Court Opinion

ID: 9427996
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:32.827149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.097431
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion. I write separately to emphasize that our decision today in no way addresses the question whether the Commission may exclude the costs of bill inserts from the rate base, nor does it intimate any view on the appropriateness of any allocation of such costs the Commission might choose to make. Ante, at 543. The Commission did not rely on the argument that the use of bill inserts required ratepayers to subsidize the dissemination of management’s view in issuing its order, and we therefore are precluded from sustaining the order on that ground. Cf. SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80, 95 (1943) (“[A]n administrative order cannot be upheld unless the grounds upon which the agency acted in exercising its powers were those upon which its action can be sustained”); FPC v. Texaco Inc., 417 U. S. 380, 397 (1974); FTC v. Sperry & Hutchinson Co., 405 U. S. 233, 249 (1972).