Court Opinion

ID: 9477428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:23:19.318307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:52.477091
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the prevailing disposition because I believe that the petitioner — a lawyer whom the Federal Communications Commission disqualified from representation of a party in a single pending matter— lacks standing to pursue his claim in the courts.
I agree with Judge Ginsburg that Richardson-Merrell, Inc. v. Koller, 472 U.S. 424, 105 S.Ct. 2757, 86 L.Ed.2d 340 (1985), clearly reflects the Supreme Court’s judgment that the interests of counsel are entitled to little or no weight in the litigative process. Where the client’s interests are *523still at risk, the case says, a decision to appeal on grounds of wrongful disqualification “should turn entirely on the client’s interest.” 472 U.S. at 435, 105 S.Ct. at 2763 (emphasis added). The present context is different, however, in several ways. Settlement of the underlying dispute has removed any chance that counsel’s self-protective efforts might jeopardize the client. The settlement also disposes of Richardson-Merrell’s finality concerns — that interim appellate review would interrupt an ongoing proceeding or bring about piecemeal litigation. But the modest weight that Richarson-Merrell assigns to counsel’s interests at least cautions against appellate courts lightly taking on the task of correcting (or editing) procedural decisions made by an agency along the way.
Standing is the normal rubric under which courts assess the character and weight of a claimant’s interest, to see whether it is entitled to a judicial hearing. As counsel’s reputational interest surely satisfies the constitutional minimum, the inquiry turns to prudential standing and (initially) a determination whether “the interest sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question.” Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153, 90 S.Ct. 827, 830, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970) (emphasis added); see also Clarke v. Securities Industry Association, 479 U.S. 388, 107 S.Ct. 750, 93 L.Ed.2d 757 (1987). No one suggests that Congress sought to “protect” communications lawyers through enactment of the Federal Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 151 et seq. (1982). Its provision of employment for hundreds or thousands of lawyers was surely an unintended by-product.
Nor can Congress be said to have intended to “regulate” the conduct of communications lawyers. We must distinguish between those interests that Congress sought to regulate and those that it may have expected the agency to affect in the course of the regulatory process. See Tax Analysts & Advocates v. Blumenthal, 566 F.2d 130, 144-45 (D.C.Cir.1977) (drawing a sharp distinction between “zone of interests” and zone of “impact” or “consequence”); Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 809 F.2d 794, 814 (D.C.Cir.1987) (in explicating Tax Analysts, court notes that mere congressional recognition that a statute may have an effect on attorneys does not bring them within the statute’s zone of interests). It is hard to see how counsel’s interests rise above the latter category.
That Congress gave the Commission broad discretion to “conduct its proceedings,” 47 U.S.C. § 154(j), hardly brings attorneys within the scope of regulated interests in the usual sense of the term. As we observed in Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, “While [8 U.S.C. § 1362 (1982)] creates a right of representation for aliens to be represented in exclusion or deportation proceedings, it seems impossible that the interest of the HRC in being the representative is also within the zone of interests.” 809 F.2d at 815. Witnesses may similarly be the object of orders issued by the Commission in the conduct of its proceedings; in the absence of some impact on their common law, statutory or constitutional rights, I would not suppose them able to ask the courts to review statements made by the Commission, even if quite pejorative.
Nor does the Commission’s provision of an internal right of review seem to me to change the picture. Agency appellate review gives disqualified counsel the benefit of a second opinion and the Commission a chance to develop consistent standards. Both are fine things, but neither helps bring counsel’s interests within the zone intended by Congress. While United States v. Erika, Inc., 456 U.S. 201, 102 S.Ct. 1650, 72 L.Ed.2d 12 (1982), observed in dictum that the Secretary’s regulations made clear that a statutory right of non-judicial review extended beyond the literal language of the statute, id. at 207 n. 7, 102 S.Ct. at 1653 n. 7, it did not discuss standing or suggest that agency regulations could widen the congressionally determined zone of interests.
*524A Commission order generally disqualifying an attorney from practice (temporarily or permanently) would pose a completely different issue. Such an order would directly prevent those regulated by the Commission, or intended by Congress to benefit from its regulation, from securing representation by the counsel of their choice. Standing for an attorney seeking review of such an order would thus advance their interests, and the attorney could well be seen as acting as a “private Attorney General.” See Associated Industries of New York State, Inc. v. Ickes, 134 F.2d 694, 704 (2d Cir.), vacated as moot, 320 U.S. 707, 64 S.Ct. 74, 88 L.Ed. 414 (1943); cf. FCC v. Sanders Bros. Radio Station, 309 U.S. 470, 60 S.Ct. 693, 84 L.Ed. 869 (1940). But it is hard to see how the core interest holders could have such a derivative interest in the state of the FCC record in its one-time disqualification of Chase.
We have in some cases granted “third party” standing to suppliers of regulated parties where the challenged decision would curtail (or extinguish) their market opportunities. See National Cottonseed Products Ass’n v. Brock, 825 F.2d 482 (D.C.Cir.1987); FAIC Securities, Ins. v. United States, 768 F.2d 352 (D.C.Cir.1985). Writing for the court in FAIC, then-judge Scalia appeared to endorse the explanation of Professor Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum.L.Rev. 277 (1984), that when either party to a class of transactions objects to a restriction, it is effectively claiming that “the state has advanced no sufficient interest to justify prohibiting the interaction.” Id. at 303, quoted in FAIC, 768 F.2d at 360 n. 5. But the only transaction the FCC has prohibited — Chase’s representation of a client in one now-settled dispute — is plainly moot.
Professor Monaghan’s analysis of course fits neatly with those cases for which the zone-of-interests test is inapposite because the challenger contends (in effect) that ultra vires acts of the agency have interfered with some common law or possibly constitutional interest. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. United States, 316 U.S. 407, 422-23, 62 S.Ct. 1194, 1202-03, 86 L.Ed. 1563 (1942) (broadcasters had standing to challenge regulations purporting “to operate to alter and affect adversely appellant’s contractual rights and business relations with station owners” whose licenses would be jeopardized by continuing relations with the broadcasters); see also United States v. Storer Broadcasting Co., 351 U.S. 192, 199-200, 76 S.Ct. 763, 768-69, 100 L.Ed. 1081 (1956) (similar); Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 809 F.2d at 811 n. 13. In the most relevant of these cases, Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 71 S.Ct. 624, 95 L.Ed. 817 (1951), a variety of organizations complained that they had been erroneously stigmatized as Communist by the Attorney General acting beyond the scope of his authority and that the stigma had drawn on them an array of adverse private and governmental actions. The Court found injury to a “legally protected right,” namely that of “a bona fide charitable organization to carry on its work, free from defamatory statements of the kind discussed.” Id. at 140-41, 71 S.Ct. at 632-33. Even if Joint Anti-Fascist sustains standing when the agency’s decision is attacked (as it is here) merely for being an erroneous exercise of conceded authority, it surely cannot encompass the interest of every person of whom an agency speaks critically in the course of an official opinion. Cf. Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976).
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Because I do not believe that Congress intended the Commission to regulate the conduct of the communications bar other than incidentally to its conduct of proceedings, or that the Commission has materially invaded any common law or constitutional right of Chase’s, I believe that the petitioner’s claim fails for want of prudential standing. I therefore concur in dismissal of the action.