The Supreme Court/The Supreme Court.iso/mac/ascii/1993/93_1783/93_1783.zo

Text File | 1995-03-21 | 25KB | 480 lines

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that
corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 93-1783
--------
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF WORKERS' COMPENSA-
TION PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,
PETITIONER v. NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING
AND DRY DOCK COMPANY et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the fourth circuit
[March 21, 1995]

  Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
  The question before us in this case is whether the
Director of the Office of Workers' Compensation Pro-
grams in the United States Department of Labor has
standing under 921(c) of the Longshore and Harbor
Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), 44 Stat. 1424, as
amended, 33 U. S. C. 901 et seq., to seek judicial
review of decisions by the Benefits Review Board that in
the Director's view deny claimants compensation to
which they are entitled.


                            I
  On October 24, 1984, Jackie Harcum, an employee of
respondent Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock
Co., was working in the bilge of a steam barge when a
piece of metal grating fell and struck him in the lower
back.  His injury required surgery to remove a herniated
disc, and caused prolonged disability.  Respondent paid
Harcum benefits under the LHWCA until he returned to
light-duty work in April 1987.  In November 1987,
Harcum returned to his regular department under
medical restrictions.  He proved unable to perform
essential tasks, however, and the company terminated
his employment in May 1988.  Harcum ultimately found
work elsewhere, and started his new job in February
1989.
  Harcum filed a claim for further benefits under the
LHWCA.  Respondent contested the claim, and the
dispute was referred to an Administrative Law Judge
(ALJ).  One of the issues was whether Harcum was
entitled to benefits for total disability, or instead only
for partial disability, from the date he stopped work for
respondent until he began his new job.  -Disability-
under the LHWCA means -incapacity because of injury
to earn the wages which the employee was receiving at
the time of injury in the same or any other employ-
ment.-  33 U. S. C. 902(10).
  After a hearing on October 20, 1989, the ALJ deter-
mined that Harcum was partially, rather than totally,
disabled when he left respondent's employ, and that he
was therefore owed only partial-disability benefits for
the interval of his unemployment.  On appeal, the
Benefits Review Board affirmed the ALJ's judgment, and
also ruled that under 33 U. S. C. 908(f), the company
was entitled to cease payments to Harcum after 104
weeks, after which time the LHWCA special fund would
be liable for disbursements pursuant to 944.
  The Director petitioned the United States Court of
Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for review of both aspects
of the Board's ruling.  Harcum did not seek review and,
while not opposing the Director's pursuit of the action,
expressly declined to intervene on his own behalf in
response to an inquiry by the Court of Appeals.  The
Court of Appeals sua sponte raised the question whether
the Director had standing to appeal the Board's order.
8 F. 3d 175 (1993).  It concluded that she did not have
standing with regard to that aspect of the order denying
Harcum's claim for full-disability compensation, since she
was not -adversely affected or aggrieved- by that
decision within the meaning of 921(c) of the Act, 33
U. S. C. 921(c).  We granted the Director's petition for
certiorari.  512 U. S. ___ (1994).


                           II
  The LHWCA provides for compensation of workers
injured or killed while employed on the navigable waters
or adjoining, shipping-related land areas of the United
States.  33 U. S. C. 903.  With the exception of those
duties imposed by 919(d), 921(b), and 941, the Secre-
tary of Labor has delegated all responsibilities of the
Department with respect to administration of the
LHWCA to the Director of the Office of Workers'
Compensation Programs (OWCP).  20 CFR 701.201
and 701.202 (1994); 52 Fed. Reg. 48466 (1987).  For ease
of exposition, the Director will hereinafter be referred to
as the statutory recipient of those responsibilities.
  A worker seeking compensation under the Act must
file a claim with an OWCP district director.  33 U. S. C.
919(a); 20 CFR 701.301(a) and 702.105 (1994).  If the
district director cannot resolve the claim informally, 20
CFR 702.311, it is referred to an ALJ authorized to
issue a compensation order, 702.316; 33 U. S. C.
919(d).  The ALJ's decision is reviewable by the
Benefits Review Board, whose members are appointed by
the Secretary.  921(b)(1).  The Board's decision is in
turn appealable to a United States court of appeals, at
the instance of -[a]ny person adversely affected or
aggrieved by- the Board's order.  921(c).
  With regard to claims that proceed to ALJ hearings,
the Act does not by its terms make the Director a party
to the proceedings, or grant her authority to prosecute
appeals to the Board, or thence to the federal court of
appeals.  The Director argues that she nonetheless had
standing to petition the Fourth Circuit for review of the
Board's order, because she is -a person adversely
affected or aggrieved- under 921(c).  Specifically, she
contends the Board's decision injures her because it
impairs her ability to achieve the Act's purposes and to
perform the administrative duties the Act prescribes.
  The phrase -person adversely affected or aggrieved- is
a term of art used in many statutes to designate those
who have standing to challenge or appeal an agency
decision, within the agency or before the courts.  See,
e.g., federal Communications Act of 1934, 47 U. S. C.
402(b)(6); Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970,
29 U. S. C. 660(a); Federal Mine Safety and Health Act
of 1977, 30 U. S. C. 816.  The terms -adversely
affected- and -aggrieved,- alone or in combination, have
a long history in federal administrative law, dating back
at least to the federal Communications Act of 1934,
402(b)(2) (codified, as amended, 47 U. S. C. 402(b)(6)).
They were already familiar terms in 1946, when they
were embodied within the judicial review provision of
the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C.
702, which entitles -[a] person . . . adversely affected
or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a
relevant statute- to judicial review.  In that provision,
the qualification -within the meaning of a relevant
statute- is not an addition to what -adversely affected or
aggrieved- alone conveys; but is rather an acknowledg-
ment of the fact that what constitutes adverse effect or
aggrievement varies from statute to statute.  As the
U. S. Dept. of Justice, Attorney General's Manual on the
Administrative Procedure Act (1947) put it, -The deter-
mination of who is `adversely affected or aggrieved . . .
within the meaning of any relevant statute' has `been
marked out largely by the gradual judicial process of
inclusion and exclusion, aided at times by the courts'
judgment as to the probable legislative intent derived
from the spirit of the statutory scheme.'-  Id., at 96
(citation omitted).  We have thus interpreted 702 as
requiring a litigant to show, at the outset of the case,
that he is injured in fact by agency action and that the
interest he seeks to vindicate is arguably within the
-zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the
statute- in question.  Association of Data Processing
Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150, 153
(1970); see also Clarke v. Securities Industry Assn., 479
U. S. 388, 395-396 (1987).
  Given the long lineage of the text in question, it is
significant that counsel have cited to us no case, neither
in this Court nor in the courts of appeals, neither under
the APA nor under individual statutory-review provisions
such as the present one, which holds that, without
benefit of specific authorization to appeal, an agency, in
its regulatory or policy-making capacity, is -adversely
affected- or -aggrieved.-  Cf. Director, Office of Workers'
Compensation Programs v. Perini North River Associates,
459 U. S. 297, 302-305 (1983) (noting the issue of
whether the Director has standing under 921(c), but
finding it unnecessary to reach the question).  There
are cases in which an agency has been held to be
adversely affected or aggrieved in what might be called
its nongovernmental capacity-that is, in its capacity as
a member of the market group that the statute was
meant to protect.  For example, in United States v. ICC,
337 U. S. 426 (1949), we held that the United States
had standing to sue the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion in federal court to overturn a Commission order
that denied the Government recovery of damages for an
allegedly unlawful railroad rate.  The Government, we
said, -is not less entitled than any other shipper to
invoke administrative and judicial protection.-  Id., at
430.  But the status of the Government as a statutory
beneficiary or market participant must be sharply
distinguished from the status of the Government as
regulator or administrator.
  The latter status would be at issue if-to use an
example that continues the ICC analogy-the Environ-
mental Protection Agency sued to overturn an ICC order
establishing high tariffs for the transportation of
recyclable materials.  Cf. United States v. Students
Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412
U. S. 669 (1973).  Or if the Department of Transpor-
tation, to further a policy of encouraging so-called
-telecommuting- in order to reduce traffic congestion,
sued as a -party aggrieved- under 28 U. S. C. 2344, to
reverse the Federal Communications Commission's
approval of rate increases on second phone lines used for
modems.  We are aware of no case in which such a
-policy interest- by an agency has sufficed to confer
standing under an -adversely affected or aggrieved-
statute or any other general review provision.  To
acknowledge the general adequacy of such an interest
would put the federal courts into the regular business of
deciding intrabranch and intraagency policy disputes-a
role that would be most inappropriate.
  That an agency in its governmental capacity is not
-adversely affected or aggrieved- is strongly suggested,
as well, by two aspects of the United States Code: First,
the fact that the Code's general judicial review provision,
contained in the APA, does not include agencies within
the category of -person adversely affected or aggrieved.-
See 5 U. S. C. 551(2) (excepting agencies from the
definition of -person-).  Since, as we suggested in United
States v. ICC, the APA provision reflects -the general
legislative pattern of administrative and judicial relation-
ships,-  337 U. S., at 433-434, it indicates that even
under specific -adversely affected or aggrieved- statutes
(there were a number extant when the APA was
adopted) agencies as such normally do not have stand-
ing.  And second, the United States Code displays
throughout that when an agency in its governmental
capacity is meant to have standing, Congress says so.
The LHWCA's silence regarding the Secretary's ability
to take an appeal is significant when laid beside other
provisions of law.  See, e.g., Black Lung Benefits Act
(BLBA), 30 U. S. C. 932(k) (-The Secretary shall be a
party in any proceeding relative to [a] claim for bene-
fits-); Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42
U. S. C. 2000e-5(f)(1) (authorizing the Attorney General
to initiate civil actions against private employers) and
2000e-4(g)(6) (authorizing the Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission to -intervene in a civil action
brought . . . by an aggrieved party . . .-); Employee
Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29
U. S. C. 1132(a)(2) (granting Secretary power to initiate
various civil actions under the Act).  It is particularly
illuminating to compare the LHWCA with the Occupa-
tional Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA), 29 U. S. C.
651 et seq.  Section 660(a) of OSHA is virtually
identical to 921(c): it allows -[a]ny person adversely
affected or aggrieved- by an order of the Occupational
Safety and Health Review Commission (a body distinct
from the Secretary, as the Benefits Review Board is) to
petition for review in the courts of appeals.  OSHA,
however, further contains a 660(b), which expressly
grants such petitioning authority to the Secre-
tary-suggesting, of course, that the Secretary would not
be considered -adversely affected or aggrieved- under
660(a), and should not be considered so under 921(c).
  All of the foregoing indicates that the phrase -person
adversely affected or aggrieved- does not refer to an
agency acting in its governmental capacity.  Of course
the text of a particular statute could make clear that
the phrase is being used in a peculiar sense.  But the
Director points to no such text in the LHWCA, and
relies solely upon the mere existence and impairment of
her governmental interest.  If that alone could ever
suffice to contradict the normal meaning of the phrase
(which is doubtful), it would have to be an interest of an
extraordinary nature, extraordinarily impaired.  As we
proceed to discuss, that is not present here.


                           III
  The LHWCA assigns four broad areas of responsibility
to the Director: (1) supervising, administering, and
making rules and regulations for calculation of benefits
and processing of claims, 33 U. S. C. 906, 908-910,
914, 919, 930, and 939 (2) supervising, administering,
and making rules and regulations for provision of
medical care to covered workers, 907; (3) assisting
claimants with processing claims and receiving medical
and vocational rehabilitation, 939(c); and (4) enforcing
compensation orders and administering payments to and
disbursements from the special fund established by the
Act for the payment of certain benefits, 921(d) and
944.  The Director does not assert that the Board's
decision hampers her performance of these express
statutory responsibilities.  She claims only two catego-
ries of interest that are affected, neither of which
remotely suggests that she has authority to appeal
Board determinations.
  First, the Director claims that because the LHWCA
-has many of the elements of social insurance, and as
such is designed to promote the public interest,- Brief
for Petitioner 17, she has standing to -advance in
federal court the public interest in ensuring adequate
compensation payments to claimants,- id., at 18.  It is
doubtful, to begin with, that the goal of the LHWCA is
simply the support of disabled workers.  In fact, we
have said that, because -the LHWCA represents a
compromise between the competing interests of disabled
laborers and their employers,- it -is not correct to
interpret the Act as guaranteeing a completely adequate
remedy for all covered disabilities.-  Potomac Electric
Power Co. v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation
Programs, 449 U. S. 268, 282 (1980).  The LHWCA is a
scheme for fair and efficient resolution of a class of
private disputes, managed and arbitered by the Govern-
ment.  It represents a -quid pro quo between employer
and employee.  Employers relinquish certain legal rights
which the law affords to them and so, in turn, do the
employees.-  1 M. Norris, The Law of Maritime Personal
Injuries 4.1, p. 106 (4th ed. 1990) (emphasis added).
  But even assuming the single-minded, compensate-the-
employee goal that the Director posits, there is nothing
to suggest that the Director has been given authority to
pursue that goal in the courts.  Agencies do not auto-
matically have standing to sue for actions that frustrate
the purposes of their statutes.  The Interior Department,
being charged with the duty to -protect persons and
property within areas of the National Park System,- 16
U. S. C. 1a-6(a), does not thereby have authority to
intervene in suits for assault brought by campers; or
(more precisely) to bring a suit for assault when the
camper declines to do so.  What the Director must
establish here is such a clear and distinctive responsi-
bility for employee compensation as to overcome the
universal assumption that -person adversely affected or
aggrieved- leaves private interests (even those favored
by public policy) to be litigated by private parties.  That
we are unable to find.  The Director is not the designated
champion of employees within this statutory scheme.
To the contrary, one of her principal roles is to serve as
the broker of informal settlements between employers
and employees.  33 U. S. C. 914(h).  She is charged,
moreover, with providing -information and assistance-
regarding the program to all persons covered by the Act,
including employers.  902(1), 939(c).  To be sure, she
has discretion under 939(c) to provide -legal assistance
in processing a claim- if it is requested (a provision that
is perhaps of little consequence, since the Act provides
attorneys' fees to successful claimants, see 928); but
that authority, which is discretionary with her and
contingent upon a request by the claimant, does not
evidence the duty and power, when the claimant is
satisfied with his award, to contest the award on her
own.
  The Director argues that her standing to pursue the
public's interest in adequate compensation of claimants
is supported by our decisions in Heckman v. United
States, 224 U. S. 413 (1912), Moe v. Confederated Salish
and Kootenai Tribes of Flathead Reservation, 425 U. S.
463 (1976), Pasadena City Bd. of Ed. v. Spangler, 427
U. S. 424 (1976), and General Telephone Co. of North-
west v. EEOC, 446 U. S. 318 (1980).  Brief for Petitioner
18.  None of those cases is apposite.  Heckman and Moe
pertain to the United States' standing to represent the
interests of Indians; the former holds, see 224 U. S., at
437, and the latter indicates in dictum, see 425 U. S., at
474, n. 13, that the Government's status as guardian
confers standing.  The third case, Spangler, supra, at
427, based standing of the United States upon an
explicit provision of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act
authorizing suit, 42 U. S. C. 2000h-2, and the last,
General Telephone Co., supra, at 325, based standing of
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission upon a
specific provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
authorizing suit, 42 U. S. C. 2000e-5(f)(1).  Those two
cases certainly establish that Congress could have
conferred standing upon the Director without infringing
Article III of the Constitution; but they do not at all
establish that Congress did so.  In fact, General Tele-
phone Co. suggests just the opposite, since it describes
how, prior to the 1972 amendment specifically giving the
EEOC authority to sue, only the -aggrieved person-
could bring suit, even though the EEOC was authorized
to use -`informal methods of conference, conciliation, and
persuasion'- to eliminate unlawful employment practices,
446 U. S., at 325-an authority similar to the Director's
informal settlement authority here.
  The second category of interest claimed to be affected
by erroneous Board rulings is the Director's ability to
fulfill -important administrative and enforcement
responsibilities.-  Brief for Petitioner 18.  The Director
fails, however, to identify any specific statutory duties
that an erroneous Board ruling interferes with, reciting
instead conjectural harms to abstract and remote
concerns.  She contends, for example, that -incorrect
claim determinations by the Board frustrate [her] duty
to administer and enforce the statutory scheme in a
uniform manner.-  Id., at 18-19.  But it is impossible to
understand how a duty of uniform administration and
enforcement by the Director (presumably arising out of
the prohibition of arbitrary action reflected in 5 U. S. C.
706) hinges upon correct adjudication by someone else.
The Director does not (and we think cannot) explain, for
example, how an erroneous decision by the Board affects
her ability to process the underlying claim, 919, provide
information and assistance regarding coverage, compen-
sation, and procedures, 939(c), enforce the final award,
921(d), or perform any other required task in a -uni-
form- manner.
  If the correctness of adjudications were essential to
the Director's performance of her assigned duties,
Congress would presumably have done what it has done
with many other agencies: made adjudication her
responsibility.  In fact, however, it has taken pains to
remove adjudication from her realm.  The LHWCA
Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 1251, assigned adminis-
tration to the Director, 33 U. S. C. 939(a); assigned
initial adjudication to ALJ's, 919(d); and created the
Board to consider appeals from ALJ's, 921.  The
assertion that proper adjudication is essential to proper
performance of the Director's functions is quite simply
contrary to the whole structure of the Act.  To make an
implausible argument even worse, the Director must
acknowledge that her lack of control over the adjudica-
tive process does not even deprive her of the power to
resolve legal ambiguities in the statute.  She retains the
rulemaking power, see 939(a), which means that if her
problem with the present decision of the Board is that
it has established an erroneous rule of law, see Chevron
U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.,
467 U. S. 837 (1984), she has full power to alter that
rule.  See Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., 505
U. S. ___ (1992) (slip op., at 7) (-The [Board] is not
entitled to any special deference-).  Her only possible
complaint, then, is that she does not agree with the
outcome of this particular case.  The Director also
claims that precluding her from seeking review of
erroneous Board rulings -would reduce the incentive for
employers to view the Director's informal resolution
efforts as authoritative, because the employer could
proceed to a higher level of review from which the
Director could not appeal.-  Brief for Petitioner 19.  This
argument assumes that her informal resolution efforts
are supposed to be -authoritative.-  We doubt that.  The
structure of the statute suggests that they are supposed
to be facilitative-a service to both parties, rather than
an imposition upon either of them.  But even if the
opposite were true, we doubt that the unlikely prospect
that the Director will appeal when the claimant does not
will have much of an impact upon whether the employer
chooses to spurn the Director's settlement proposal and
roll the dice before the Board.  The statutory require-
ment of adverse effect or aggrievement must be based
upon -something more than an ingenious academic
exercise in the conceivable.-  United States v. SCRAP,
412 U. S., at 688.
  The Director seeks to derive support for her position
from Congress' later enactment of the BLBA in 1978,
but it seems to us that the BLBA militates precisely
against her position.  The BLBA expressly provides that
-[t]he Secretary shall be a party in any proceeding
relative to a claim for benefits under this part.-  30
U. S. C. 932(k).  The Director argues that since the
Secretary is explicitly made a party under the BLBA,
she must be meant to be a party under the LHWCA as
well.  That is not a form of reasoning we are familiar
with.  The normal conclusion one would derive from
putting these statutes side by side is this: when, in a
legislative scheme of this sort, Congress wants the
Secretary to have standing, it says so.
  Finally, the Director retreats to that last redoubt of
losing causes, the proposition that the statute at hand
should be liberally construed to achieve its purposes,
see, e.g., Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, 432
U. S. 249, 268 (1977).  That principle may be invoked,
in case of ambiguity, to find present rather than absent
elements that are essential to operation of a legislative
scheme; but it does not add features that will achieve
the statutory -purposes- more effectively.  Every statute
purposes, not only to achieve certain ends, but also to
achieve them by particular means-and there is often a
considerable legislative battle over what those means
ought to be.  The withholding of agency authority is as
significant as the granting of it, and we have no right
to play favorites between the two.  Construing the
LHWCA as liberally as can be, we cannot find that the
Director is -adversely affected or aggrieved- within the
meaning of 921(c).

                       *    *    *
  For these reasons, the judgment of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is affirmed.

                                            So ordered.