Court Opinion

ID: 9429215
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:26:01.503519+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:17.922658
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
concurring.
The Court holds that the “plain language” of § 207(a)(1) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Pub. L. 89-10, 79 Stat. 32, and its successor provision, §415 of the General Education Provisions Act, 20 U. S. C. § 1226a-l (1976 ed., Supp. V), expressly grants the Secretary of Education (1) the right to require States to repay misspent Title I funds, and (2) the right to make an administrative adjudication of the question whether funds have in fact been misspent, with the result that such adjudication is subject to judicial review only on a limited, “substantial evidence” basis. Ante, at 782-792. The Secretary will no doubt be pleased with today’s holding, but I note that he must have thought the authorizing language of this provision was not so “plain,” since his lawyers deemed it worthy of no more than passing mention in his brief. See Brief for Petitioner 7, 20.
I join the Court’s opinion, although I would have preferred to decide the case on a different basis, one that has been thoroughly briefed. Specifically, I would have held that the 1978 Amendments, see 20 U. S. C. §§ 1234, 2835(b) (1976 ed., Supp. V), which unequivocally state that the Secretary may administratively recoup misspent Title I funds, should be applied retroactively. A federal court or administrative agency must “apply the law in effect at the the time it renders its decision, unless doing so would result in manifest injustice or there is statutory direction or legislative history to the contrary.” Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 416 U. S. 696, 711 (1974). Accord, Gulf Offshore Co. v. Mobil Oil Corp., 453 U. S. 473, 486, n. 16 (1981). Here, nothing in the 1978 Amendments or the legislative history suggests that the Amendments were not intended to be applied retroac*794tively, and their application to this case would not result in manifest injustice. The States entered into contractual-type agreements with the United States to disburse the moneys in accordance with specified conditions. The States had no legitimate claim to a right to be able to breach these agreements with impunity. In the absence of any contrary congressional intent, agreements such as these are surely enforceable in a court of law. Therefore, at most, the 1978 Amendments merely changed the appropriate forum for litigating the Federal Government’s claims that the agreements had been breached from a court of competent jurisdiction to an administrative tribunal. Because there is no manifest injustice in a simple change of forum, see ante, at 777-778, n. 3; Hallowell v. Commons, 239 U. S. 506, 508 (1916), there is no bar to the retroactive application of the 1978 Amendments, and this case more preferably should have been decided on this basis.
In closing, I also note that this case does not involve any question as to the substantive standard by which a claim that a recipient has violated its Title I commitments is to be judged. Rather, it concerns the abstract question whether the Secretary has the right to recover Title I funds under any circumstances. In my view, there is a significant issue whether a State can be required to repay if it has committed no more than a technical violation of the agreement or if the claim of violation rests on a new regulation or construction of the statute issued after the State entered the program and had its plan approved.