Court Opinion

ID: 9469662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:46:17.005187+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:30.216205
License: Public Domain

CARDAMONE, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur with my colleagues in affirming the District Court’s holding as to the local defendants — that plaintiffs had no private right of action under section 16 of the UMT Act, and that the plaintiffs did not state a *655claim under either 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or the equal protection clause via section 1983.
I respectfully dissent, however, from the majority in its reversal of the District Court’s grant of summary judgment for the federal defendants. I would hold, for essentially the same reasons stated by Judge Weinfeld, that the record before both this Court and the District Court was the full administrative record upon which the federal agencies acted and was an adequate one for the District Court to determine whether the federal defendants had acted in a manner consistent with the mandate of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Thus, I would retain the findings made by the District Court as to the rational basis for the federal defendants’ actions in continuing to fund the local defendants. The District Court’s findings on the issue of whether the federal defendants acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner contain an analysis of the good-faith efforts of the local defendants, one of the indicia used by the federal defendants in deciding whether to continue funding. The federal defendants decided, and the District Court agreed, that the local defendants had taken steps to provide better mass transportation services to the handicapped (“special efforts”). While I too read section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act as requiring that at least “modest, affirmative steps” be taken, the District Court had already received evidence on this subject. Support can be found in the record to conclude that the local defendants had made a good faith attempt in the area of special efforts.1 Further, included in the record is the fact that Judge Weinfeld took judicial notice of the local defendants’ purchase of Grumman buses specially equipped for the handicapped. Nonetheless, the issue of summary judgment in the suit between the plaintiffs and the local defendants was not raised below, either by the parties or by the Court sua sponte. Hence, I must agree with the majority’s reversal of the dismissal of the section 504 claim, but do so for procedural rather than substantive reasons.

. Many of these affirmative acts failed for reasons beyond the control of the local defendants.