Court Opinion

ID: 9477729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:29:56.777849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:01.172482
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I fully agree with the result reached by the majority and I join in the judgment. I cannot, however, join in the majority’s opinion for several reasons.
First, I cannot agree that the statute is clear and unambiguous on its face. In my view, not only is the reference in § 2021(b)(3) to disqualification and traffickers not dispositive, but the facial reading adopted by the district court is as plausible as that of the majority. The district court read the statute to provide two types of punitive sanctions: disqualification and civil money penalty. A civil money penalty must be considered “if the Secretary determines that disqualification would cause hardship to food stamp households.” § 2021(a). Hardship arises where there are no other comparable retail food stores authorized to accept food stamps in the area. See 7 C.F.R. § 278.6(f) (1987). Thus, according to the district court’s reading, § 2021(b)(3), the subsection making disqualification mandatory upon “the first occasion of a disqualification based on ... trafficking,” only applies to situations in which disqualification is the appropriate sanction. Where hardship exists, subsection (b) does not apply and a civil money penalty must be considered by the Secretary.
The district court determined that the challenged regulation, by mandating disqualification, stripped the Secretary of the discretion to apply civil money penalties to traffickers in hardship areas. As the district court saw it, consideration of hardship was an important congressional policy and the statute mandates that the Secretary at least consider civil money penalties even in trafficking cases. I find the district court’s approach sufficiently persuasive to impel me to view the statute as ambiguous. Therefore, in construing it I would turn to the legislative history. See 2A C. Sands, Sutherland on Statutory Construction, § 48.04, at 300 (4th ed. 1984) (legislative history “has generally been the first extrinsic aid to which courts have turned in attempting to construe an ambiguous act”).
Having considered the legislative history, ably set forth by the majority, I agree entirely that Congress intended to authorize disqualification for trafficking regardless of the hardship factor. Thus I am satisfied that the majority is correct, and that the regulation is valid. For me that is the end of the case. Under these circumstances, I would not reach the Chevron point. The majority does so, and I am troubled by its discussion.
The majority invokes the “plain meaning” of the statute and the legislative history to conclude that the Secretary’s regulation is entitled to deference. But those factors are not the stuff of Chevron “deference”; that deference turns instead on *398the reasonableness of the agency interpretation. As I understand the law, Chevron is explicitly premised on silence or ambiguity. 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2781-82. Hence when the statute or the statute plus legislative history is clear (as it is here), Chevron does not apply. See Kean v. Heckler, 799 F.2d 895, 898-902 (3d Cir.1986) (examining statute and legislative history before applying Chevron deference); Transbrasil S.A. Linhas Aereas v. Department of Transp., 791 F.2d 202, 206-07 (D.C.Cir.1986) (deference need not be accorded where “a statute’s language and legislative history indicate a clear congressional intent”).
The government maintained at oral argument that permanent disqualification is not theoretically inconsistent with the congressional desire to accommodate hardship because permanent disqualification may produce a prompt sale of the store to new owners who are eligible to participate in the food stamp program. We need not address this contention, however, because the legislative history indicates that Congress did not intend the Secretary to review trafficking cases for hardship; instead, it is apparent that Congress intended mandatory disqualification in all such cases.
Had Congress intended that the Secretary consider hardship in trafficking cases (a premise contrary to fact, as evidenced by the legislative history, but one that is nonetheless assumed in the majority’s alternative Chevron deference argument), we would be faced with the difficult question whether the rule could be construed to have made a generic determination of non-hardship in trafficking cases. Cf. Baltimore Gas & Elec. Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 462 U.S. 87, 103 S.Ct. 2246, 76 L.Ed.2d 437 (1983) (generic rulemaking that storage of nuclear wastes would not have significant environmental impact not arbitrary and capricious where issues are common to all licensing decisions). There is no evidence that the Secretary considered hardship in the rule-making, nor is there evidence that all trafficking decisions are sufficiently similar to be subject to such a rulemaking, should consideration of hardship be required. The majority’s holding, insofar as it rests on Chevron deference, is therefore problematic. I deem it preferable to rest our decision on the statute and legislative history as discussed above. On that basis I concur in the judgment.