Court Opinion

ID: 9468877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:25:47.43035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:05.659677
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The Government in the Sunshine Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552b (1976) (“Sunshine Act”), was enacted to provide the public with “the fullest practicable information regarding the decisionmaking processes of the Federal Government . . . while protecting the rights of individuals and the ability of Government to carry out its responsibilities.” Pub. L.No.94-409, § 2, 90 Stat. 1241 (1976). To fulfill this design, every meeting of an agency covered by the Sunshine Act must be open to the public except when a majority of the agency’s members determines that its meeting or any part of its meeting is likely to reveal matters which Congress had determined ought not be disclosed prematurely, such as national security, internal personnel practices, or pending litigation.1
*246Agencies subject to the Sunshine Act are those
headed by a collegial body composed of two or more individual members, a majority of whom are appointed to such position by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
5 U.S.C. § 552b(a)(1). A generic definition of agency was used in the law instead of a specific list of agencies so that qualifying subsequently-constituted agencies would automatically be covered by the Act. See Government in the Sunshine Act — S.5 (Public Law 94-409), Source Book: Legislative History, Texts, and Other Documents, Comm, on Gov’t Operations, United States Senate, and Comm, on Gov’t Operations, U. S. House of Representatives, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (December 1976) [hereinafter Source Book]. Neither advisory committees, id at 210, nor collegial bodies of a subordinate nature, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, on S. 260, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 245 (1975), were meant to be included in the Act. Otherwise, the definition was intended to be a broad one.2
The question in this case is whether the members of the Board constituted by the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1861 et seq. (Supp. III 1979) (“Chrysler Act”), were appointed “to such position by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.” The Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Board (“Chrysler Board” or “Board”) is statutorily composed of the Secretary of the Treasury, who serves as Chairman of the Board, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Comptroller General of the United States — officials who are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. In addition, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Transportation, also appointed and confirmed officials, are designated ex officio nonvoting members of the Board.
The majority finds the statutory language “clear” and so, relying primarily upon the “plain meaning doctrine,” holds that the Sunshine Act is inapplicable to the Chrysler Board. That reading of the statute is, I believe, overly simplistic and, in the context of the facts here, unjustified. While the language of the Sunshine Act might seem clear on first reading, it carries with it a substantial ambiguity when applied in this case. Simply put, it seems to me that when appointed and confirmed officials are statutorily required to serve as a majority of members on a high-level, deci-sionmaking, collegial body, the definition of “agency” under the Sunshine Act is satisfied.
The Chrysler Act requires the Secretary of the Treasury and other appointed and confirmed officials to serve on the Board. Having been appointed and confirmed to *247one of the offices enumerated in the Act, each of those individuals must serve on the Chrysler Board. An appointment to head the Treasury Department is also an appointment to chair the Chrysler Board. When Donald Regan was appointed and confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, he was simultaneously appointed and confirmed as Chairman of the Chrysler Board. Hearings on his appointment naturally included questions about the Chrysler “bailout.” See e.g., Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Finance on the Nomination of Donald T. Regan To Be Secretary of the Treasury, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., 12-13 (January 6, 1981). If, for example, Secretary Regan were replaced as Secretary of the Treasury by the President, he could not continue to serve as Chairman of the Chrysler Board. His replacement as Secretary of the Treasury would be required to serve as Chairman of the Chrysler Board. The President could not replace Secretary Regan with someone to serve as Secretary of the Treasury and someone else to serve as Chairman of the Chrysler Board, for the latter position is a necessary part of the duties of the former position. This reading of the statute is not undercut by the fact that the first Chairman of the Chrysler Board was already serving as Secretary of the Treasury at the time the Chrysler Act was passed. Clearly it is contemplated that, during the tenure of an appointed and confirmed official, that official might be required to discharge duties assigned by subsequently enacted legislation. Cf. Shoemaker v. United States, 147 U.S. 282, 13 S.Ct. 361, 37 L.Ed. 170 (1893) (Congress may increase the powers and duties of an appointed and confirmed officer without rendering it necessary that the officer be again appointed and confirmed). Thus, the members of the Chrysler Board, by virtue of their appointment and confirmation to the positions enumerated in the Chrysler Act, are appointed and confirmed to that Board and so meet the requirement of the Sunshine Act set by the words “to such position.”
The only legislative history available to suggest any other interpretation is testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by Representative Bella Abzug, who chaired the House Government Operations Committee which reported out the House version of the Sunshine Act. In response to Representative Kindness’ question about whether the National Security Council was to be covered by the bill, Representative Abzug answered:
No; I don’t think they are because they’re not appointed to that position by the President.
You see, I think that the answer to that is that they are appointed to other positions and that they are ex officio members and that the NSC is not a subsidiary of a covered agency. And I’m looking at section 552b(b) which gives us the definition — I don’t know if you have the act in front of you, I mean, the bill— but in any case the term “agency” means “headed by a collegial body composed of two or more individual members, a majority of whom are appointed to such position by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
I think the definition itself is clear, I mean, I had to stop and think for a minute. I think the definition gives you an answer for almost any agency that you have. I don’t think there’s any problem with the generic definition.3
*248The majority acknowledges that the remarks of a single legislator are not controlling in analyzing legislative intent. Nevertheless, it embraces the remarks of Representative Abzüg for the support those remarks provide. I cannot, however, accord the remarks any significant weight. Nowhere else in the legislative history is there any indication of Congressional intent to exclude from the purview of the Sunshine Act high-level, policymaking bodies, composed of statutorily designated appointed and confirmed officers. Further, nowhere in the legislative history can there be found any reason for distinguishing bodies whose appointed and confirmed members were statutorily designated from those whose members are appointed and confirmed separately for the collegial body on which they serve. Although courts, in construing Congressional intent, ought not attempt to probe the motives behind statements made by legislators, they should not be blind to confusion or error in such statements. In this case, Representative Abzug was obviously casting about for a quick answer to soothe the apprehensions of a colleague concerned that the sensitive discussions of the National Security Council would be exposed to public view by the Sunshine Act. Representative Abzug could have answered simply that the National Security Council was not subject to the Sunshine Act because it is an advisory body. Instead, she took a position with which neither proponents nor opponents of the Act had any need to take issue at the time (although, as appears from the exchange, Representative Kindness was not altogether persuaded by the position). The testimony consequently offers little insight into Congressional intent. Without any reliable legislative history to inform our choice between two reasonable constructions of the statutory language, we must look to the spirit and goal of the two Acts for guidance.
The majority admits that its position “may . . . run counter to the spirit of the [Sunshine] Act.” At 245. It undoubtedly does. As noted above, the Act was designed to encompass all multi-member, high-level, policymaking bodies, a majority of whose members were appointed and confirmed to the body. The history of the Chrysler Board legislation strongly suggests that it is precisely the kind of agency that Congress meant to subject to the Act. See, e.g., 125 Cong.Rec. H10621 (daily ed. Nov. 13, 1979) (remarks of Rep. Hinson, Rep. Bethune and Rep. Shumway); see also S.Rep.No.96-463, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. 17 (1979). Surely the public, whose funds are being expended to save the Chrysler Corporation from bankruptcy is entitled to the “fullest practicable information” regarding its investment.4 While section 14 of the Chrysler Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1873, requiring regular reports to Congress, provides a limited mandate for disclosure, compliance with the Sunshine Act’s requirement of open meetings accomplishes a far broader remedial purpose of keeping the public informed. And the exemption provided by section 3(c)(9)(A) of the Sunshine Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c)(9)(A), for partial closings when premature disclosure would upset the *249securities markets, alleviates any fear that sunshine will fall on areas that require cover to insure the public interest. Note that the Federal Reserve Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission, agencies that deal regularly with sensitive financial matters, are included within the Sunshine Act. See Source Book at 211.
In sum, I find that neither the plain language, the legislative history, nor the spirit of the Act command the decision of the majority. I would affirm the district court, and therefore I dissent.

. 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c)(1)-(10) provides that
Except in a case where the agency finds that the public interest requires otherwise, the second sentence of subsection (b) shall not apply to any portion of an agency meeting, and the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) shall not apply to any information pertaining to such meeting otherwise required by this section to be disclosed to the public, where the agency properly determines that such portion or portions of its meeting or the disclosure of such information is likely to—
“(1) disclose matters that are (A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interests of national defense or foreign policy and (B) in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
“(2) relate solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency;
“(3) disclose matters specifically exempted from disclosure by statute (other than section 552 of this title), provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld;
“(4) disclose trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential;
“(5) involve accusing any person of a crime, or formally censuring any person;
“(6) disclose information of a personal nature where disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;
“(7) disclose investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes, or information which if written would be contained in such records, but only to the extent that the production of such records or information would (A) interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation, confidential information furnished only by the confidential source, (E) disclose investigative techniques and procedures, or (F) endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel;
“(8) disclose information contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions;
“(9) disclose information the premature disclosure of which would—
*246“(A) in the case of an agency which regulates currencies, securities, commodities, or financial institutions, be likely to (i) lead to significant financial speculation in currencies, securities, or commodities, or (ii) significantly endanger the stability of any financial institution; or
"(B) in the case of any agency, be likely to significantly frustrate implementation of a proposed agency action, except that subparagraph (B) shall not apply in any instance where the agency has already disclosed to the public the content or nature of its proposed action, or where the agency is required by law to make such disclosure on its own initiative prior to taking final agency action on such proposal; or
“(10) specifically concern the agency’s issuance of a subpena, or the agency’s participation in a civil action or proceeding, an action in a foreign court or international tribunal, or an arbitration, or the initiation, conduct, or disposition by the agency of a particular case of formal agency adjudication pursuant to the procedures in section 554 of this title or otherwise involving a determination on the record after opportunity for a hearing.

. See Source Book at 212:
While many of those [agencies] covered are regulatory, others have more general policy-making roles. The decisions of one may involve no less important policy questions than the decisions of the other. Opening one type of meeting to the public is as important as opening another type. The notion of including some multiheaded agencies . . . and excluding others would do violence to the fundamental purpose of the legislation, which is open Government to the people wherever and whenever possible.

. The colloquy continued:
Mr. KINDNESS: In that specific case, the reasoning there would be that the people who serve on that Council, the National Security Council, are appointed by the President—
Ms. ABZUG: They serve their — they are appointed to another office. And they serve here as ex officio.
Mr. KINDNESS: And not appointed to such positions?
Ms. ABZUG: That’s correct.
Mr. KINDNESS: I submit there may be some room for questions there. But the Domestic Council and the Council on Environmental Quality fall in about the same category, I think, then.
Ms. ABZUG: We would simply take the definition of “appointment” and see how they’re appointed.
Hearings on H.R. 11656 Before the House Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Govern*248ment Relations of the Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 16 (1976).

. Congressional concern for the risk the American taxpayer was being asked to take was evidenced throughout the floor debates. See, e.g., 125 Cong.Rec. H12204 (daily ed. Dec. 18, 1979) (remarks of Rep. Stanton) (“In petty arguments about whether or not it is the Secretary of Transportation or the Secretary of Labor, we can stand up here all night and give arguments that it should be the Secretary of Commerce, that it is his business, that this affects small business or something, and that the Secretary of Commerce should be there as well as the Secretary of Labor. We can keep this up all night. For those who are so anxious to get home for Christmas and to get this subject out of the way, truthfully, I hope that they could give control to someone who would be a meaningful participant and do the best for my taxpayers and the gentleman’s taxpayers to protect their money.”); id., S. 19165 (remarks of Senator Bellmon) (“I urge Members to be very careful and not jump into something where we think we are doing a company a service when, in fact, we are doing an enormous disservice to the American taxpayer.”); id., at S. 19201 (remarks of Senator Gravel) (“Another of my concerns with this bill is the risk the Congress proposes to take with taxpayers’ dollars.”).