Court Opinion

ID: 9476191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:49:40.412151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:23.892933
License: Public Domain

STARR, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I fully concur in section II of the panel opinion, holding that FDA’s decision to permit blending fell within the agency’s enforcement discretion. I am also persuaded that the majority’s careful treatment of the substantive rules-policy statements distinction is not unfaithful to the teachings of this circuit’s more recent precedents. Nonetheless, I am constrained to conclude that the correct rule was that laid down by our court thirteen years ago in Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. FPC, where we held:
The critical distinction between a substantive rule and a general statement of policy is the different practical effect that these two types of pronouncements have in subsequent administrative proceedings____ A properly adopted substantive rule establishes a standard of conduct which has the force of law.
506 F.2d 33, 38 (D.C.Cir.1974). The Pacific Gas-enunciated factor — whether the pronouncement has the force of law in subsequent proceedings — should be deemed determinative of the issue. Because there is no doubt that the agency pronouncements at issue here have no such effect, I respectfully dissent from section I of the panel opinion.
I
The abiding characteristic of a legislative rule is that it is law. It defines a standard of conduct that regulated individuals or entities ignore at their peril, in the face of possible enforcement action. Significantly, the only issue in any such proceeding is whether the rule applies to the facts at hand. “The underlying policy embodied in the rule is not generally subject to challenge before the agency.” Id., at 38.
Before such rules are sanctioned one would think that they should be carefully crafted, with the “underlying polic[ies] embodied in the rule” recognized, openly discussed, and deliberately weighed. To return to basic civics for a moment, statutes passed by Congress have been refined in this manner by the very nature of the legislative process. Bills are considered by committees, hearings are held, debate is conducted, compromises are reached, and votes are taken. And all this is carried on in a bicameral legislative body with the final result presented to the President for *951his approval or rejection. See INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983). A statute therefore possesses important attributes justifying placement of the coercive power of the state behind a particular policy framed in accordance with the process ordained at the Founding.
In the modern administrative state, many “laws” emanate not from Congress but from administrative agencies, inasmuch as Congress has seen fit to vest broad rule-making power in the executive branch, including independent agencies. See Synar v. United States, 626 F.Supp. 1374, 1383-84 (D.D.C.) (three judge court), aff'd, — U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 3181, 92 L.Ed.2d 583 (1986); K. Davis Administrative Law Treatise § 3.8 (1982 Supp.); cf. Ticor Title Insurance Co. v. FTC, 814 F.2d 731, 732 (D.C.Cir.1987) (dismissing on procedural grounds a challenge to the delegation of law enforcement powers to an independent agency). This rulemaking power is obviously cabined by whatever requirements may exist in the particular statute delegating rulemaking authority, a subject which we treated in our initial decision in this case. See 757 F.2d 354 (D.C.Cir.1985). But Congress has also provided in the APA for certain procedural protections before that which achieves the lofty status of “law” is promulgated by an agency acting in its Congressionally authorized lawmaking capacity. Chief among these protections are the notice-and-comment requirements laid down in the familiar provision of 5 U.S.C. § 553. In a sense, notice-and-comment procedures serve as a Congressionally mandated proxy for the procedures which Congress itself employs in fashioning its “rules,” as it were, thereby insuring that agency “rules” are also carefully crafted (with democratic values served by public participation) and developed only after assessment of relevant considerations. It is thus, in theory, important for APA procedures to be followed before an agency pronouncement is deemed a binding legislative rule not merely because the APA says so, but because in saying so the APA is protecting a free people from the danger of coercive state power undergirding pronouncements that lack the essential attributes of deliberativeness present in statutes. Because of the value inhering in such procedures, it is well-established that “ ‘only reluctantly should courts recognize exceptions therefrom.’ ” American Bus Association v. United States, 627 F.2d 525, 528 (D.C.Cir.1980) (quoting Humana of South Carolina v. Califano, 590 F.2d 1070, 1082 (D.C.Cir.1978)).
Nonetheless, in crafting the APA, Congress directed that courts should recognize certain exceptions to the statute’s notice- and-comment requirements. Specifically, Congress recognized that not all agency pronouncements, even those of considerable moment, rise to the dignity of law. Thus, the APA excepts, as the panel opinion recounts, interpretative rules and general statements of policy from the general notice-and-comment requirements. While it is no doubt true, and indeed is frequently recognized, that such agency pronouncements may have a direct effect on the regulated community, and may even be judicially reviewable, see, e.g., AFL-CIO v. Donovan, 757 F.2d 330, 341-43 (D.C.Cir. 1985); cf. Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967), these pronouncements still lack the dignity of “law.” Before that status can be achieved, the agency must run its policies through the notice-and-comment gantlet. Perhaps in part because the agency here has avoided testing its pronouncements in this way, it must in any future proceeding defend and justify its chosen standard in the face of a challenge to that standard. Cf. United States v. Boston Farm Center, Inc., 590 F.2d 149, 151 (5th Cir.1979).
II
The majority is quite correct when it chronicles the difficulty courts have found in attempting to fathom the distinction between legislative or substantive rules on one hand, and interpretative rules or policy statements on the other.1 Inasmuch as our *952decisional law over the last decade avowedly reflects considerable uncertainty in discerning the line between agency pronouncements that are “law” and those that are “policy,” see Majority Opinion at 946, it seems advisable to return to the pristine teaching of Pacific Gas. In that case, this court articulated a rule which is clearly preferable to the present muddy state of the law. The wisdom of the Pacific Gas principle is in no small measure found in the fact that the case reflects the “core principles” which I sought briefly to adumbrate in the preceding section of this opinion. As I read the case, Pacific Gas deems as “critical” the effect of the agency pronouncement in future proceedings. This is as it should be, for as I discussed above, it is this element that is the essence of “law.” Not only is the Pacific Gas approach therefore the most principled manner in which to draw the legislative-interpretative line (in view of the fact that the determination is whether a pronouncement is “law” or not), but it has the not insignificant practical benefit in an unclear world of providing great clarity where previously there has been “considerable smog.” See American Bus, 627 F.2d at 529.
We should reembrace our Pacific Gas test as the determinative factor in analyzing whether a particular pronouncement is legislative or interpretative in nature. If the pronouncement has the force of law in future proceedings, it is a legislative rule. Unless that critical feature is present, however, the agency statement should be considered to be a lower form of pronouncement, a “non-law” as it were, or in APA terms an “interpretative rule” or “general statement of policy.” The correct measure of a pronouncement’s force in subsequent proceedings is a practical one: must the agency merely show that the pronouncement has been violated or must the agency, if its hand is called, show that the pronouncement itself is justified in light of the underlying statute and the facts.
Application of this test can readily be illustrated by the case at hand.2 Action levels offer guidance to the regulated community with respect to what products FDA deems adulterated within the meaning of the FDC Act. But in an enforcement proceeding in which FDA seeks either to impose sanctions for shipment of an adulterated product or to enjoin shipment of an adulterated product, the agency must prove the product is “adulterated.” That is, FDA cannot merely show that the product at issue fails to comply with the action level. See Boston Farm Center, 590 F.2d at 151. Rather, FDA must offer scientific or other probative evidence to support its contention that the product is adulterated. Thus, the action level does not have the force of law in the subsequent proceeding. Indeed, it has no “force” at all.
Let me quickly observe that I am not encouraging rebellion and sedition within the circuit. While the law has certainly evolved since Pacific Gas, at no point has this court disavowed that decision.3 Quite to the contrary, the leading case since Pacific Gas, American Bus, expressly embraced the earlier decision. See 627 F.2d at *953529. Moreover, post-American Bus decisions grappling with the legislative rule-interpretative rule distinction have often emphasized the Pacific Gas factor. Just the other day, for example, Judge Bork, in writing for the court in The National Latino Media Coalition v. FCC, 816 F.2d 785, 788 (D.C.Cir.1987), emphasized that “an interpretative rule does not have the force of law and is not binding upon anyone” in holding that the agency pronouncements at issue there were not legislative rules and thus not subject to the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements. To my eye, this represents an application, albeit not explicit, of Pacific Gas. Thus, I view Pacific Gas as not only “good” law, in the sense that it has never been overruled, but can discern in our precedents examples, including very fresh ones, of its being heartily applied. I would therefore urge that the “force of law” factor from Pacific Gas be explicitly recognized anew as the polestar guiding the legislative-interpretative determination. Such a modest step would not only be faithful to fundamental principles informing the nature of legislative rules but would have the happy practical consequence of bringing clarity to a troubled area.
While I thus view this step as warranted, I recognize a potential danger lurking in the embrace of a single-factor, Pacific Gas test. Agencies may yield to temptation and seek to shield their regulations from the scrutiny occasioned by notice-and-comment procedures, choosing instead to cast would-be regulations as interpretative rules. The rule would still, of course, be subject to scrutiny in a subsequent proceeding, but this fact may be of little comfort to prospective commentors, given the deference accorded agency views in any such proceedings. See generally Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). But upon analysis, the danger is more theoretical than real. Indeed, Congress not atypically provides agencies with a direct command to promulgate regulations, cf, e.g., Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO v. American Petroleum Institute, 448 U.S. 607, 100 S.Ct. 2844, 65 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1980), thereby imposing a duty that would not be satisfied with issuance of an humble interpretative rule. In this case, of course, the Supreme Court has now ruled that FDA is not required by the organic statute to issue formal regulations, but can instead proceed by way of informal action levels. — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 2360, 90 L.Ed.2d 959 (1986). But if Congress prefers a traditional model of command to the agencies to issue regulations, it can embrace that model through legislation, informed by the need, reiterated by the Supreme Court in this very case, to avoid dangling participles and other forms of that omnipresent occupational hazard of the draftsman’s workshop, ambiguity. But see INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, — U.S.-, 107 S.Ct. 1207, 94 L.Ed.2d 434 (1987); Board of Governors v. Dimension Financial Corp., 474 U.S. 361, 106 S.Ct. 681, 88 L.Ed.2d 691 (1986). Because Pacific Gas, and the basic principles upon which it stands, points the way to a quite different result than that reached by my colleagues, I am constrained to dissent in part.

. In addition, the difficulty can be seen in attempts by courts to quite understandably make *952sense of this area by seeking simple, easily-applied rules. In Brock v. Cathedral Bluffs Shale Oil Co., 796 F.2d 533, 539 (D.C.Cir.1986), now-Justice Scalia intimates that "(t]he real dividing point between regulations and general statements of policy is publication in the Code of Federal Regulations.” Such an approach would certainly be simple, if arguably inconsistent with the notion that the deference entitled to an agency’s own characterizations of its statements is "not overwhelming.” Id., at 537. I prefer the Pacific Gas approach, which has a much firmer rooting in the core principles at issue.

. I recognize that in many ways, nothing can be "readily” demonstrated by the case at hand; action levels, as the FDA has fashioned them, are a rather curious hybrid. Under a functionalist analysis, this form of agency action comes tantalizingly close to a substantive rule. I find particularly compelling the fact that FDA considers it necessary to grant "exceptions" to its action levels. See 21 C.F.R. § 109.8 (1986). Thus, I must confess in candor that I view the majority’s approach not only as faithful to our circuit’s more recent pronouncements, but as buttressed by common sanse.

. What seems to have taken place as the law has evolved (and arguably become obfuscated) is that the Pacific Gas factor has been consigned to a supporting role, as one aspect of what seems to be a multi-factor test.