Court Opinion

ID: 9480608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:52:49.204529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:47.408483
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
with whom RIPPLE, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:
The present Simmons opinion denies standing to railroad labor to challenge the exempt acquisition of a rail line under the Interstate Commerce Act (the “ICA”). This is a decision of exceptional importance since it is the first known instance in a very long history of employee participation where standing has been denied to railroad labor in a proceeding in which job elimination is a consideration. There have, of course, been many thousands of administrative proceedings and appeals to the courts involving line abandonments, mergers, line sales and the like in which employee representatives have participated without question both in the agency "and in court.1 To assert that job protection lies outside the “zone of interests” arguably protected by the ICA seems to me to ignore the, history of railroad regulation for most of the twentieth century. The ICA certainly recognizes loss of jobs as a crucial problem, even if the principal mode of “protection” is via the imposition of conditions of compensation.
The full court ought to consider whether the zone of interests test has been applied too narrowly here and without sufficient attention to congressional intent as incorporated in a number of the ICA’s provisions applicable to various forms of restructuring rail service. See, e.g., 49 U.S.C. §§ 11347, 10901(e), 10505(g). Rail employees, through their representatives, have a statutory right to participate in ICC proceedings affecting labor interests. 49 U.S.C. section 10328(a) provides:
(a) Designated representatives of employees of a carrier may intervene and be heard in a proceeding arising under this subtitle that affects those employees.
The affected employees’ right of intervention in both ICC and judicial proceedings was declared more than four decades ago in Railroad Trainmen v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co., 331 U.S. 519, 67 S.Ct. 1387, 91 L.Ed. 1646 (1947). Interpreting section 17(11) of the ICA2 — -the predecessor to the current section 10328(a) — the Supreme Court expressly rejected an argument that affected employees could intervene only in *192proceedings before the Commission but not in court proceedings. The Court said:
Here the meaning of § 17(11) is unmistakable on its face. There is a simple, unambiguous reference to “any proceeding arising under this Act” or, as the House committee paraphrased it, to “any proceedings arising under part I.” There is not a word which would warrant limiting this reference so as to allow intervention only in proceedings arising under § 17 or in proceedings before the Commission. The proceedings mentioned are those which arise under this Act, an Act under which both judicial and administrative proceedings may arise....
Nor do we perceive any reason of statutory policy why the framers of § 17(11) should have wished to confine the right of intervention by employee representatives to proceedings before the Commission. Occasions may arise, as in this case, where the employee representatives have no interest in intervening in the original administrative proceeding, but where they have a very definite interest in intervening in a subsequent judicial proceeding arising under the Act. When the framers have used language which covers both proceedings, we would be unjustified in formulating some policy which they did not see fit to express to limit that language in any way.
331 U.S. at 529-30, 67 S.Ct. at 1392-93 (footnotes omitted). The Court reaffirmed its view that employees have standing to intervene in any proceeding arising under the Act in American Trucking Ass'ns v. United States, 355 U.S. 141, 144, 146-47, 78 S.Ct. 165, 168-69, 2 L.Ed.2d 158 (1957). The present opinion cites no decision of the Supreme Court or, indeed, of any other court that purports to limit or overrule Baltimore & Ohio.
The panel’s opinion correctly notes that there is a presumption in favor of judicial review of agency action. Clarke v. Securities Industry Ass’n, 479 U.S. 388, 399, 107 S.Ct. 750, 757, 93 L.Ed.2d 757 (1987) (construing section 10 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 702). Because of this presumption, the Supreme Court declared in Clarke that the zone of interests test “is not meant to be especially demanding; in particular, there need be no indication of congressional purpose to benefit the would-be plaintiff.” Id. at 399-400, 107 S.Ct. at 757-58 (footnotes omitted). As I have indicated, the ICA in fact makes specific provision for the protection of railroad workers in a number of railroad restructuring schemes. Further, rail labor’s statutory right of intervention alone ought to indicate that employees’ interests are not “marginally related to or inconsistent with the purposes implicit in” the Interstate Commerce Act. Clarke, 479 U.S. at 399, 107 S.Ct. at 757. The whole court ought to weigh the apparently implausible proposition that Congress would by statute guarantee employees a role in ICC proceedings and in the courts, but, without any express provision to that effect, intend to deny them standing to appeal from one to the other.
There is certainly a strong possibility that the panel’s construction of 49 U.S.C. section 10101a(12) undermines Congress’s intention that the voice of labor be heard. Section 10101a(12) provides that it is the policy of the United States Government to encourage fair wages and safe and suitable working conditions in the railroad industry. Having a job is obviously a necessary prerequisite to “fair wages and suitable working conditions.” Loss of employment would therefore seem to fall squarely within the zone of interests with which the ICA and other railroad regulatory and deregula-tory legislation is concerned.
Indeed, it has evidently gone unquestioned for decades that the potential impact of ICC decisions upon railroad employees falls within the zone of interests protected by the ICA. More than fifty years ago— long before the coining of the phrase “zone of interests” — Justice Harlan Fiske Stone recognized that the “public concern,” as defined by the ICA, encompasses the blow to railroad employees who suffer displacement in the wake of a railroad consolidation. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Stone observed:
One must disregard the entire history of railroad labor relations in the United *193States to be able to say that the just and reasonable treatment of railroad employees in mitigation of the hardship imposed on them in carrying out the national policy of railway consolidation, has no bearing on the successful prosecution of that policy and no relationship to the maintenance of an adequate and efficient transportation system.
The now extensive history of legislation regulating the relations of railroad employees and employers plainly evidences the awareness of Congress that just and reasonable treatment of railroad employees is not only an essential aid to the maintenance of a service uninterrupted by labor disputes, but that it promotes efficiency, which suffers through loss of employee morale when the demands of justice are ignored.
United States v. Lowden, 308 U.S. 225, 234, 235-36, 60 S.Ct. 248, 253, 254, 84 L.Ed. 208 (1939). It appears that the panel in this case may have overlooked this history lesson.
It may be that the ICA does not explicitly provide for the preservation of jobs as a goal in and of itself. But the procedures set up under the Act surely recognize that loss of jobs is an inevitable and unfortunate result of railroad consolidations and abandonments, and, consequently, the Act provides that those affected have a right to be heard. A hearing is all that has been asked of us here.
This case presents a very difficult and important question — one which deserves the consideration of the entire court. I therefore respectfully dissent from the court’s denial of rehearing en banc.

. Patrick Simmons is the Illinois Legislative Director of the United Transportation Union. Simmons has appeared quite recently before this court. On these occasions, his claims were considered on the merits; no attack was mounted to his standing to seek review of ICC decisions affecting the railroad employees he represents. See Simmons v. ICC, 871 F.2d 702 (7th Cir.1989); Simmons v. ICC, 760 F.2d 126 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1055, 106 S.Ct. 791, 88 L.Ed.2d 769 (1986); Simmons v. ICC, 766 F.2d 1177 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1055, 106 S.Ct. 791, 88 L.Ed.2d 769 (1986).

. Section 10328(a) is virtually identical to the former section 17(11), which provided:
Representatives of employees of a carrier, duly designated as such, may intervene and be heard in any proceeding arising under this chapter and chapters 8 and 12 of this title affecting such employees.