Court Opinion

ID: 9487077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:07:39.994034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:05.169459
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The court’s opinion in this case countenances the extremely anomalous result that when a person transfers from one welfare program (AFDC) to another (SSI), a transfer that is legitimate and that appears to have been made available for the benefit of the claimants, the claimant will automatically lose a significant amount of income for up to two months. This result both negates the purpose of Congress in creating the SSI program and contradicts the clear command of 42 U.S.C. § 1382(c)(4)(B).
The Secretary appears determined to short-change the plaintiffs in this case. The court is not correct in arguing that Congress has simply set out a rough-and-ready measure that benefits some claimants and injures others, while coming out about even overall. Maj. op. at 720-21. There is no evidence in the record to support this proposition. Instead, Congress mandated that, in general, parties should receive benefits based on a previous month’s earnings. This was to prevent parties from “low-balling,” or giving a pessimistic projection of future income, in order to get greater benefits. By resting the benefit computation on past earnings and income, Congress made it much more difficult for claimants to pad their benefits, whether through cheating or pessimism.
In our case, however, it is known by operation of law that the claimants will not receive in future months the AFDC benefits that the Secretary is determined to assume that they will receive. In the reverse scenario, the government is quite ready, willing, and able to reduce a coming month’s benefits when by operation of law the parties are due to receive more money, as with a Social Security increase. See 20 C.F.R. § 416.420(a) (adopted Nov. 26, 1985). Here, in just the same fashion, the government knows that, by operation of law, the parties’ benefits will be reduced in the coming month. Indeed, it is the government that is imposing the reductions. And yet the Secretary obstinately refuses to take these reliably known facts into account.
That refusal may be the Secretary’s right under the discretion granted by statute. She does not, however, have the right to proceed without following the Congressional mandate to adopt a regulation and to publish the facts on the record, “let[ting the fjacts be submitted to a candid world.” The Declaration of Independence, para. 2 (U.S. 1776). There is a world of difference between simply refusing to adopt a regulation, and affirmatively adopting a regulation that takes a potentially unpalatable position. There are important policy reasons that rulemaking procedures exist and are often required by statute. In the first place, when the Secretary ultimately places the imprimatur of the Department and the Administration on a course of action by *722adopting a regulation, she affords the public a transparent view of what is happening. Therefore, it is simply more difficult to adopt an unpopular or untenable position in so clear a way.
Second, under the APA, an interested party enjoys a clearer opportunity to challenge a course of action that has been affirmatively adopted in a regulation than he does if he desires to challenge a failure to take action. See Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985). To my mind, this is why Congress used quite different words in subparagraphs (A) and (B) of 42 U.S.C. § 1382(c)(4). Subparagraph (A) says that the Secretary “may” adjust payments based on prospective months if she determines that reliable information is currently available. Thus, the Secretary has discretion, even when she finds that reliable information is available, to grant or deny an adjustment. I agree with the court to that extent.
However, subparagraph (B) states with equal clarity that the Secretary “shall,” that is, she must, issue regulations that explain when and how she plans to find “reliable information.” If she were to issue such a regulation, the Secretary would have to go on the public record and defend her inability to find as “reliable” information that is plain for all to see. In addition, under the formal rulemaking process, such a decision, that no “reliable information” is “currently available,” could be directly challenged as being arbitrary and capricious. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). Third, the formal rulemaking process would place the parties on notice as to the standards by which the Secretary defines “reliable information.” Parties who believe that they are being short-changed at least would have the opportunity to endeavor to produce information that is sufficiently “reliable” to convince the Secretary that it fits within the terms of the statute. For all these reasons, the action of Congress in making subparagraph (B) mandatory should not lightly be set aside.
I do not believe that the Chevron “reasonable interpretation” standard, Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 844, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2782, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984), allows the Secretary to make a choice to interpret the word “shall” as permissive rather than mandatory. I know of no case that directly so holds, and we know that the “shall/may” distinction and confusion is one that arises quite frequently in our jurisprudence. See e.g., United States v. Rodgers, 461 U.S. 677, 706-08, 103 S.Ct. 2132, 2149-50, 76 L.Ed.2d 236 (1983); Morgan Srvcs., Inc. v. Local 323, Chicago & Cent. States Joint Bd., Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, 724 F.2d 1217, 1223 n. 9 (6th Cir.1984).
This ease does not fall within the Chevron pattern, in which an agency interprets a general or ambiguous word or phrase in a statute. In Chevron itself, the agency had to interpret whether a “source” of pollution meant a single smokestack or the collection of smokestacks that made up a particular building or industrial operation. See 467 U.S. at 854-58, 104 S.Ct. at 2787-89. Such an interpretative choice is greatly different from altering fundamental limitations on the grant of discretion itself, such as the shall/ may distinction. Furthermore, in Chevron itself it was clear that the Secretary would have to make some type of discretionary definition to deal with the question of what is a “source.” Here, the statute by its own terms does not appear to allow discretion as to whether or not the Secretary should promulgate a regulation; rather, it only allows discretion in what the Secretary is to do with information once it is assessed in accordance with that regulation.
I therefore respectfully dissent and would reverse and remand with instructions that the Secretary carry out her statutory mandate to issue a regulation and place the matter in the open, on the record, and subject to challenge.