Court Opinion

ID: 9497723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:58:15.641426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:22.466812
License: Public Domain

HARRY T. EDWARDS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment in part.
The No Child Left Behind Act (“NCLBA” or “Act”), Pub.L. No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 (2001) (relevant sections codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 6301-6578 (Supp. I 2001)), was enacted to enhance the edu*1163cational opportunities of all children and ensure their ability to meet challenging academic standards. The Act permits schools to exercise “greater decisionmak-ing authority ... in exchange for greater responsibility for student performance,” 20 U.S.C. § 6301(7), as monitored through state testing and accountability systems that comply with specific standards set out in 20 U.S.C. § 6311. Students in schools that consistently fail to meet target performance levels are entitled to supplemental educational services and the option to transfer to other public schools. Id. § 6316.
The Act envisions parents as an integral part of achieving high-quality results and provides for parental participation from the inception of the implementing regulations through the development of state plans regarding assessments and accountability systems. See id. §§ 6571, 6311. To implement the NCLBA, the Secretary of Education (“Secretary”) is required to “establish a negotiated rulemaking process on, at a minimum, standards and assessments,” id. § 6571(b)(3)(A), and “select individuals to participate in such process ... in such numbers as will provide an equitable balance between representatives of parents and students and representatives of educators and education officials,” id. § 6571(b)(3)(B).
Rachelle Lindsey is a parent of two children who attend a school that has been identified as a “school in need of improvement” under the NCLBA. She alleges that the Department of Education (“Department”) failed to observe the “equitable balance” requirement of § 1901 of the NCLBA, 20 U.S.C. § 6571, in selecting the members to participate in the negotiated rulemaking process. In particular, she contends that this Committee did not include an adequate number of representatives of parents and students. She also contends that the implementing regulations, which originated with the Committee, have placed at risk her children’s capacity to obtain the full benefits of the Act.
Two questions are presented on this appeal. The first question is whether any challenge to the composition of the Committee is subject to judicial review. The second question is whether any of the appellants in this case have standing to pursue such a challenge. I believe that the District Court erred in holding that judicial review of the Committee’s composition is barred; however, on the record at hand, I find that appellants lack standing to bring this case.
I. The Secretary’s Selection of Participants for the Negotiated Rulemaking Process Prescribed by the NCLBA Is Clearly Subject to Judicial Review
The Department asserts that this court lacks jurisdiction over appellants’ claims, because judicial review is barred. In advancing this contention, the Department argues that the NCLBA incorporates § 570 of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act, which provides in part:
Any agency action relating to establishing, assisting, or terminating a negotiated rulemaking committee under this subchapter shall not be subject to judicial review. Nothing in this section shall bar judicial review of a rule if such judicial review is otherwise provided by law.
5 U.S.C. § 570 (2000). The Department’s argument is entirely without merit. The NCLBA does not incorporate § 570 of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act. And, even if it did, § 570 does not bar review of the present suit.
The NCLBA plainly does not incorporate the Negotiated Rulemaking Act in its totality. Indeed, the NCLBA mandates a negotiated rulemaking process, see 20 *1164U.S.C. § 6571(b)(3), while the Negotiated Rulemaking Act leaves the decision whether to engage in such process to the discretion of the agency, see 5 U.S.C. §§ 563, 565 (2000). . The NCLBA also prescribes particular steps for selecting participants in the negotiated rulemaking process, see 20 U.S.C. § 6571(b)(3), whereas the Negotiated Rulemaking Act has no such prescriptions. The NCLBA only looks to the Negotiated Rulemaking Act to guide the “process” of negotiated rulemaking. This is apparent from the language and structure of the relevant provisions of the two acts.
The NCLBA directs the Secretary to establish a negotiated rulemaking process, 20 U.S.C. § 6571(b)(3)(A), and to “select individuals to participate in such process ... in such numbers as will provide an equitable balance between representatives of parents and students and representatives of educators and education officials,’’ 20 U.S-C. § 6571(b)(3)(B) (emphasis added)., The next paragraph of § 6571, titled “Process,” explains that “[s]uch process'— .... shall not be subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, but shall otherwise follow the provisions of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990.” 20 U.S.C. § 6571(b)(4)(B). Thus, § 6571 first prescribes that the Secretary establish a negotiated rulemaking process and provides instructions for the selection of persons to participate in that process. It then directs that the process of negotiated rulemaking shall follow the prescriptions of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act, such as the consensus requirement contained in 5 U.S.C. § 566 (2000). It is therefore clear that, under the NCLBA, questions concerning the selection of the Committee are completely distinct from how the Committee members participate in the negotiated rulemaking process. Judicial review is foreclosed only with respect to the process of negotiated rulemaking.
Furthermore,' nothing in the language, structure, or legislative history of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act purports to bar judicial review of procedural requirements imposed by other statutes. In fact, it expressly states the opposite. First, § 570 of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act is explicit that “[a]ny agency action relating to establishing ... a negotiated rulemaking committee under this subchapter shall not be subject to judicial review.” 5 U.S.C. § 570 (emphasis added). The NCLBA Committee is not established “under [the] subchapter” in which the Negotiated Rule-making Act is located. Indeed, establishing a negotiated rulemaking committee “under [that] subchapter” is a discretionary act, 5 U.S.C. § 565, which follows consideration of multiple factors enumerated at 5 U.S.C. § 563(a). In contrast, establishing the Committee under the NCLBA is mandatory, and must follow specific steps contained in 20 U.S.C. § 6571(b)(3). Clearly, then, the Committee established under 20 U.S.C. § 6571(b)(3) is not a committee established under the Negotiated Rulemaking Act.
Second, where, as here, review of an alleged procedural violation in the context of final rule review is permitted by the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), the savings clause of § 570 explicitly permits such review: “Nothing in this section shall bar judicial review of a rule if such judicial review is otherwise provided by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 570. The legislative history of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act is explicit that the savings clause of § 570 was intended to preserve rights available under the APA. The Senate Report states:
Persons wishing to challenge a rule derived from the work of a negotiated rulemaking committee would retain all rights they presently possess under the *1165APA to obtain judicial review of that rule.
[The bill] recognizes and maintains the long tradition in federal administrative law which authorizes judicial review of agency rules at the time those rules are promulgated. The bill merely precludes judicial intervention in the earlier stages of the regulatory process, when a negotiated rulemaking is underway.
S. Rep. No. 101-97, at 28 (1989). Contrary to the District Court’s analysis, the House Report is also consistent with this interpretation. It explains that “[a]gency decisions to establish a negotiated rulemaking committee or regarding the makeup of this [sic] membership are not subject to judicial review.” H.R. Rep. No. 101-461, at 15 (1990), reprinted in 1990 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6697, 6706. It makes perfect sense that discretionary decisions whether to establish a negotiated rulemaking committee under the Negotiated Rulemaking Act are nonreviewable. This says nothing about the reviewability of binding directives to establish such committees under other statutes.
The District Court’s misunderstanding of the relationship between the NCLBA and the Negotiated Rulemaking Act stems in part from its peculiar phrasing of the question presented. The court considered whether § 570’s bar on judicial review lapses when final rules are promulgated, and identified tension between the plain language of § 570 and a temporal limitation on the prohibition of judicial review; it also expressed concern that reading the prohibition contained in the first sentence of § 570 as lapsing when final rules are promulgated renders § 570 superfluous because the APA already bars review prior to final agency action. See Ctr. for Law & Educ. v. United States Dep’t of Educ., 315 F.Supp.2d 15, 32-33 (D.D.C.2004). The properly framed question, however, is whether the savings clause of § 570 permits review under the APA, which grants jurisdiction to review a final agency action, and allows for -review of procedural violations at that time. See 5 .U.S.C. §§ 704, 706(2)(D).
Approaching the issue in this way alleviates the District Court’s concerns. First, the plain language of the savings clause is consistent with permitting review under the APA. Second, triggering the savings clause does not render the first part of § 570 superfluous. Indeed, intermediate agency action pursuant to the Negotiated Rulemaking Act remains unreviewable under the APA because of the first part of § 570, which provides a clear statement barring judicial review of alleged violations of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act, thereby overcoming the APA’s presumption of reviewability. There also is no basis for attacking regulations produced under the Negotiated Rulemaking Act unless another statute expressly creates such a basis.
In sum, nothing in § 570 of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act proscribes review of procedures mandated by the NCLBA for establishing the Committee. Even if § 570 weré improbably construed to have such meaning, it is evident from the language and structure of § 1901 of the NCLBA that the Act incorporates provisions of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act only to the extent that those provisions determine the process of an already established Committee. Such a construction clearly prevents § 570 from determining reviewability in this case.
II. Appellants Have No Standing
Although there is no statutory bar to judicial review of this case, we nonetheless lack jurisdiction over this matter because appellants have no standing.
In order to establish Article III standing, a plaintiff must demonstrate that (1) *1166she has suffered an injury-in-fact, (2) which is fairly traceable to the defendant’s purported unlawful conduct, and is not the result of ah independent action of a third party not before the court, and (3) is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision of the court. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136-37, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). In Defenders of Wildlife, the Supreme Court fortified standing doctrine. It provided for precise notions of injury-in-fact grounded in concrete and imminent harm and of redressa-bility rooted in an uninterrupted causal chain. See id. at 562-71, 112 S.Ct. at 2137-43. It is especially significant, therefore, that Defenders of Wildlife simultaneously embraced an expansive view of standing in the context of procedural rights: “[S]o long as the procedures in question are designed to protect some threatened concrete interest of [the plaintiffs],” id. at 573 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. at 2143 n. 8, “[t]he person who has been accorded a procedural right to protect his concrete interests can assert that right without meeting all the normal standards for re-dressability and immediacy,” id. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 n. 7. In other words, “ ‘procedural rights’ are special.” Id. This is because they are prophylactic in nature. Such requirements reflect Congress’s reasonable judgment that a government decision will better protect particular interests with the specified procedures in place.
Consistent with the unique role of procedural rights in contemporary statutory schemes, a procedural rights plaintiff must establish that (1) the procedural requirement was designed to guard her concrete interests; and (2) the government conduct, performed in the absence of that procedure, will cause a distinct risk to her particularized interests.
In applying these principles to the instant case, I concur in the judgment that the organizational plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims. The majority opinion needs no amplification on this point.
The question whether Lindsey has standing to-seek judicial enforcement of her alleged procedural right to a properly constituted Committee raises a much harder issue. There is not the slightest doubt in the record that this procedural requirement was intended to protect parents’ voices on the Committee; and Lindsey contends that -the disputed regulations, which allegedly originated in the absence of adequate parental representation, have placed at risk her interest in ensuring that her children are properly assessed so as to receive the full benefits of the NCLBA.
The District Court concluded that Lindsey failed to establish an injury-in-fact because the language of § 1901 does not “expressly bestow upon any person an individual right to enforce his or her construction of an ‘equitably balanced’ negotiated rulemaking committee.” Ctr. for Law & Educ., 315 F.Supp.2d at 27. This holding is clearly wrong. Because Lindsey brings this suit under the APA, not the NCLBA, the standing inquiry does not turn on rights enforceable independently from the APA, but rather on an independent source of procedural protection— here, § 1901 of the NCLBA — and a risk to concrete interests protected by the procedural requirement.
I also disagree with the statement in the majority opinion suggesting that, in procedural rights cases, “[o]utside of increased exposure to environmental harms, hypothesized ‘increased risk’ has never been deemed sufficient ‘injury’ ” to satisfy standing requirements. In my view, this statement is not consistent with the applicable case law. Most recently, in Electric Power Supply Ass’n v. FERC, 391 F.3d 1255 (D.C.Cir.2004), we held that the Electric Power Supply Association (“EPSA”) *1167had standing “to enforce procedural requirements designed to protect [its] concrete interest in the outcome of hearings to which [it was] a party.” Id. at 1262. Specifically, EPSA had standing to challenge FERC’s new exemptions regarding ex parte communications even though there was no guarantee that impermissible ex parte contacts would in fact materialize:
In complaining that the market monitor exemption violates the Sunshine Act, EPSA is seeking to enforce procedural requirements designed to protect EPSA’s concrete interest in the outcome of hearings to which EPSA is a party. That being the case, EPSA’s standing is not defeated by the fact that it cannot show, with any certainty, that its or its members’ financial interests will be damaged by the operation of the [rule limiting the proscription against ex parte communications in agency hearings].
Id. The holding of Electric Power follows the well-established law of this circuit. See id. at 1262.
As noted above, there is no doubt that a “person who has been accorded a procedural right to protect his concrete interests can assert that right without meeting all the normal standards for redressability and immediacy.” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 n. 7. However, “in cases involving alleged procedural errors, the plaintiff must show that the government act performed without the procedure in question will cause a distinct risk to a particularized interest of the plaintiff.” Wyo. Outdoor Council v. United States Forest Serv., 165 F.3d 43, 51 (D.C.Cir.1999) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Lindsey has failed to do this. The injury that she alleges is so attenuated that she fails to demonstrate that “the procedural violation endangers a concrete interest ... (apart from [her] interest in having the procedure observed).” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 573 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. at 2143 n. 8.
This court looks to a two-part nexus to establish the requisite relationship between the alleged procedural irregularity, the substantive government decision, and the concrete interests of the procedural rights plaintiff. Consistent with the prophylactic nature of procedural rights, a litigant seeking to enforce such rights must, first, show that the omitted procedure is linked to a substantive government decision or act, see City of Waukesha v. EPA, 320 F.3d 228, 234 (D.C.Cir.2003) (per curiam), and, second, “that the government act performed without the procedure in question will cause a distinct risk to [her] particularized interest,” Wyo. Outdoor Council, 165 F.3d at 51 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Procedural requirements serve their prophylactic function irrespective of whether the ultimate Government decision is consistent with views that emerge through the requisite process. Thus, under the first part of the causal nexus requirement, “[a] plaintiff who alleges a deprivation of a procedural protection to which he is entitled never has to prove that if he had received the procedure the substantive result would have been altered. All that is necessary is to show that the procedural step was connected to the substantive result.” Sugar Cane Growers Coop. v. Veneman, 289 F.3d 89, 94-95 (D.C.Cir.2002). Lindsey’s problem lies not with this first prong, but the second. She has failed to establish any causal relationship between the substantive Government decision that she desires and a concrete, personal interest.
Lindsey is a parent of two children who attend John Foster Dulles Elementary School, a public school in Chicago that has been identified as a “school in need of improvement” under the NCLBA. She contends that the Department violated her *1168procedural right to equitable representation on the Committee, and that the Department’s implementing regulations, which originated in the allegedly improperly constituted Committee, increase the risk that her children will be incorrectly assessed and therefore denied the full benefits of the NCLBA. See Ctr. for Law & Educ., 315 F.Supp.2d at 26, 29 (citing Pis.’ Opp’n). Lindsey, however, does not contend that the disputed regulations violate the NCLBA. Indeed, at oral argument, Lindsey’s counsel conceded that the regulations do not violate the statute. See Recording of Oral Argument at 7:30-:40. Lindsey’s .claim, then, is that the regulations might have been qualitatively better if the Committee had been properly constituted and this might have resulted in the state adopting qualitatively better educational assessment programs vyhich, in turn, might have benefited her children.
Lindsey’s argument cannot succeed. First, it is far from clear that she has demonstrated a cognizable concrete interest sufficient to satisfy Article III standing. Second, even assuming that her interest in her children’s education has some content that makes it sufficiently concrete to be cognizable, she has failed to demonstrate that there is any causal relationship between the disputed regulations and her asserted interest. In short, Lindsey has failed to show that the alleged procedural violation endangers a concrete interest apart from her interest in having the procedure observed. I therefore agree with the majority that she lacks standing.