Court Opinion

ID: 9446265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:50:14.854488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:35.133874
License: Public Domain

BURGER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This is a close and difficult case, but I would sustain the Secretary’s action. As I read the majority opinion, it holds, not that the Secretary is without power to correct his own inadvertent administrative errors, but that in doing so in this particular case he did so arbitrarily.
The Secretary’s action had some rational basis even though it was one which we, as judges, might not have taken in the first instance, had we been in his place. But it does not seem to me our function to repudiate administrative acts because we might take a different view of the equities or because the administrator reached a “wrong” conclusion. The stat*725utes directed certain channels which applicants must follow to secure a valid lease. The applicant first in point of time here started through the correct channel but, on the erroneous advice of the Department, changed to the wrong channel. The applicant second in point of time complied with the statute precisely and used the proper channel. The Secretary held “Since Dorough had sought as acquired land land available for leasing only as public domain, his application was not a proper one and failed to earn him a preference right to a public land oil and gas lease [citing prior Department decisions]. * * * Snyder’s offer was filed under the proper statute and regulation and, as the first qualified applicant to file a proper application, he had earned a statutory preference * * * for the land in question.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, the Secretary held the lease must go to the applicant coming through the correct channel first. The Secretary’s holding that the first applicant could not amend his application over two years after its filing to cure a defect in his compliance with the statute does not seem to me arbitrary or “plainly and convincingly wrong.” It is simply saying that Dorough lost his priority by failure to comply with the statute until after Snyder had filed a correct application. The majority holds that the Secretary is compelled to ignore the statutes prescribing the channels to be used. In this day of increasingly complex government, those charged with its administration must be given the power to enforce compliance with the Congressional acts which fix orderly, even though rigid, procedures.1
Recently in McKenna v. Seaton, 103 U.S.App.D.C. -, - F.2d -, this court acknowledged the broad powers of administrative officers and sustained an action comparable, in some respects in its legal impact, to the action taken here to cancel the erroneously issued lease.

. This case is distinguishable from the kind of arbitrariness we disapproved in Valley Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, 1956, 99 U.S.App.D.C. 156, 237 F.2d 784.