Court Opinion

ID: 9843134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:28:09.203924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:37.680142
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I regret that I find myself in respectful disagreement with the majority of this panel. In my view, if the approach adopted in this case endures as the law of the circuit, the government will be placed at a disadvantage in future litigation that was never intended by the Congress and that is contrary to the realities of sound governance.
The majority correctly states that the district court must take into consideration the position of the government with respect to both the underlying agency action and the present litigation. In this case, however, this distinction is without a practical difference. The Secretary’s position in this litigation was the same as in the underlying agency action: that the adoption of the children’s and the spouses’ disability regulations was legally justifiable as a faithful interpretation of congressional intent. The caselaw support for the Secretary’s position is relevant to an assessment of the agency’s pre-litigation position because it demonstrates that, at the time the agency acted, the law was unclear and that reasonable people, including a significant number of our fellow federal judges, found the agency’s position to be a reasonable one.
With respect to the regulations governing children’s disability, the Supreme Court of the United States eventually determined that the agency’s position was erroneous. See Sullivan v. Zebley, 493 U.S. 521, 110 S.Ct. 885, 107 L.Ed.2d 967 (1990). Nevertheless, in the course of its decision, the Court acknowledged that several circuits had previously held that the regulations were valid. Id. at 527 n. 5., 110 S.Ct. at 890 n, 5. It is indeed difficult to justify, as the majority seems in large part to do, the imposition of a quarter of a million dollars in attorneys’ fees on the rhetorical style of the author of the Supreme Court opinion. The regulations governing spouses also were supported after their enactment by respectable judicial authority.1
Because the legal position initially adopted by the Secretary in the promulgation of the regulations was determined to be a reasonable one when initially scrutinized in judicial proceedings, I do not believe that it is consonant with the congressional intent to interpret the Equal Access to Justice Act as permitting the award .of fees in this case. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. Indeed, the district court acknowledged that the position it took in this litigation was contrary to an earlier interpretation it had articulated, albeit in dicta. See Marcus v. Bowen, 696 F.Supp. 364, 380 n. 21 (N.D.Ill.1988).