Court Opinion

ID: 9428085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:42.916512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.665365
License: Public Domain

Mb. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
These cases press upon the Court difficult unanswered questions on the frontiers of science and medicine. The statute and the legislative history give ambiguous signals as to how the Secretary is directed to operate in this area. The opinion by Mr. Justice Stevens takes on a difficult task to decode the message of the statute as to guidelines for administrative action.
To comply with statutory requirements, the Secretary must bear the burden of “finding” that a proposed health and safety standard is “reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment.” This policy judgment entails the subsidiary finding that the pre-existing standard presents a “significant risk” of material health impairment for a worker who spends his entire employment life in a working environment where ex*663posure remains at maximum permissible levels. The Secretary’s factual finding of “risk” must be “quantified sufficiently to enable the Secretary to characterize it as significant in an understandable way.” Ante, at 646. Precisely what this means is difficult to say. But because these mandated findings were not made by the Secretary, I agree that the 1 ppm benzene standard must be invalidated. However, I would stress the differing functions of the courts and the administrative agency with respect to such health and safety regulation.
The Congress is the ultimate regulator, and the narrow function of the courts is to discern the meaning of the statute and the implementing regulations with the objective of ensuring that in promulgating health and safety standards the Secretary “has given reasoned consideration to each of the pertinent factors” and has complied with statutory commands. Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, 390 U. S. 747, 792 (1968). Our holding that the Secretary must retrace his steps with greater care and consideration is not to be taken in derogation of the scope of legitimate agency discretion. When the facts and arguments have been presented and duly considered, the Secretary must make a policy judgment as to whether a specific risk of health impairment is significant in terms of the policy objectives of the statute. When he acts in this capacity, pursuant to the legislative authority delegated by Congress, he exercises the prerogatives of the legislature — to focus on only one aspect of a larger problem, or to promulgate regulations that, to some, may appear as imprudent policy or inefficient allocation of resources. The judicial function does not extend to substantive revision of regulatory policy. That function lies elsewhere — in Congressional and Executive oversight or amendatory legislation — although to be sure the boundaries are often ill-defined and indistinct.
Nevertheless, when discharging his duties under the statute, the Secretary is well admonished to remember that a heavy responsibility burdens his authority. Inherent in this statutory scheme is authority to refrain from regulation of *664insignificant or de minimis risks. See Alabama Power Co. v. Costle, 204 U. S. App. D. C. 51, 88-89, 636 F. 2d 323, 360-361 (1979) (opinion of Leventhal, J.). When the administrative record reveals only scant or minimal risk of material health impairment, responsible administration calls for avoidance of extravagant, comprehensive regulation. Perfect safety is a chimera; regulation must not strangle human activity in the search for the impossible.