Opinion ID: 359862
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Ex Parte Contacts and Judicial Review

Text: 59 Ex parte contacts, in addition to being inconsistent with the  hearing required by the Shipping Act, also foreclose effective judicial review of the agency's final decision according to the arbitrary and capricious standard of the Administrative Procedure Act. Under this standard the reviewing court must test the actions of the FMC for arbitrariness or inconsistency with delegated authority against the full administrative record that was before the (agency official) at the time he made his decision. Overton Park, supra,401 U.S. at 420, 91 S.Ct. at 825. But as we recognized in Home Box Office, Inc. v. FCC, supra: 60 (H)ere agency secrecy stands between us and fulfillment of our obligation. As a practical matter, Overton Park's mandate means that the public record must reflect what representations were made to an agency so that relevant information supporting or refuting those representations may be brought to the attention of the reviewing courts by persons participating in agency proceedings. This course is obviously foreclosed if communications are made to the agency in secret and the agency itself does not disclose the information presented.    61 185 U.S.App.D.C. at 187, 567 F.2d at 54. 62 The agency's secrecy as to Ex parte communications is particularly troublesome in this case. For what we do know about the course of the agency's decisionmaking suggests that these communications were vital to the agency decision. This necessarily calls into question whether the justifications put forth by the agency in its decision were in fact its motivating force. As we noted in Home Box Office: 63 (W)here, as here, an agency justifies its actions by reference only to information in the public file while failing to disclose the substance of other relevant information that has been presented to it, a reviewing court cannot presume that the agency has acted properly, Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, supra, 401 U.S. at 415, 419-420 (91 S.Ct. 814); See K. Davis, Administrative Law of the Seventies § 11.00 at 317 (1976), but must treat the agency's justifications as a fictional account of the actual decisionmaking process and must perforce find its actions arbitrary. See Rupert v. Washington, 366 F.Supp. 686, 690 (D.D.C.1973), Aff'd by order, (177 U.S.App.D.C. 270, 543 F.2d 417) D.C. Cir. No. 73-1985 (Oct. 26, 1976). 64 185 U.S.App.D.C. at 187-188, 567 F.2d at 54-55. 65 To be sure, while we do not know the precise content of the agency communications or what was revealed of them to the Commission by its staff, we have some idea of the substance of the communications from the memorandum excerpted in the joint appendix. This memorandum, however, hardly provides a substitute sufficient to allow for the searching and careful judicial inquiry required by Overton Park. Moreover, even if the detailed contents of the Ex parte contacts were revealed by the agency on judicial review, we would still be deprived of the benefit of an adversarial discussion among the parties. Our cases, discussed earlier with respect to blind references, make clear the critical role of adversarial comment in ensuring proper functioning of agency decisionmaking and effective judicial review. Such comment serves not only to clarify the issues and positions being considered at the agency level, but also to ensure that factual questions underlying the agency's decision are not raised, by necessity, for the first time on judicial review. And adversarial comment is particularly critical where, as here, Ex parte communications are made by a party interested in securing the Commission approval necessary for the legality of its contracts; clearly, the potential for bias in Euro-Pacific's presentation is as great as that posed in rulemaking proceedings which resolve conflicting private claims to a valuable privilege, Sangamon Valley Television Corp. v. United States, supra, 106 U.S.App.D.C. at 33, 269 F.2d at 224, and is indeed greater than in those cases where we have reversed agencies for failure to disclose internal studies. See Home Box Office, Inc. v. FCC, supra, 185 U.S.App.D.C. at 188, 567 F.2d at 55.