Court Opinion

ID: 8917448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 05:40:16.548558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:09:07.206121
License: Public Domain

SNEED, Circuit Judge,
Concurring:
I concur in Judge Goodwin’s opinion. I only write separately to suggest the possibility that the Secretary, faced with a statute not reflecting what she perceived was the intent of Congress, sought to act to further that perceived intent while not abiding by the letter of the statute. If this is what happened, and I am by no means sure that it was, the Secretary has only done what many administrators have done from time to time, and our insistence that the plain meaning of the statute be followed is only what many courts from time to time have done, should have done, and hereafter ought to do. Thus, whether, as Judge Goodwin suggests, the Secretary was motivated only by a desire to protect the fisc, or by a desire to conform to the perceived intent of Congress, or by a bit of both, our duty to enforce the statute as written is inescapable. As time-consuming and laborious as it might be, the Secretary must go to Congress to obtain a clarifying amendment should she wish to act as, perhaps, she perceives Congress intended.