Court Opinion

ID: 9468135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:05:50.707115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:42.423800
License: Public Domain

MacKINNON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
My views coincided with the original majority opinion of the Division in this case and they concur with those now expressed in Judge Tamm’s dissent. As I stated previously, to allow the Secretary’s overly comprehensive regulations to preempt the authority of the states to act in the first instances, would as a practical matter, operate to stifle the activity of all the states in their handling of what Congress has indicated to be largely local state problems. Congress did not express an intent to so limit the authority of the states. In effect the Secretary’s regulations practically smother all state initiative. Thus, to uphold the excessively broad regulations violates the Congressional intent in an unusual *535way. The Secretary’s action in this case is a prime example of the extravagant expansion of federal power by departmental regulations that will have the effect of law.
I cannot read the .regulations in question as the majority asserts, as being limited to “providing oversight, advice, and back-up authority, and the states bearing the majority responsibility for implementation of the Act.” Maj. Op. at 516 (emphasis added). If the regulations were so limited I would support them.
The majority states that its “inquiry is narrow,” but it expands this narrow jurisdiction into a very far reaching order. As the majority recognizes Congress delegated “primary regulatory authority to the States” and “a limited Federal oversight role” was given to the Secretary. Maj. Op. at 520. In my view the majority has overly expanded an oversight role into a role that permits the Secretary to formulate organizational and operational rules for the states. This is a great deal more than “oversight.” I would restrict the Secretary on initial approvals to the specific confines of the data that Congress specified in the statute.
In my view the cardinal error made by the majority opinion appears on page 518 where it states:
The Secretary’s primary means of guaranteeing effective state programs lies in his approval function at the beginning of the process.
Maj. Op. at 520 (emphasis added). There is nothing in the statute, experience or logic to support that statement and it is the keystone the majority relies upon to support its expansion of the Secretary’s power. The primary means of guaranteeing effective state programs lies in the inspection function which continues as long as mining operations continue. It would be pure folly to rely principally upon the approval at the beginning.
It is thus my opinion that the majority has expanded the Secretary’s authority beyond the intent of the statute at the expense of authority that Congress intended to be exercised by the states in the first instance.