Court Opinion

ID: 9482024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:37:57.711953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:42.999013
License: Public Domain

TROTT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Today, the majority hangs the specter of an injunction over the heads of state officials responsible for administering large bureaucracies and tells those officials (1) they may be held in contempt of court if they fail to comply with the administrative demands of their missions “as strictly as humanly possible,” and (2) administrative failures will be tolerated only if they are “truly inevitable.” This is not an insignificant ruling. If this nearly impossible standard of overall performance had been mandated by Congress I should not dissent, for the resolution of such issues is for the legislative branch of government. But as I read the law, Congress did not have this sisyphean standard in mind when it launched these programs. I respectfully disagree with Judge Canby’s analysis, and I do so because I am persuaded that the reasoning advanced by the Third Circuit in Shands v. Tull, 602 F.2d 1156, 1160-61 (3rd Cir.1979) is sound.
*1390Our task in this case is to discover the intent of Congress with respect to the degree of overall compliance required of a state participating in the three programs in question. To accomplish this, we look to the relevant law, but when we do, we do not find an explicit answer. As is often the case with Congressional pronouncements, we are required to tease the answer out of the legislative fabric by locating pertinent threads that will guide our inquiry.
The indicators of Congressional intent that answer our present inquiry are well described in the majority opinion. The most persuasive of these strands is found in the AFDC statute itself. As Judge Can-by notes, 42 U.S.C. § 604(a)(2) provides that “federal funding of a state’s program may be terminated if the state has failed ‘substantially’ to comply with the federal hearing standards.” Majority op. at p. 1387. Moreover, “food stamp funding may be terminated when a state fails to comply with such federal standard without ‘good cause.' 7 U.S.C. § 2020(g).” Majority op. at p. 1387. This is enough to convince me that Congress contemplated a test of overall “substantial compliance” with respect to this program, not virtually perfect compliance in every individual case as mandated by Judges Canby and Kozinski. What Congress may have understandably expected with respect to the timetables for individual cases does not necessarily mean that the systems themselves are not working up to expectation unless they are performing as a whole at a level never before attained by a bureaucracy since bureaucracies were invented. The majority’s extrapolation from the unit to the aggregate is logically unsound because the performance standards for each necessarily derive from different considerations, as 42 U.S.C. § 604(a)(2) demonstrates. If Congress is satisfied to spend its money to support a program that complies “substantially” with its expectations, why do we demand more?
Thus, as did the court in Shands v. Tull, I find in the overall scheme of things—notwithstanding the “shalls” and the “musts” that live in some of the trees in these forests-“an implied intent to hold the states to a standard of substantial compliance and thus to make some allowance for the difficulties of administering an extensive bureaucracy.” 602 F.2d at 1160. Parenthetically, I am not nearly as sanguine as the Seventh Circuit in Haskins v. Stanton, 794 F.2d 1273, 1277 (7th Cir.1986) about the burdenless impact of these kinds of decisions on the states in our circuit. It is folly in a time 'qf shrinking revenues at the state level to believe that the expense of bringing these programs into virtually perfect compliance is insignificant. All over our nation, needed public services are being slashed and burned, yet a federal court now effectively eliminates a state’s ability to control administrative costs for these programs. But my real problem with what sounds like a misguided no-harm, no-foul rationalization is that it inappropriately ties the hands of a district judge called on to exercise discretion in deciding whether the equitable remedy of injunction is called for in these cases. An agency must be virtually perfect regarding the requirements in question, or it becomes subject to an injunction with all its attendant burdens.
Moreover, I am uncomfortable with the articulation of the standard we order the district court to use in this case. What is a “truly inevitable instance of noncompliance?” We now have at least four categories to play with: (1) perfect compliance, (2) partial compliance where noncompliance is excused as “truly inevitable,” (3) substantial compliance, and (4) noncompliance. I can only hope all these boxes provide adequate guidance to the district court and that categories one and two do not turn out in the real world to be the equivalent of a snipe hunt.
“Substantial compliance” is not an invitation to the states to perform their duties in a haphazard fashion or in bad faith. It is a stringent yet understanding standard that requires the best of an agency under the circumstances. Unlike our new category, substantial compliance is a familiar standard. It does not leave the recipients of aid at the mercy of a poorly managed bureaucracy, nor does it leave the federal courts without power to enforce the law. Moreover, individuals aggrieved by episodic *1391or sporadic failures in Oregon are not without remedy. In this connection, I quote Oregon’s Attorney General’s Brief:
Plaintiffs also argue that the substantial compliance standard is fundamentally flawed, because it permits “some class members [to] be deprived of hearing decisions indefinitely.” That argument overlooks the remedy that an individual applicant or recipient has under state law to compel the state agency to issue a decision. Or.Rev.Stat. § 183.490 (1989), part of Oregon’s Administrative Procedure Act, empowers Oregon’s circuit (i.e., trial) courts, upon petition, to “compel an agency to act where it has unlawfully refused to act or make a decision or unreasonably delayed taking action or making a decision.” See Bay River v. Envir. Quality Comm., 26 Or.App. 717, 722-23, 554 P.2d 620, rev. den. (1976) (Or.Rev.Stat. § 183.90 grants Oregon circuit courts jurisdiction to order state agencies to act). An agency’s failure to comply with a court’s order under this statute would be enforceable through contempt proceedings. See Or.Rev.Stat. § 33.010(1)(e) (1989) (defining “contempt” to include “[disobedience of any lawful judgment, decree, order or process of the court.”) Thus, plaintiffs’ fear that the substantial compliance standard gives individuals “no recourse but to wait for their decision,” is groundless.
I have no doubt that Oregon will honor this promise and render this remedy effective if such actions are commenced by aggrieved recipients, and I am confident that Oregon Legal Services Corporation stands ready to assist such recipients if they find it necessary to resort to this process.
I would affirm the district court, thus I respectfully dissent.