Showing posts with label Deference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deference. Show all posts

Ninth Circuit: Presidio Historical Assn v. Presidio Trust

Administrative, Deference

Agency's interpretation of ambiguous statute requiring equivalent rebuilding as "one up, one down" anywhere on the site is unreasonable.

Current plans for building, however, are congruent with statute.

Statute requiring agency consideration does not impose a substantive change in scrutiny on judicial review -- it merely requires that the agency demonstrate that it considered alternatives.

https://d3bsvxk93brmko.cloudfront.net/datastore/opinions/2016/01/27/13-16554.pdf


Federal Circuit: Hymas v. US

Administrative

Cooperative agreements were initiated under permissible agency rulemaking and are therefore not procurement contracts subject to Tucker Act jurisdiction.

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/14-5150.Opinion.1-12-2016.1.PDF

Federal Circuit: Ford Motor Company v. US

FRCP, Administrative Law, Deference

(Complex.  Here's an especially guesslike guess.)

Where a statute implements a treaty but is not the sole implementation of a treaty, a court's subsequent shift in the basis for the decision does not violate the law of the case, as there are potentially several statutes at issue.

Where more than one statute enables a rulemaking, deference can be shown to an agency's interpretation of one regulation despite law of the case to the contrary with respect to the other statute.

The differences in the means of practical implementation can make contradictory agency decisions in substantially similar cases not arbitrary/capricious.

Dissent - The second statute doesn't independently implement the treaty, so there's no deference to agency on substantive matter of interpretation - the second statute is merely procedural.  No Skidmore deference on present agency interpretations, as it's not persuasive.  Procedural differences don't justify different handling of identical cases.

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/14-1581.Opinion.1-4-2016.1.PDF

Ninth Circuit: Alaska Wilderness League v. Sally Jewell

Environment - Denial of En Banc

Dissent from denial:

There is no Chevron ambiguity in a statute where a fixed number of criteria are established for compliance, and findings of compliance are later accorded discretion.

ESA/CWA.

Court impermissibly allows agency to define its own scope of discretion when it allows it to define a finding of compliance as mandatory when the text does not explicitly so state.

https://d3bsvxk93brmko.cloudfront.net/datastore/opinions/2015/12/29/13-35866.pdf

DC Circuit: Washington Regional Medicorp v. Sylvia Burwell

Chevron, Auer deference, rulemaking.

Where the stated intent of Congress is to implement a change, an inability to transition certain elements within the desired timeframe permits agencies to devise rules for the intersticial elements; these rules are not per se impermissible because they incorporate lapsed statutory elements of past systems.

Rules that derive from the previous statutory mandate, however, may be modified at the discretion of the agency.

A rule establishing that a value be derived from a certain other value does not require the two to be equal (or vary equally).

A rulemaking is sometimes not retroactive when the organic statute of the superseded rule has lapsed.

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/28EC0B9175C966AF85257F2A00548088/$file/14-5330-1590892.pdf


First Circuit: Castaneda v. Souza


Immigration - AG's detention mandate.  Statutory interpretation, En banc, 107 pp.

3-1-3 split.  District courts decision requiring bond hearings for aliens affirmed, in line with the first opinion, viz:

(3)
When an antecedent portion of a statute refers to an entity later described in the statute, it is assumed that the full modifier is incorporated in the later reference, i.e., a statute referring to an alien as described above refers to the type of alien described above, and not aliens generally, some of whom fall into the category described above, and some of whom don't.

Chevron analysis, TKO'd on step one - agency adjudication deserves no deference, as the statute isn't ambiguous.

Additionally, as agency only decided whether statute's requirements attach on release or after release, there is no agency guidance on relative duration of release.

Loss-of-authority canon.

(1)
Concurrence in J.

14A bars indefinite detention without access to bail or bond of anybody in the US.  Yick Wo.

(3)
Dissent

Statutory interpretation - the adverbial modifier in the previous clause shouldn't attach to the second clause.

Circuit split flagged.

Legislative intent, surplussage.

Where a statutory mandate is not implemented, a second clause referring to the entities in the mandate continues to describe them as as an independent referent, though not acted upon by the terms of the previous mandate.

Constitutional avoidance.

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/13-1994P2-01A.pdf