federal financial assistance to airports subjects them to the nondiscrimination mandate of the federal civil rights laws, including section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. 129 64 The critical question then becomes whether, as respondents contend, the scope of section 504 extends to the threshold of the planes themselves, but not beyond. 130 Such a result is required, respondents argue, by virtue of longstanding administrative interpretation, Supreme Court precedent, and a case in our own district court which has squarely held that the indirect assistance provided airlines using federally-funded airports did not trigger the coverage of section 504. 131 We consider, and reject, each of these arguments in turn. 65 First, the longstanding and, until this proceeding, consistent interpretation of federal civil rights statutes has supported the position not of respondents but of PVA. For example, in applying its Title VI regulations to federally assisted airports, the Department of Transportation explicitly included 66 restaurants, snack bars, gift shops, ticket counters, baggage handlers, car rental agencies, limousines and taxis franchised by the airport sponsor, insurance underwriters, and other businesses catering to the public at the airport. 132 67 If these businesses are construed as receiving federal financial assistance by virtue of federal aid to airports, it is nonsensical to exclude the air carriers themselves, which surely are businesses catering to the public at the airport. Indeed, in its own section 504 rulemaking, DOT explained that its regulations apply, inter alia, to ticket counters, boarding devices, baggage check-in and retrieval, and teletypewriters, all of which are owned and operated by the airlines at most airports. 133 DOT's decision in 1979 not to extend its own rules to air carriers' in-flight activities obviously was a result of the CAB's assertion of such authority at that time, and of DOT's commendable effort to avoid redundant, overlapping regulations: 68 Following publication of [DOT's] NPRM, representatives of the DOT, FAA, HEW and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) met to discuss the respective legal authority and responsibilities for improving the accessibility of air travel to handicapped persons. Following this meeting, the CAB determined that it had statutory authority to issue regulations governing air transportation of handicapped persons.... Action by the CAB ... would ensure the uniform provision of services and equipment by the airlines, needed to accomplish accessibility to air travel for handicapped persons.... 134 69 Of course, the CAB's initial interpretation of its rulemaking authority under section 504 was consistent with this expectation. Its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking assumed that all certificated carriers would be covered, and invited comment specifically only as to whether small commuter carriers with planes of fewer than thirty seats should be exempted. 135 This initial position of the CAB was in fact consistent with its own longstanding administrative interpretation of its Title VI regulations as covering programs including--but not limited to--those receiving direct money subsidies, and as applying not only to money paid but to other federal financial assistance extended. 136 The Board's sudden reversal in this regard was contrary not only to the interpretation of other agencies in this context, but to its own. 70 A more substantial argument advanced by respondents is based upon two recent Supreme Court cases, one of which was sub judice at the time the instant petition for review was heard. In North Haven Board of Education v. Bell, 456 U.S. 512, 102 S.Ct. 1912, 72 L.Ed.2d 299 (1982), the Court concluded that an agency's authority under Title IX both to promulgate regulations and to terminate funds is subject to the program-specific limitation of Secs. 901 and 902. 137 Thus, respondents argue, [w]hile an airline may utilize a federally-funded program, i.e., airport operations, it is not a federally funded program itself by virtue of the airport's receipt of aid. 138 North Haven 's emphasis upon program specificity was, as we have noted, reaffirmed by the Court's more recent decision in Grove City College v. Bell. 139 But it is also true that in its North Haven opinion the Court expressly did not undertake to define 'program'  140 and that in Grove City the plurality emphasized not only that the student financial aid at issue was sui generis but that the intent of Congress in passing Title IX was central to its analysis. 141 In considering what we believe must also be termed the sui generis nature of commercial air transportation, as well as the intent of Congress in passing the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, combined with the postenactment administrative and legislative construction of section 504, we find that the regulations promulgated in this case must be applied to all air carriers using federally-funded airports in their program or activity of providing commercial air transportation. 71 Airports and airlines are inextricably intertwined. 142 The indissoluble nexus between them is the provision of commercial air transportation. Although airports may lease space to gift shops and airlines may publish inflight magazines or own a chain of resort hotels, when it comes to the program or activity of providing air transportation to the traveling public, the two entities are so functionally integrated that they become one. While it may be the case, as respondents urge, that the airline as a corporate entity does not become a federally-assisted program by virtue of its use of federally-assisted airports, its program or activity of providing commercial air transportation certainly does. Thus, section 504 may or may not reach the practices of a hotel owned and operated by an airline company; but it certainly must reach, in our view, the treatment afforded a passenger who boards that company's aircraft at, deplanes to, and reaches his destination safely and efficiently only because of, a federally-funded airport. Just as the plurality in Grove City distinguished the college's financial aid program from other programs within the institution, an airline's commercial aviation program, its activity in actually carrying passengers from one place to another, may be distinguished from its other programs or activities. 72 Respondents attempt to avoid this holding, finally, by pointing to a case in our district court which squarely held 143 that to hold that commercial airlines fall within section 504 merely because of assistance provided to airports would expand improperly the accepted proposition that section 504 is limited to direct recipients of Federal funds. 144 The Board quoted in full and explicitly relied upon this language from Angel v. Pan American World Airways, Inc. 145 We reject it on at least three grounds, and declare Angel squarely overruled. 73 First, even if airlines on a company-wide basis are not covered by section 504, we believe their programs and activities providing commercial air transportation are, as noted above. Second, Grove City directly undermines any notion that coverage of federal antidiscrimination statutes is in any way--much less as an accepted proposition--limited to direct recipients of Federal funds. As the Court held unambiguously in Grove City: 74 Nothing ... suggests that Congress elevated form over substance by making the application of the nondiscrimination principle dependent on the manner in which a program or activity receives federal assistance. There is no basis in the statute for the view that only institutions that themselves apply for federal aid or receive checks directly from the federal government are subject to regulation. 146 75 Third, Angel depends for its holding upon an unjustifiably broad reading of Gottfried v. FCC, a case which, as we have discussed in some detail, is license-specific in its holding and rationale, and which in the consideration of federal financial assistance to airports and air transportation is thoroughly inapposite. 147 76