Court Opinion

ID: 9461571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:18:11.630357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:08.547019
License: Public Domain

WIDENER, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
Although I concur in vacating the judgment of the district court and in remanding the case, I would do so for different reasons and under different standards than those set forth in the opinion of the court. I concur in the result reached by the majority, rather than with either dissent, because I think it more nearly expresses the intent of Congress, although to me neither of the three opinions reflects the intent of Congress and restrict the extent of review which I think was not contemplated by the statute.
It is well settled that Congress may authorize review of administrative actions by the courts under such terms, and to such extent as it chooses, and even, absent a constitutional requirement, to deny review altogether. See Labor Board v. Cheney Lumber Co., 327 U.S. 385, 66 S.Ct. 553, 90 L.Ed. 739 (1946); Estep v. United States, 327 U.S. 114, 66 S.Ct. 423, 90 L.Ed. 567 (1946). Further, there are the deeply imbedded principles that courts should decide constitutional questions only if necessary, and should construe statutes in a manner which requires decision of a serious constitutional question only if the statutory language leaves no reasonable alternafive. United States v. Gambling Devices, 346 U.S. 441, 74 S.Ct. 190, 98 L.Ed. 179 (1953); United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41, 73 S.Ct. 543, 97 L.Ed. 770 (1953). I think the case at hand does not require us to reach the question of whether the opportunity to engage in food stamp transactions is an interest that is protected by the Constitution. I also note that the constitutional question is raised by the court rather than by the parties who simply ask that the statute be construed.
The Food Stamp Act provides for judicial review of an administrative disqualification of a store by the filing of a complaint in the district court. “The suit . . . shall be a trial de novo by the court in which the court shall determine the validity of the questioned administrative action in issue. If the court determines that such administrative action is invalid it shall enter such judgment or order as it determines is in accordance with the law and the evidence.” 7 U.S.C. § 2022(c)
Since the “administrative action” must consist both of the finding of a violation and punishment of disqualification, I think the statute as it allows a review of the “validity of the administrative action,” and provides that if the administrative action is invalid the court shall enter such judgment as “it determines” in accordance with the law and the evidence, may only be construed as granting a full right of review. The court’s judgment is by statute to be based on its determination of both the law and the evidence, and I see no reason to read into this perfectly plain language a judicially imposed restriction.
As both the opinion of the majority and Judge Russell’s dissent1 acknowl*1220edge, a trial de novo may only mean a broad right of review, the majority construing de novo to mean that the court “should make an independent determination of the issues”, and the dissent that the court “would enjoy the same unfettered rights as the Secretary to impose a sanction according to its sense of justice and fairness.” Yet both opinions, inexplicably to me, having acknowledged the broad meaning of the phrase, then proceed to restrict its application.
My views on the subject are in general agreement with the dissent of Judge Edwards in Martin v. United States, 459 F.2d 300, 302 (6th Cir. 1972), a case arising under the same statute at issue here, and are best articulated in the dissent of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Stark v. Wickard, 321 U.S. 288, 312, 64 S.Ct. 559, 88 L.Ed. 733 (1944), a part of the reasoning of which has been quoted with approval by Mr. Justice Douglas in the opinion of the court in Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 156, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970). Mr. Justice Frankfurter:
“Apart from legislation touching the revenue, the public domain, national banks and patents, not until the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, 49 U.S. C.A. § 1 et seq., did Congress begin to place economic enterprise under systems of administrative control. These regulatory schemes have varied in the range of control exercised by government; they have varied no less in the procedures by which the control was exercised. More particularly, these regimes of national authority over private enterprise reveal great diversity in the allotment of power by Congress as between courts and administrative agencies. Congress has not made uniform provisions in defining who may go to court, for what grievance, and under what circumstances, in seeking relief from administrative determinations. Quite the contrary. In the successive enactments by which Congress has established administrative agencies as major instruments of regulation, there is the greatest contrariety in the extent to which, and the procedures by which, different measures of control afford judicial review of administrative action.
Except in those rare instances, as in a claim of citizenship in deportation proceedings, when a judicial trial becomes a constitutional requirement because of ‘The difference of security of judicial over administrative action,’ Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276, 285, 42 S.Ct. 492, 495, 66 L.Ed 938, whether judicial review is available at all and, if so, who may invoke it, under what circumstances, in what manner, and to what end, are questions that depend for their answer upon the particular enactment under which judicial review is claimed. Recognition of the claim turns on the provisions dealing with judicial review in a particular statute and on the setting of such provisions in that statute as part of a scheme for accomplishing the purposes expressed by that statute. Apart from the text and texture of a particular law in relation to which judicial review is sought ‘judicial review’ is a mischievous abstraction. There is no such thing as a common law of judicial review in the federal courts. The procedural provisions in more than a score of these regulatory measures prove that the manner in which Congress has distributed responsibility for the enforcement of its laws between courts and administrative agencies runs a gamut all the way from authorizing a judicial trial de novo of a claim determined by the administrative agency to denying all judicial review and making adminis*1221trative action definitive.”2 321 U.S. 288, 311, 64 S.Ct. 559, 572, 88 L.Ed. 733.
I would remand this case for a new trial by the district court in which it would make its own independent judgment as to the term of disqualification within the limits expressed in 7 CFR § 272.6 as authorized by 7 U.S.C. § 2020.3

. I am unable to accept the thesis that a storekeeper ought not to be allowed to seek judicial review if he is only dissatisfied with the punishment rather than being dissatisfied both with the finding of guilt as to the violation and also the term of disqualification. Under this theory, a defendant in a civil case appealed for a trial de novo under a State law (see e. g. Va.Code of 1950 as amended, § 16.-1-113; Addison v. Salyer, 185 Va. 644, 40 S.E.2d 260, 263 (1946)), from a court not of record to a court of record, would not be allowed to admit liability on his appeal and have only the matter of damages contested and ascertained. Such a construction, to me, is untenable as it obviously would defeat the entire purpose of a de novo trial.
Neither would a defendant in a criminal case under the various State statutes so al*1220lowing for trial de novo be allowed to plead guilty upon his appeal and only have his punishment reascertained. Cf. Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972), in which the Supreme Court held that a trial de novo on appeal insulated the result from the application of North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969). There, the Court referred to the Kentucky trial de novo procedure as an “unrestricted right to have a new trial”. 407 U.S. 104, 117, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 1960, 32 L.Ed.2d 584.

. I especially note that the last part of the quoted language from Stark obviously refers to a trial de novo as the broadest kind of judicial review of administrative action: " . . . [Ajll the way from . . judicial trial de novo ... to denying all judicial review . . ..” 321 U.S. 288, 312-313, 64 S.Ct. 559, 572, 88 L.Ed. 733.

. Assuming the application of the Administrative Procedure Act to this review, the result would be the same, for 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(F) provides in pertinent part that the scope of review is such that “ . . . the reviewing court . shall . . hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be unwarranted by the facts to the extent that the facts are subject to trial de novo by the reviewing court.”