Court Opinion

ID: 9472214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:52:45.620303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:48.128705
License: Public Domain

*235POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would dismiss the petition for review rather than deny it. With all due respect to the contrary conclusion of my brethren, I submit that when someone who is not even a listener complains to the Federal Communications Commission that a television station has violated the Commission’s “fairness doctrine,” and the Commission finds no violation, the disappointed complainant has no right to petition for judicial review of the decision. The “injury” he suffers from the Commission’s finding of no violation does not confer standing to sue, and in any event the Commission’s order is unreviewable because it is agency action committed by law to agency discretion.
I make this submission with some diffidence. Several court of appeals opinions (mainly from the D.C. Circuit) allow such complainants to petition for judicial review, though without discussing the issues of standing and reviewability. See Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. FCC, 717 F.2d 1471 (D.C.Cir.1983); American Security Council Education Foundation v. FCC, 607 F.2d 438 (D.C.Cir.1979) (en banc); Public Media Center v. FCC, 587 F.2d 1322 (D.C.Cir.1978); Council for Employment & Economic Energy Use v. FCC, 575 F.2d 311 (1st Cir.1978); Neckritz v. FCC, 446 F.2d 501 (9th Cir.1971). One of these opinions (Council for Employment) states without elaboration that the petitioner was "aggrieved,” 575 F.2d at 314 — the wrong test, I shall argue. The others do not discuss standing or reviewability at all. A fifth case, Office of Communication of United Church of Christ v. FCC, 359 F.2d 994, 1000-06 (D.C.Cir.1966), discusses standing but, I shall argue, is distinguishable from this case.
I begin with the question of Mayor Mai-er’s standing, thus reversing the order in which the standing and reviewability issues are discussed in the majority opinion. That opinion, after deciding that Congress wanted decisions such, as the FCC’s in this case to be judicially reviewable, argues that therefore someone must have standing to seek judicial review, as otherwise the congressional purpose would be thwarted. But this ignores the fact that the requirement of standing is constitutional; if any of the requirements of Article III of the Constitution for maintaining a case in federal court are not satisfied, and as a result an issue that Congress would like the court to review cannot be reviewed, that is just too bad. The approach in the majority opinion of putting reviewability before standing also ignores the fact that someone besides Maier — a listener for example— might, as I shall argue, have a better claim of standing to challenge the Commission’s decision.
The Administrative Procedure Act provides, “A person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof.” 5 U.S.C. § 702. If the Commission in this case had found that WTMJ had violated the fairness doctrine, and imposed some sanction (on the range of possible sanctions for violations of the doctrine see Simmons, The Fairness Doctrine and the Media 12, 15 n. 32 (1978)), the station would have had standing under the first part of section 702 to seek judicial review. The financial injury it would have suffered would be the kind of injury — personal, concrete, direct— on which common law suits are based; and thus, if wrongful, it would be an injury caused by a “legal wrong” within the meaning of section 702. See Attorney General’s Manual on the Administrative Procedure Act 96 (1947). The station might have standing even if the Commission imposed no immediate sanction, for when the station’s license was up for renewal the Commission might count a violation of the fairness doctrine against renewal, and nonre-newal would have devastating financial consequences for the station’s owners. In either case the station would be an injured party in an uncontroversial sense and would have standing to seek judicial redress for its injury. See Straus Communications, Inc. v. FCC, 530 F.2d 1001, 1006-07 (D.C.Cir.1976); cf. Bethlehem *236Steel Corp. v. EPA, 723 F.2d 1303, 1306 (7th Cir.1983).
This case is somewhat unusual because the person seeking judicial review is not a licensee but an unsuccessful complainant. We need to distinguish among three different types of disappointed complainant. The first is a member of the station’s audience. The injury he suffers from a violation of the fairness doctrine, though somewhat tenuous and indistinct, is analogous to that of a customer who is overcharged; it. may therefore be concrete enough to confer standing. The second type of complainant is a member of the general public who, whether or not he watches the station; believes that its alleged violations of the fairness doctrine have harmed him" indirectly by misleading the station’s audience with regard to issues of public policy in which he has a stake. This type of injury is too tenuous to support standing under conventional principles, which require that a person wanting to maintain a suit in federal court have suffered an injury of the sort that would support a common law suit. See People Organized for Welfare & Employment Rights v. Thompson, 727 F.2d 167, 171 (7th Cir.1984), and cases cited there. The tort concept of remoteness of damage would rule out a common law suit based on an injury as speculative and indirect (much more so, for example, than even the “neighborhood effects” alleged in such cases as Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 376-78, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 1123-1124, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982)) as this. Compare Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928); Crankshaw v. Piedmont Driving Club, 115 Ga.App. 820, 156 S.E.2d 208 (1967). The third type of injury that is relevant here is the injury suffered by a politician when unfair news coverage impairs his ability to do his job or his prospects for reelection. This is also too indirect an injury to support standing under conventional principles. Cf. Winpi-singer v. Watson, 628 F.2d 133, 137-39 (D.C.Cir.1980). Otherwise a national political figure might have standing to challenge the Commission’s rejection of a fairness complaint lodged with any television station in the nation that broadcast material critical of him.
Mayor Maier bases standing on the second and third types of injury. He does not sue as a representative of listeners, and could not, for he does not claim to be a listener who was confused as a result of the alleged violation of the fairness doctrine and he cannot sue as the representative of a class of persons to which he doesn’t belong. See, e.g., Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979); Minority Police Officers Ass’n v. City of South Bend, 721 F.2d 197, 202 (7th Cir.1983). The other types of injury will not support standing under conventional principles; and though those principles have been severely bent in the judicial review of administrative action — section 702 being both ratification and encouragement of this tendency — the broadcast cases that discuss standing do not go so far as this court does today. A representative of the general public has been allowed to get judicial review of a sanction imposed on a broadcaster, on the theory that the public’s right to be informed might be impaired as a result of the deterrent effect of the sanction, see Illinois Citizens Comm. for Broadcasting v. FCC, 515 F.2d 397, 402 (D.C.Cir.1975); but the petitioner represented listeners, see id. at 401, whom I earlier analogized to consumers. Office of Communications of United Church of Christ v. FCC, supra, 359 F.2d at 998-99, upheld the standing of a citizens’ group to intervene to oppose the renewal of a station’s license on the ground that the licensee had violated the fairness doctrine; but again the petitioner represented listeners. Also, the case arose under 47 U.S.C. § 402(b)(6), which allows “any ... person who is aggrieved or whose interests are adversely affected” by particular types of FCC orders to petition for review in the District of Columbia Circuit. This language, read together with the APA’s section 702 (“adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute" (emphasis added)), con*237fers standing on persons who have not suffered a “legal wrong” in the traditional common law sense. But the present case does not arise under section 402(b)(6), it arises under section 402(a), which (read in conjunction with 28 U.S.C. § 2342(1)) merely gives this court jurisdiction to set aside certain FCC orders. It does not speak to standing. Section 2344 of the Judicial Code does refer to “any party aggrieved,” but the function of that section is to assign judicial review jurisdiction to the courts of appeals, not to determine who has standing to seek judicial review.
Thus, even if (as is by no means clear) section 402(b)(6) was intended to (and can constitutionally) confer standing on one as remotely affected as Maier by the alleged violation of the fairness doctrine, he would have standing only if section 402(a) were intended to embody the same broad concept of standing as 402(b)(6), though worded differently. (The language comparing 402(a) and 402(b) that my brethren quote from Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 316 U.S. 4, 15-16, 62 S.Ct. 875, 882-883, 86 L.Ed. 1229 (1942), relates to a different question from any in the present case.) And before I would conclude that it was— ignoring the difference between the language of the two sections and the constitutional doubts that the suggested reading must give rise to — I would require greater evidence of congressional intent to expand standing in 402(a) to its uttermost constitutional limits (and maybe beyond) than I find. The language of section 402(b)(6) provides a handle for an expansionary interpretation of standing; the language of section 402(a) does not, and there is no legislative history that might fill the gap. True, Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153, 90 S.Ct. 827, 829, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970), can be read as redefining the words “within the meaning of a relevant statute” in the APA’s section 702 to mean “within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute”; and the general public is within the zone of interests that the fairness doctrine (not a statute, but an administrative embellishment of a statute, namely of the Communications Act of 1934) was intended to protect. But as Professor Currie has suggested, Data Processing may allow standing only where the statute (here section 402(a)) “is construed ... to provide an implicit remedy to members of the protected class.” Currie, Federal Courts: Cases and Materials 60 (3d ed. 1982); see also Currie, Misunderstanding Standing, 1981 S.Ct.Rev. 41, 44. And there is no evidence for such a construction of section 402(a). (Data Processing is read more broadly, however, in Judge Scalia’s article, The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers, at p. 14, forthcoming in 17 Suffolk Univ.L.Rev., winter 1983.)
Standing as defined in section 702 and interpreted by Professor Currie merges with the question whether Congress wanted the courts to be able to review the administrative order in question; but as I said at the outset the two questions are logically distinct, and I turn now to the second. When section 402(a) was enacted back in 1934, the right of a complainant to an administrative agency to get judicial review of the agency’s refusal to impose a sanction against the firm complained about was'(and is still today) limited. The limitation is codified in the Administrative Procedure Act, which bars judicial review of “agency action ... committed to agency discretion • by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(2). Thus, not all agency action is reviewable, even if the requirement of standing in Article III of the Constitution is satisfied. It is true that there is a presumption of reviewa-bility, but there are a number of areas where the presumption has failed to carry the day, and one of them is quite pertinent to this case. If you complain to the FTC that a competitor is hurting you by making false claims about your product (or his), and the FTC either refuses to issue a complaint against him or exonerates him after a proceeding, you cannot get judicial review of the Commission’s action, even though you have suffered the type of injury that might support a common law suit and thus confer standing to sue, and even *238if . the Commission’s decision is based on an explicit legal determination rather than on an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. See ITT Continental Baking Co. v. FTC, 515 F.2d 367 (D.C.Cir.1975). It is true that the evidence from both the structure and legislative history of the Federal Trade Commission Act that disappointed complainants were not to have rights of judicial review is stronger than anything in the Communications Act; but since the fairness doctrine was created by the FCC after the Act was passed (though a 1959 amendment to the Act indicates legislative recognition of the doctrine, see 47 U.S.C. § 315(a), .Simmons, supra, at 51), you could not expect to find comparable evidence. It is also true that the FTC is (or at least was in its original form) a prosecutorial agency, and prosecu-torial discretion is traditionally unreviewa-ble.. The FCC was modeled on public utility and common carrier regulatory agencies, which are umpires between consumer and supplier interests; and typically any disappointed party to a public utility or common carrier proceeding can get judicial review of the agency’s action. But qua enforcer of the fairness doctrine in independent remedial proceedings that are not inspired by listeners’ complaints (listeners being a group corresponding to consumers in public utility and common carrier cases) and that are distinct from license-renewal proceedings (as in United Church of Christ), the FCC is a prosecutor, rather than a regulator in the sense in which its broadcast-licensing and telephone-regulation functions are regulatory. Moreover, as I have said, the rule that FTC decisions dismissing complaints are not judicially reviewable applies even when the FTC bases dismissal on a legal determination rather than on the exercise of its prosecutorial discretion. The similarities between the FCC’s role in a case like the present and the FTC’s role when it dismisses a deceptive-advertising complaint after full proceedings thus are greater than the differences. And despite my brethren’s remarks about the importance of preserving judicial review of agency action, we have gotten along quite nicely without judicial review of FTC decisions dismissing deceptive-advertising complaints, and would get along quite as well without judicial review of FCC decisions dismissing complaints under what is after all a doctrine that the FCC itself, and not Congress, created. We are busy enough as it is.
Of course if Congress has commanded us to review these decisions we must; but the fact that Congress alluded to the fairness doctrine in the 1959 amendment to section 315 of the Communications Act is not a congressional determination that decisions by the FCC dismissing fairness complaints are judicially reviewable. Judicial review was not the issue before Congress when it amended section 315; and to suppose that when members of Congress were thinking about the fairness doctrine they had present to their minds all the ancillary questions that the doctrine raises, such as whether the denial of a complaint under the doctrine is judicially reviewable, would ignore the realities of the legislative process. Moreover, I do not agree that in deciding the issue of reviewability we should give weight to the Commission’s view on the question, assuming as I do not that its failure to object to judicial review constitutes a considered administrative interpretation of the statute. The fact that the Commission’s view has never been stated but must be inferred, speculatively, from its silence, and the fact that the judicial-review provisions of the Communications Act are not among the provisions of that Act which the Commission is responsible for enforcing (they come into play only after the Commission has done its work), are sufficient objections to this course, and also underscore the artificiality of the suggestion that the “administrative construction” has been strengthened by Congress’s refusal to alter it. Congress has never been asked to alter the construction, an implicit construction of which few if any members of Congress can ever have heard.
I have discussed the case so far as if Maier’s complaint had been limited to an alleged violation of the fairness doctrine’s generalized prohibition of unbalanced *239broadcasting. But he also complains that he was the victim of a personal attack, which the doctrine prohibits separately. If my analogy between the FTC as a prosecutor of unfair trade practices and the FCC as a prosecutor of unfair broadcasting practices is correct, Maier’s complaint about the Commission’s failure to find a violation of the personal-attack doctrine is also unreviewable. He has a stronger argument on standing; the interest that the personal-attack doctrine protects is very similar to that protected by the law of defamation (Simmons, supra, at 88), and an interest that will support a common law suit will also support standing to get judicial review of agency action. But standing is not enough. The fact that Maier was singled out for attack by the station would no more entitle him to get judicial review of the Commission’s rebuff of his personal-attack charge, in the face of the principle that agency action committed by law to agency discretion is unreviewable, than if Maier had been the target of a competitor’s false advertising and had complained unsuccessfully to the FTC.