Court Opinion

ID: 9429004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:26.057277+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:16.757583
License: Public Domain

*513Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins,
dissenting.
In determining that the “public interest” would be served by renewal of the broadcast license of public station KCET-TV, the FCC refused to consider whether the station had violated the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 during its previous license term. The Court today holds that this refusal to consider the Rehabilitation Act did not constitute an abuse of discretion. In concluding that the FCC was free to disregard the Rehabilitation Act, the Court emphasizes that “the Commission’s duties derive from the Communications Act, not from other federal statutes,” ante, at 510, n. 17, and that there is no evidence that Congress intended to vest the Commission with power to enforce the Rehabilitation Act, ante, at 509. Because the Court’s decision is not supported by either precedent or any sound view of the administrative process, I respectfully dissent.
I
This Court s decisions establish that where an agency has a statutory duty, as does the FCC,1 to assess the “public interest” in implementing a particular regulatory scheme, the agency must give at least some consideration to other federal statutes that are pertinent to its administrative decision. Although the open-ended phrase “public interest” “take[s] meaning from the purposes of the regulatory legislation” that defines the particular agency’s responsibilities, NAACP v. FPC, 425 U. S. 662, 669 (1976), the agency may not focus on those purposes to the complete exclusion of the policies reflected in other relevant statutes.
The principle that an agency may not ignore a relevant Act of Congress was clearly set forth by Justice Rutledge in his *514opinion for the Court in McLean Trucking Co. v. United States, 321 U. S. 67 (1944). In McLean Trucking the ICC had approved a proposed consolidation as “ ‘consistent with the public interest.’” Id., at 75-76, quoting 49 U. S. C. § 5(2)(b). While recognizing that the ICC’s duties derived primarily from the Interstate Commerce Act and related legislation specifically regulating commerce, Justice Rutledge rejected any suggestion that the ICC could therefore ignore other relevant statutes in deciding whether a proposed transaction would serve the “public interest”: *515The Court held that the ICC was obligated to take the Sherman Act into account in deciding whether to approve the proposed consolidation, even though Congress had not given the Commission either the power or the duty to enforce the Act.2
*514“To secure the continuous, close and informed supervision which enforcement of legislative mandates frequently requires, Congress has vested expert administrative bodies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission with broad discretion and has charged them with the duty to execute stated and specific statutory policies. That delegation does not necessarily include either the duty or the authority to execute numerous other laws. Thus, here, the Commission has no power to enforce the Sherman Act as such. It cannot decide definitively whether the transaction contemplated constitutes a restraint of trade or an attempt to monopolize which is forbidden by that Act. The Commission’s task is to enforce the Interstate Commerce Act and other legislation which deals specifically with transportation facilities and problems. That legislation constitutes the immediate frame of reference within which the Commission operates; and the policies expressed in it must be the basic determinants of its action.
“But in executing those policies the Commission may be faced with overlapping and at times inconsistent policies embodied in other legislation enacted at different times and with different problems in view. When this is true, it cannot, without more, ignore the latter.” 321 U. S., at 79-80 (emphasis added).
*515Similarly, in Denver & R. G. W. R. Co. v. United States, 387 U. S. 485 (1967), this Court concluded that “the broad terms ‘public interest’ and ‘lawful object’ [in § 20a(2) of the Interstate Commerce Act] negate the existence of a mandate to the ICC to close its eyes to facts indicating that the transaction may exceed limitations imposed by other relevant laws.” Id., at 492. Justice Brennan explained in his opinion for the Court that “[c]ommon sense and sound administrative policy point to the conclusion that such broad statutory standards require at least some degree of consideration of control and anticompetitive consequences when suggested by the circumstances surrounding a particular transaction.” Ibid. Accordingly, the Court held that the ICC was required to consider the anticompetitive effect under § 7 of the Clayton Act of a proposed stock issuance by a carrier even though that Act confers no enforcement power on the ICC.
In Southern S.S. Co. v. NLRB, 316 U. S. 31 (1942), this Court recognized that the National Labor Relations Board must consider federal statutes independent of federal labor law where they are relevant to an issue to be *516decided by the Board. Although the Court acknowledged the breadth of the Board’s discretion, id., at 46, it concluded that the Board had no discretion to disregard pertinent federal laws: “the Board has not been commissioned to effectuate the policies of the National Labor Relations Act so single-mindedly that it may wholly ignore other and equally important Congressional objectives.” Id., at 47. The Court ruled that the Board had abused its discretion in ordering the reinstatement of striking seamen without considering whether the strike had violated either a federal law requiring crew members to promise obedience to their superiors or provisions of the Federal Criminal Code proscribing mutiny and revolt aboard ship.
These decisions establish that, however broad an administrative agency’s discretion in implementing a regulatory scheme may be, the agency may not ignore a relevant Act of Congress. The agency need not conclusively determine what the statute in question requires or forbids. See McLean Trucking Co. v. United States, supra, at 79 (ICC “cannot decide definitively whether the transaction contemplated constitutes a restraint of trade or an attempt to monopolize”). If the agency, after considering the relevant statute, concludes that it should not prevent achievement of the objectives embodied in the regulatory scheme that the agency is specifically empowered to implement, and states reasons for this conclusion, the agency’s determination will not lightly be overturned. But the agency cannot simply “close its eyes” to the existence of the statute. Denver & R. G. W. R. Co. v. United States, supra, at 492.
There are good reasons for this Court’s insistence that administrative agencies consider relevant statutes. The objectives of Congress would be ill served if each administrative agency were permitted to disregard any statute that it is not specifically authorized to enforce. “No agency entrusted with determinations of public convenience and necessity is an island. It fits within a national system of regulatory control *517of industry.” Palisades Citizens Assn., Inc. v. CAB, 136 U. S. App. D. C. 346, 349, 420 F. 2d 188, 191 (1969). As the Court observed in Southern S.S. Co., “[ffrequently the entire scope of Congressional purpose calls for careful accommodation of one statutory scheme to another.” 316 U. S., at 47. There can be no accommodation, careful or otherwise, if an agency refuses even to consider a relevant statute.
II
In light of the principle established by our prior decisions, the Court of Appeals correctly held that it was an abuse of discretion for the FCC to refuse to consider respondent’s allegation that KCET-TV had violated § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.3
The relevance of the alleged violation to the Commission’s licensing decision is beyond dispute. The chief purpose of the Communications Act was “to make available ... to all the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service.” 47 U. S. C. § 151 (emphasis added). See National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 319 U. S. 190, 217 (1943). The deaf constitute a substantial segment of the population. Ante, at 508, n. 12. If, as this Court has stated, the Commission has an “obligation ... to ensure that its licensees’ programming fairly reflects the tastes and viewpoints of minority groups,” *518NAACP v. FPC, 425 U. S., at 670, n. 7, then surely it also has an obligation to consider whether a licensee has denied meaningful programming of any kind to a sizable minority group.
Since respondent’s allegation that KCET-TV had violated the Rehabilitation Act was relevant to the PCC’s determination of whether renewal of the station’s license would serve the “public interest,” the Commission should have given “at least some degree of consideration” to the Act. Denver & R. G. W. R. Co. v. United States, 387 U. S., at 492. There is no reason to depart from our traditional insistence that administrative agencies take into account any federal statute that is pertinent to an administrative decision.4 As the Court noted in Southern S.S. Co., consideration of any pertinent statutes “is not too much to demand of an administrative body.” 316 U. S., at 47. The decision of the Court of Appeals demanded no more than this, and the handicapped individuals protected by the Rehabilitation Act are entitled to no less.

 The FCC is directed by statute to grant an application for renewal of a broadcast license only if it finds that the “public interest, convenience, and necessity would be served thereby.” 47 U. S. C. § 307(c) (1982 ed.).

 The majority errs in attempting to distinguish McLean Trucking by quoting Justice Rutledge’s statement that the ICC was “not to measure proposals for all-rail or all-motor consolidations by the standards of the anti-trust laws.” 321 U. S., at 85, quoted ante, at 509, n. 14. The issue here is not whether the FCC should have measured KCET-TV’s application by the same standards that would apply in a proceeding to enforce the Rehabilitation Act, but whether the FCC should have given at least some consideration to the policies underlying the Act. In McLean Trucking the Court made it clear that the ICC was not free to ignore the policies underlying the antitrust laws. In addition to the passage quoted in the text, see 321 U. S., at 86 (“Congress . . . neither has made the anti-trust laws wholly inapplicable to the transportation industry nor has authorized the Commission in passing on a proposed merger to ignore their policy”).

 Section 504 provides in pertinent part that “[n]o otherwise qualified handicapped individual. . . shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 29 U. S. C. §794 (1976 ed., Supp. V). Respondents alleged that KCET-TV had violated the Rehabilitation Act by, among other things, failing, for most of its license term, to broadcast a captioned version of the ABC Evening News that was made available to it free of charge by the Public Broadcasting Service, and by thereafter failing to broadcast the program during any prime time hours. It is undisputed that KCET-TV conducts a “program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” within the meaning of § 504.

 Contrary to the Court’s suggestion, ante, at 512, a requirement that the Commission take the Rehabilitation Act into account in its licensing decisions involving public stations would not necessarily subject such stations to a more stringent standard than that applicable to commercial stations, which are not covered by the Act. In the exercise of its discretion, there is nothing to stop the Commission from imposing an equally or more demanding standard on commercial stations if it properly explains why such a standard is justified by the purposes of the Communications Act. For example, commercial stations may be better able to afford the costs of special programming. See ante, at 512, n. 19. What the Commission cannot do under our prior decisions is simply ignore the Rehabilitation Act in a licensing proceeding in which that Act is relevant.