Court Opinion

ID: 9476466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:56:40.448757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:20.103673
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority, in my view, interprets EAJA’s “substantially justified” test to create what we previously decided in Federal Election Commission v. Rose, 806 F.2d 1081 (D.C.Cir.1986), is precisely what Congress did not intend — an automatic fee-shifting statute. The majority opinion makes the government presumptively liable for legal fees under EAJA whenever its interpretation of a statute or regulation is ultimately rejected by a court as “contrary to law.” The Rose case adopted a very different approach for those situations where the government’s position is rejected as “arbitrary and capricious.” There we observed that despite the seemingly incongruity of language, it was perfectly possible for the government’s position to be both arbitrary and capricious and still substantially justified (or reasonable) within the meaning of the EAJA. Thus, Rose requires us to carefully consider whether the government’s administrative position was reasonable despite having been found legally defective. See id. at 1089. “Congress’ inclusion of the discrete legal standard [substantially justified] makes clear that an independent evaluation through an EAJA perspective is required.” Id. at 1087. The majority rejects that approach for cases involving the government’s interpretation of statutes and regulations, concluding that since our governing scope of review requires that we defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation, our declaring the agency’s position “contrary to law” necessarily means that the agency’s position was unreasonable, and thus perforce not substantially justified under EAJA. Since I believe the majority opinion is a victory of semantics over logic and congressional intent, I respectfully dissent.
Under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984), our deference is not to an agency’s reasonable administrative position but rather to its reasonable interpretation of a statute. In that latter sense, “reasonable” — like “arbitrary and capricious,” see Rose, 806 F.2d at 1087 — is a legal term of art; it recognizes that the agency has been delegated authority to fill in legislative interstices and resolve statutory ambiguities, but only within a circle of general legislative intent that the courts will draw. Even judges — presumably reasonable judges— often disagree as to whether an agency’s interpretation of the statute is, under Chevron, a reasonable one. Yet under the majority’s view, no matter how close the question, if we decide against the government in this kind of case, EAJA requires that fees be awarded. Presumably, then, if ten other circuit courts affirmed the government’s interpretation but we — by, say, two to one — disagreed with the government’s administrative position, it, as a matter of law, would not be substantially justified. I think that hypothetical alone shows that the majority’s interpretation of “substan*107tially justified” is, to turn the blade, “unreasonable.”
Moreover, I do not think there is anywhere near as sharp a distinction as the majority perceives between those administrative law cases in which the government’s conduct is deemed “arbitrary and capricious” and those in which it is deemed “contrary to law.” In most cases, the petitioner challenging the government’s position makes both arguments, and those arguments often run together. Indeed, our opinions often fail to clearly distinguish between the two. When we remand to an agency because that agency “arbitrarily and capriciously” failed to provide an adequate explanation of its decision, we really have not passed upon the merits of the agency’s position. See Rose, 806 F.2d at 1088. But when, for example, we reject an agency’s position because it insufficiently considered a relevant factor, our decision invariably rests on a judicial interpretation of the governing statute that explicitly or implicitly differs from that of the government. See, e.g., City of New York v. FCC, 814 F.2d 720, 726-28 (D.C.Cir.1987). Although we may call the government’s position in such a case “arbitrary and capricious,” we are implicitly also calling it “contrary to law.” Thus, the majority opinion places more burden on the distinction between these concepts than administrative law and judicial decisionmaking will bear. Under the majority’s rule, future awards of attorney’s fees may well depend on almost capricious judicial labeling.
In truth, there are analytically only two postures — no matter what words are used to express them — for courts to take in determining whether the government’s position is substantially justified.1 One is to say — as the majority does in this case— that if the government loses on the merits, it fails the test. The other is for the court to ask itself whether the case presents a close question. Would reasonable lawyers divide over the likely result? We adopted the latter approach in Rose when we described, as an example of a case where fees should be paid, an instance where “an agency [fails] to apply a rule in a situation to which the rule obviously pertains.” 806 F.2d at 1089 (emphasis added). The majority rejects that approach here, describing it as “a mere penalty box for gross misconduct.” Maj. Op. at 101.
“Gross misconduct” is hyperbole, but it seems to me that as between the two positions described above, Congress did intend us to use EAJA as a penalty box rather than as a vehicle for automatic fee-shifting. See Rose, 806 F.2d at 1087 & n. 13, 1090. We, however, have chosen to use it for both purposes, and have relied upon imprecise terminology to identify categories of cases where one or the other test should apply. In so doing, we have made hash of the statute.
Because I believe the main case, Tierney v. Schweiker, 718 F.2d 449 (D.C.Cir.1983), was, notwithstanding some fierce judicial language, very close, I would hold that the government’s position was substantially justified.2

. Ever since Spencer v. NLRB, 712 F.2d 539 (D.C.Cir.1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 936, 104 S.Ct. 1908, 80 L.Ed.2d 457 (1984), we have required the government to show that its litigating position was "slightly more” than reasonable. I, however, do not believe that we judges — or, for that matter, anyone else — can identify or imagine a government position that would pass a reasonableness threshold but fail Spencer's. Indeed, in Spencer, the opinion used “reasonable” and "slightly more than reasonable" interchangeably. See Battles Farm Co. v. Pierce, 806 F.2d 1098, 1101 n. 11 (D.C.Cir.1986).

. Alternatively, I would hold that "special circumstances” justified the government’s position. If that statutory phrase has any meaning at all, it should apply here.