Court Opinion

ID: 9427026
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:29.675915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.564001
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Blacicmun join,
dissenting.
Section 307 (b)(1) of the Clean Air Act provides that a “petition for review of action of the Administrator in promulgating . . . any emission standard under section 112” may be filed only in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit within 30 days of promulgation. Section 307 (b)(2) of the Act provides that an “:[a]ction of the Administrator with respect to which review could have been obtained under paragraph (1) shall not be subject to judicial review in civil or criminal proceedings for enforcement.” Despite these unambiguous provisions, the Court holds in this case that such an action of the Administrator shall be subject to judicial review in a criminal proceeding for enforcement of the Act, at least sometimes. Because this tampering with the plain statutory language threatens to destroy the effectiveness of the unified and expedited judicial review procedure established by Congress in the Clean Air Act, I respectfully dissent.
The inquiry that the Court today allows a trial court to make — whether the asbestos regulation at issue is an emission standard of the type envisioned by Congress — is nothing more than an inquiry into whether the Administrator has acted beyond his statutory authority. But such an inquiry is a normal part of judicial review of agency action. 5 U. S. C. § 706 (2) (C); see Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, *292401 U. S. 402, 415. And it is precisely such “judicial review” of an “[a]ction of the Administrator” that Congress has, in § 307 (b)(2), expressly forbidden a trial court to undertake. There is not the slightest indication in the Act or in its legislative history that Congress, in providing for review of the Administrator’s actions only in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, meant nonetheless to allow some kinds of review to be available in other courts. To the contrary, Congress clearly ordained that “any review of such actions” be controlled by the provisions of § 307. S. Rep. No. 91-1196, p. 41 (1970) (emphasis supplied).
The Court’s interpretation of §307 (b)(2) also conspicuously frustrates the intent of Congress to establish a speedy and unified system of judicial review under the Act. The Court concludes that violation of the regulation involved in this case is not proscribed by §§ 112 (c) (1) (B) and 113 (c) (1) (C) because the regulation is not an emission standard. This interpretation of the Act would make judicial review of this regulation in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit impossible, since that court has statutory jurisdiction under § 307 (b)(1) to review “emission standard [s] ” but is not given jurisdiction to review the actions of the Administrator generally. It follows that judicial review of this action of the Administrator could be had only in other courts, either in enforcement proceedings as in this case or under the general provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 701 et seq., despite the clearly expressed congressional intent to centralize all judicial review of the Administrator’s regulations. The Court’s interpretation thus not only invites precisely the sort of inconsistent judicial determinations by various courts that Congress sought to prevent, but flies in the face of the congressional purpose “to maintain the integrity of the time sequences provided throughout the Act.” S. Rep. No. 91-1196, supra, at 41.
Finally, the Court provides no real guidance as to which *293aspects of an emission standard áre so critical that they fall outside the scope of the exclusive judicial review procedure provided by Congress. For example, § 112 requires that an emission standard relate to a “hazardous air pollutant,” and that it be set so as to provide “an ample margin of safety to protect the public health.” Such express congressional mandates would seem at least as important in determining whether a regulation is a statutorily authorized emission standard as the supposed requirement that the regulation be numerical in form. Are issues such as these, therefore, now to be subject to review in trial court enforcement proceedings? The Court today has allowed the camel's nose into the tent, and I fear that the rest of the camel is almost certain to follow.
Since I believe that the Administrator’s action in promulgating this regulation could have been reviewed in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit under § 307 (b)(1), and that such review could have included the petitioner’s claim that the Administrator’s action was beyond his authority under the Act, I would hold that the petitioner was barred by the express language of § 307 (b)(2) from raising that issue in the present case.*

Because the petitioner has not raised any constitutional challenge in this case, there is no occasion to consider what limits,, if any, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment imposes on the power of Congress to qualify or foreclose judicial review of agency action.