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UNITED STATES v. CHANDLER et al.
No. 72-438.
Decided January 22, 1973
Per Curiam.
This case presents a narrow federal estate tax issue: Does a registered co-owner of a United States Savings Bond, Series E, by physical inter vivos delivery of the bond to the other registered co-owner, with intent to effectuate a gift, but without reissuance of the bond, succeed in divesting himself of the incidents of ownership so that, at his subsequent death, the value of the bond is not includable in his gross estate under the joint interests provisions of § 2040 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U. S. C. § 2040?
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the co-owner had accomplished this divestiture, and it rendered judgment in favor of the taxpayer-estate. 312 F. Supp. 1263 (1970). The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed for the reasons set out in the District Court’s opinion. 460 F. 2d 1281 (1972). The Sixth Circuit theretofore had held to the contrary on a fact situation similar to that of the present case. Estate of Curry v. United States, 409 F. 2d 671 (1969). There are other decisions to like effect. Estate of Elliott v. Commissioner, 57 T. C. 152 (1971), reviewed by the court and now pending on appeal to the Fifth Circuit; Chambless v. United States, 70-1 U. S. T. C. ¶ 12,655, 25 A. F. T. R. 2d 70-1512 (SC 1970). The Third Circuit, however, previously had ruled sweepingly along the lines followed by the Ninth Circuit here. Silverman v. McGinnes, 259 F. 2d 731 (1958).
We grant certiorari and reverse.
I
The decedent, Mary E, Baum, purchased several United States Savings Bonds, Series E, in 1954. She had them issued in the familiar co-ownership form. Some were in the names of Mrs. Baum "or” Patricia Ritter, a granddaughter. Others were in the names of Mrs. Baum “or” Beatrice Baum, another granddaughter. In 1961 the decedent delivered these bonds to the respective granddaughters, with the intention of making complete, irrevocable, inter vivos gifts.
Mrs. Baum died in 1962. At her death the bonds were still in the original co-ownership form. They had not been redeemed. Neither had they been reissued, as they might have been under the applicable regulations, in the names of the respective granddaughters as sole owners.
The respondents, who are executors of the decedent’s will, disclosed the bonds in the federal estate tax return filed for the decedent’s estate but did not include them in the gross estate. On audit, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that the bonds were includable. A resulting deficiency in estate tax was assessed and was paid by the respondents. The present suit for refund of the tax attributable to the inclusion of the bonds was instituted in due course.
II
Section 2040 is the governing statute. At the time of the decedent’s death the section provided that there shall be included in a decedent’s gross estate, with exceptions not here pertinent, “the value of all property . . . to the extent of the interest therein held as joint tenants by the decedent and any other person ... in their joint names and payable to either or the survivor . . . .”
Title 31 U. S. C. § 757c (a) authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to issue United States Savings Bonds “in such manner and subject to such terms and conditions consistent with subsections (b)-(d) of this section, and including any restrictions on their transfer, as the Secretary of the Treasury may from time to time prescribe” (emphasis supplied).
Pursuant to this authorization, the Secretary issued Regulations on United States Savings Bonds. The first were those that appeared in Department Circular 571, dated December 16, 1936, 1 Fed. Reg. 2165. They have been revised from time to time. The eighth revision was in effect in 1961 when Mrs. Baum delivered the bonds in question to her respective granddaughters.
Section 315.5 of the Regulations, 31 CFR (1959 revision), provided that the “form of registration used must express the actual ownership of and interest in the bond and . . . will be considered as conclusive of such ownership and interest.” Section 315.7 authorized registration in the names of two persons in the alternative as co-owners, and stated, “No other form of registration establishing co-ownership is authorized.”
Section 315.15 imposed a limitation on transfer: “Savings Bonds are not transferable . . . except as specifically-provided in the regulations . . . .” Section 315.20 (a) stated, “No judicial determination will be recognized which would give effect to an attempted voluntary transfer inter vivos of a bond . . . .” Section 315.60 provided that a savings bond registered in co-ownership form will be paid, during the lives of both co-owners, “to either upon his separate request,” in which case the other “shall cease to have any interest in the bond,” or will be reissued, during the lives of both co-owners, upon the request of both, in the “name of either, alone or with a new co-owner or beneficiary,” if, in the case of reissuance, the co-owners possessed one of a number of specifically enumerated relationships, including “grandparent and grandchild.”
Section 351.61 related to payment or reissue after the death of a co-owner. The survivor is recognized “as the sole and absolute owner,” and payment or reissue is “made as though the bond were registered in the name of the survivor alone,” except that the request must be supported by proof of death of the other co-owner.
The regulations thus made the jointly issued bond nontransferable in itself and permitted a change in ownership, so long as both co-owners were alive, only through reissuance at the request of both co-owners.
III
Mary E. Baum, the decedent here, whatever the reason may have been, chose not to have the bonds in question reissued in the names of her granddaughters, as she might have done pursuant to the applicable regulations. Instead, she merely delivered the bonds to the granddaughters with donative intent. Our issue is whether that delivery, accompanied by that donative intent, was sufficient to remove the bonds from the decedent’s gross estate. We conclude that it was not.
We have no reason to rule against the integrity and effect of the regulations. The issuance of the bonds by the Secretary, subject to such “restrictions on their transfer” as the Secretary may prescribe, was clearly authorized by the Congress in 31 U. S. C. § 757c (a). And the restrictions on their transfer were just as clearly spelled out by the Secretary in his regulations. No claim is made — and none could be made — that the regulations are unclear or are inapplicable to Mrs. Baum’s purported transfers. Nor can we view the regulations as an undue or improper restriction of the transfer rights the decedent would otherwise have. The bonds were issued subject to transfer restrictions, and those restrictions, in the eyes of the law at least, were known to her. She could have had the bonds issued originally in the sole names of the grandchildren, but she chose the co-ownership form and, as her later attempts at transfer reveal, she chose to retain possession of them. Having done so, she was obligated to play the game according to the rules.
The decisions below also overlook the facts that until her death, the decedent retained the right to redeem each of the bonds in question, the right to succeed to the proceeds if she survived the putative donee, and the right to join or to veto any attempt to have the bonds reissued. 31 CFR §§ 315.60 and 315.61 (1959 revision).
We note, in passing, that any other rule could well lead to chaotic conditions with respect to savings bonds and to great potential for abuse. Millions of these bonds are outstanding. The requirements of Government for uniformity and for proper recordkeeping alone demand and justify something less than absolute freedom of transfer. Considerations of safety and an aspect of permanency of investment are additional factors that demand the same result.
Our conclusion, we feel, is required by the holding in Free v. Bland, 369 U. S. 663 (1962). There the Court held that, absent fraud, the regulations creating a right of survivorship in United States Savings Bonds issued in co-ownership form overrode or pre-empted any inconsistent state property law. We stressed there, as we do here, that a contrary result would fail “to give effect to a term or condition under which a federal bond is issued.” Id., at 669. We see nothing in the earlier case of Bank of America Trust & Savings Assn. v. Parnell, 352 U. S. 29 (1956), that implies anything to the contrary. That case was also distinguished in Free v. Bland, 369 U. S., at 669.
Reversed.
It is stipulated that these deliveries were not made in contemplation of death. Section 2035 of the 1954 Code, 26 U. S. C. § 2035, relating to transfers in contemplation of death, therefore has no application.
This is § 22 (a) of the Second Liberty Bond Act, 40 Stat. 288, as added by § 6 of the Act of Feb. 4, 1935, 49 Stat. 21, and as amended by § 3 of the Public Debt Act of 1941, 55 Stat. 7.
The District Court, and the Court of Appeals in adopting the District Court’s opinion, stated that either co-owner could have had the bonds “reissued without even the signature of the other.” 312 F. Supp. 1263, 1268. This ignores the positive requirement of § 315.60 that reissue is to be “upon the request of both.”
The Government in its petition, p. 8, asserts that approximately 600 million Series E Bonds are outstanding, that these are worth over 50 billion dollars, and that 75% of them are registered in co-ownership-form. | What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations. | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | [
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UNITED STATES, Petitioner
v.
Gary WOODS.
No. 12-562.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued Oct. 9, 2013.
Decided Dec. 3, 2013.
Syllabus*
Respondent Gary Woods and his employer, Billy Joe McCombs, participated in an offsetting-option tax shelter designed to generate large paper losses that they could use to reduce their taxable income. To that end, they purchased from Deutsche Bank a series of currency-option spreads. Each spread was a package consisting of a long option, which Woods and McCombs purchased from Deutsche Bank and for which they paid a premium, and a short option, which Woods and McCombs sold to Deutsche Bank and for which they received a premium. Because the premium paid for the long option was largely offset by the premium received for the short option, the net cost of the package to Woods and McCombs was substantially less than the cost of the long option alone. Woods and McCombs contributed the spreads, along with cash, to two partnerships, which used the cash to purchase stock and currency. When calculating their basis in the partnership interests, Woods and McCombs considered only the long component of the spreads and disregarded the nearly offsetting short component. As a result, when the partnerships' assets were disposed of for modest gains, Woods and McCombs claimed huge losses. Although they had contributed roughly $3.2 million in cash and spreads to the partnerships, they claimed losses of more than $45 million.
The Internal Revenue Service sent each partnership a Notice of Final Partnership Administrative Adjustment, disregarding the partnerships for tax purposes and disallowing the related losses. It concluded that the partnerships were formed for the purpose of tax avoidance and thus lacked "economic substance," i.e., they were shams. As there were no valid partnerships for tax purposes, the IRS determined that the partners could not claim a basis for their partnership interests greater than zero and that any resulting tax underpayments would be subject to a 40-percent penalty for gross valuation misstatements. Woods sought judicial review. The District Court held that the partnerships were properly disregarded as shams but that the valuation-misstatement penalty did not apply. The Fifth Circuit affirmed.
Held :
1. The District Court had jurisdiction to determine whether the partnerships' lack of economic substance could justify imposing a valuation-misstatement penalty on the partners. Pp. 562 - 565.
(a) Because a partnership does not pay federal income taxes, its taxable income and losses pass through to the partners. Under the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA), the IRS initiates partnership-related tax proceedings at the partnership level to adjust "partnership items," i.e., items relevant to the partnership as a whole. 26 U.S.C. §§ 6221, 6231(a)(3). Once the adjustments become final, the IRS may undertake further proceedings at the partner level to make any resulting "computational adjustments" in the tax liability of the individual partners. §§ 6230(a)(1)-(2), (c), 6231(a)(6). Pp. 562 - 563.
(b) Under TEFRA's framework, a court in a partnership-level proceeding has jurisdiction to determine "the applicability of any penalty... which relates to an adjustment to a partnership item." § 6226(f). A determination that a partnership lacks economic substance is such an adjustment. TEFRA authorizes courts in partnership-level proceedings to provisionally determine the applicability of any penalty that could result from an adjustment to a partnership item, even though imposing the penalty requires a subsequent, partner-level proceeding. In that later proceeding, each partner may raise any reasons why the penalty may not be imposed on him specifically. Applying those principles here, the District Court had jurisdiction to determine the applicability of the valuation-misstatement penalty. Pp. 563 - 565.
2. The valuation-misstatement penalty applies in this case. Pp. 565 - 568.
(a) A penalty applies to the portion of any underpayment that is "attributable to" a "substantial" or "gross" "valuation misstatement," which exists where "the value of any property (or the adjusted basis of any property) claimed on any return of tax" exceeds by a specified percentage "the amount determined to be the correct amount of such valuation or adjusted basis (as the case may be)." §§ 6662(a), (b)(3), (e)(1)(A), (h). The penalty's plain language makes it applicable here. Once the partnerships were deemed not to exist for tax purposes, no partner could legitimately claim a basis in his partnership interest greater than zero. Any underpayment resulting from use of a non-zero basis would therefore be "attributable to" the partner's having claimed an "adjusted basis" in the partnerships that exceeded "the correct amount of such... adjusted basis." § 6662(e)(1)(A). And under the relevant Treasury Regulation, when an asset's adjusted basis is zero, a valuation misstatement is automatically deemed gross. Pp. 565 - 566.
(b) Woods' contrary arguments are unpersuasive. The valuation-misstatement penalty encompasses misstatements that rest on legal as well as factual errors, so it is applicable to misstatements that rest on the use of a sham partnership. And the partnerships' lack of economic substance is not an independent ground separate from the misstatement of basis in this case. Pp. 565 - 568.
471 Fed.Appx. 320, reversed.
SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Malcolm L. Stewart, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
Gregory G. Garre, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Joel N. Crouch, Meadows, Collier, Reed, Cousins, Crouch & Ungerman LLP, Dallas, TX, Gregory G. Garre, Counsel of Record, Brian D. Schmalzbach, Katya S. Cronin, Latham & Watkins LLP, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Solicitor General, Kathryn Keneally, Assistant Attorney General, Malcolm L. Stewart, Deputy Solicitor General, John F. Bash, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Gilbert S. Rothenberg, Richard Farber, Arthur T. Catterall, Attorneys, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
We decide whether the penalty for tax underpayments attributable to valuation misstatements, 26 U.S.C. § 6662(b)(3), is applicable to an underpayment resulting from a basis-inflating transaction subsequently disregarded for lack of economic substance.
I. The Facts
A
This case involves an offsetting-option tax shelter, variants of which were marketed to high-income taxpayers in the late 1990's. Tax shelters of this type sought to generate large paper losses that a taxpayer could use to reduce taxable income. They did so by attempting to give the taxpayer an artificially high basis in a partnership interest, which enabled the taxpayer to claim a significant tax loss upon disposition of the interest. See IRS Notice 2000-44, 2000-2 Cum. Bull. 255 (describing offsetting-option tax shelters).
The particular tax shelter at issue in this case was developed by the now-defunct law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist and marketed by the accounting firm Ernst & Young under the name "Current Options Bring Reward Alternatives," or COBRA. Respondent Gary Woods and his employer, Billy Joe McCombs, agreed to participate in COBRA to reduce their tax liability for 1999. To that end, in November 1999 they created two general partnerships: one, Tesoro Drive Partners, to produce ordinary losses, and the other, SA Tesoro Investment Partners, to produce capital losses.
Over the next two months, acting through their respective wholly owned, limited liability companies, Woods and McCombs executed a series of transactions. First, they purchased from Deutsche Bank five 30-day currency-option spreads. Each of these option spreads was a package consisting of a so-called long option, which entitled Woods and McCombs to receive a sum of money from Deutsche Bank if a certain currency exchange rate exceeded a certain figure on a certain date, and a so-called short option, which entitled Deutsche Bank to receive a sum of money from Woods and McCombs if the exchange rate for the same currency on the same date exceeded a certain figure so close to the figure triggering the long option that both were likely to be triggered (or not to be triggered) on the fated date. Because the premium paid to Deutsche Bank for purchase of the long option was largely offset by the premium received from Deutsche Bank for sale of the short option, the net cost of the package to Woods and McCombs was substantially less than the cost of the long option alone. Specifically, the premiums paid for all five of the spreads' long options totaled $46 million, and the premiums received for the five spreads' short options totaled $43.7 million, so the net cost of the spreads was just $2.3 million. Woods and McCombs contributed the spreads to the partnerships along with about $900,000 in cash. The partnerships used the cash to purchase assets-Canadian dollars for the partnership that sought to produce ordinary losses, and Sun Microsystems stock for the partnership that sought to produce capital losses. The partnerships then terminated the five option spreads in exchange for a lump-sum payment from Deutsche Bank.
As the tax year drew to a close, Woods and McCombs transferred their interests in the partnerships to two S corporations. One corporation, Tesoro Drive Investors, Inc., received both partners' interests in Tesoro Drive Partners; the other corporation, SA Tesoro Drive Investors, Inc., received both partners' interests in SA Tesoro Investment Partners. Since this left each partnership with only a single partner (the relevant S corporation), the partnerships were liquidated by operation of law, and their assets-the Canadian dollars and Sun Microsystems stock, plus the remaining cash-were deemed distributed to the corporations. The corporations then sold those assets for modest gains of about $2,000 on the Canadian dollars and about $57,000 on the stock. But instead of gains, the corporations reported huge losses: an ordinary loss of more than $13 million on the sale of the Canadian dollars and a capital loss of more than $32 million on the sale of the stock. The losses were allocated between Woods and McCombs as the corporations' co-owners.
The reason the corporations were able to claim such vast losses-the alchemy at the heart of an offsetting-options tax shelter-lay in how Woods and McCombs calculated the tax basis of their interests in the partnerships. Tax basis is the amount used as the cost of an asset when computing how much its owner gained or lost for tax purposes when disposing of it. See J. Downes & J. Goodman, Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms 736 (2010). A partner's tax basis in a partnership interest-called "outside basis" to distinguish it from "inside basis," the partnership's basis in its own assets-is tied to the value of any assets the partner contributed to acquire the interest. See 26 U.S.C. § 722. Collectively, Woods and McCombs contributed roughly $3.2 million in option spreads and cash to acquire their interests in the two partnerships. But for purposes of computing outside basis, Woods and McCombs considered only the long component of the spreads and disregarded the nearly offsetting short component on the theory that it was "too contingent" to count. Brief for Respondent 14. As a result, they claimed a total adjusted outside basis of more than $48 million. Since the basis of property distributed to a partner by a liquidating partnership is equal to the adjusted basis of the partner's interest in the partnership (reduced by any cash distributed with the property), see § 732(b), the inflated outside basis figure was carried over to the S corporations' basis in the Canadian dollars and the stock, enabling the corporations to report enormous losses when those assets were sold. At the end of the day, Woods' and McCombs' $3.2 million investment generated tax losses that, if treated as valid, could have shielded more than $45 million of income from taxation.
B
The Internal Revenue Service, however, did not treat the COBRA-generated losses as valid. Instead, after auditing the partnerships' tax returns, it issued to each partnership a Notice of Final Partnership Administrative Adjustment, or "FPAA." In the FPAAs, the IRS determined that the partnerships had been "formed and availed of solely for purposes of tax avoidance by artificially overstating basis in the partnership interests of [the] purported partners." App. 92, 146. Because the partnerships had "no business purpose other than tax avoidance," the IRS said, they "lacked economic substance"-or, put more starkly, they were "sham[s]"-so the IRS would disregard them for tax purposes and disallow the related losses. Ibid. And because there were no valid partnerships for tax purposes, the IRS determined that the partners had "not established adjusted bases in their respective partnership interests in an amount greater than zero," id., at 95, ¶ 7, 149, ¶ 7 so that any resulting tax underpayments would be subject to a 40-percent penalty for gross valuation misstatements, see 26 U.S.C. § 6662(b)(3).
Woods, as the tax-matters partner for both partnerships, sought judicial review of the FPAAs pursuant to § 6226(a). The District Court held that the partnerships were properly disregarded as shams but that the valuation-misstatement penalty did not apply. The Government appealed the decision on the penalty to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. While the appeal was pending, the Fifth Circuit held in a similar case that, under Circuit precedent, the valuation-misstatement penalty does not apply when the relevant transaction is disregarded for lacking economic substance. Bemont Invs., LLC v. United States, 679 F.3d 339, 347-348 (2012). In a concurrence joined by the other members of the panel, Judge Prado acknowledged that this rule was binding Circuit law but suggested that it was mistaken. See id., at 351-355. A different panel subsequently affirmed the District Court's decision in this case in a one-paragraph opinion, declaring the issue "well settled." 471 Fed.Appx. 320 ( per curiam ), reh'g denied (2012).1
We granted certiorari to resolve a Circuit split over whether the valuation-misstatement penalty is applicable in these circumstances. 569 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 1632, --- L.Ed.2d ---- (2013). See Bemont, supra, at 354-355 (Prado, J., concurring) (recognizing "near-unanimous opposition" to the Fifth Circuit's rule). Because two Courts of Appeals have held that District Courts lacked jurisdiction to consider the valuation-misstatement penalty in similar circumstances, see Jade Trading, LLC v. United States, 598 F.3d 1372, 1380 (C.A.Fed.2010); Petaluma FX Partners, LLC v. Commissioner, 591 F.3d 649, 655-656 (C.A.D.C.2010), we ordered briefing on that question as well.
II. District-Court Jurisdiction
A
We begin with a brief explanation of the statutory scheme for dealing with partnership-related tax matters. A partnership does not pay federal income taxes; instead, its taxable income and losses pass through to the partners. 26 U.S.C. § 701. A partnership must report its tax items on an information return, § 6031(a), and the partners must report their distributive shares of the partnership's tax items on their own individual returns, §§ 702, 704.
Before 1982, the IRS had no way of correcting errors on a partnership's return in a single, unified proceeding. Instead, tax matters pertaining to all the members of a partnership were dealt with just like tax matters pertaining only to a single taxpayer: through deficiency proceedings at the individual-taxpayer level. See generally §§ 6211-6216 (2006 ed. and Supp. V). Deficiency proceedings require the IRS to issue a separate notice of deficiency to each taxpayer, § 6212(a) (2006 ed.), who can file a petition in the Tax Court disputing the alleged deficiency before paying it, § 6213(a). Having to use deficiency proceedings for partnership-related tax matters led to duplicative proceedings and the potential for inconsistent treatment of partners in the same partnership. Congress addressed those difficulties by enacting the Tax Treatment of Partnership Items Act of 1982, as Title IV of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA). 96 Stat. 648 (codified as amended at 26 U.S.C. §§ 6221-6232 (2006 ed. and Supp. V)).
Under TEFRA, partnership-related tax matters are addressed in two stages. First, the IRS must initiate proceedings at the partnership level to adjust "partnership items," those relevant to the partnership as a whole. §§ 6221, 6231(a)(3). It must issue an FPAA notifying the partners of any adjustments to partnership items, § 6223(a)(2), and the partners may seek judicial review of those adjustments, § 6226(a)-(b). Once the adjustments to partnership items have become final, the IRS may undertake further proceedings at the partner level to make any resulting "computational adjustments" in the tax liability of the individual partners. § 6231(a)(6). Most computational adjustments may be directly assessed against the partners, bypassing deficiency proceedings and permitting the partners to challenge the assessments only in post-payment refund actions. § 6230(a)(1), (c). Deficiency proceedings are still required, however, for certain computational adjustments that are attributable to "affected items," that is, items that are affected by (but are not themselves) partnership items. §§ 6230(a)(2)(A)(i), 6231(a)(5).
B
Under the TEFRA framework, a court in a partnership-level proceeding like this one has jurisdiction to determine not just partnership items, but also "the applicability of any penalty... which relates to an adjustment to a partnership item." § 6226(f). As both sides agree, a determination that a partnership lacks economic substance is an adjustment to a partnership item. Thus, the jurisdictional question here boils down to whether the valuation-misstatement penalty "relates to" the determination that the partnerships Woods and McCombs created were shams.
The Government's theory of why the penalty was triggered is based on a straightforward relationship between the economic-substance determination and the penalty. In the Government's view, there can be no outside basis in a sham partnership (which, for tax purposes, does not exist), so any partner who underpaid his individual taxes by declaring an outside basis greater than zero committed a valuation misstatement. In other words, the penalty flows logically and inevitably from the economic-substance determination.
Woods, however, argues that because outside basis is not a partnership item, but an affected item, a penalty that would rest on a misstatement of outside basis cannot be considered at the partnership level. He maintains, in short, that a penalty does not relate to a partnership-item adjustment if it "requires a partner-level determination," regardless of "whether or not the penalty has a connection to a partnership item." Brief for Respondent 27.
Because § 6226(f)'s "relates to" language is "essentially indeterminate," we must resolve this dispute by looking to "the structure of [TEFRA] and its other provisions." Maracich v. Spears, 570 U.S. ----, ----, 133 S.Ct. 2191, 2200, 186 L.Ed.2d 275 (2013) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). That inquiry makes clear that the District Court's jurisdiction is not as narrow as Woods contends. Prohibiting courts in partnership-level proceedings from considering the applicability of penalties that require partner-level inquiries would be inconsistent with the nature of the "applicability" determination that TEFRA requires.
Under TEFRA's two-stage structure, penalties for tax underpayment must be imposed at the partner level, because partnerships themselves pay no taxes. And imposing a penalty always requires some determinations that can be made only at the partner level. Even where a partnership's return contains significant errors, a partner may not have carried over those errors to his own return; or if he did, the errors may not have caused him to underpay his taxes by a large enough amount to trigger the penalty; or if they did, the partner may nonetheless have acted in good faith with reasonable cause, which is a bar to the imposition of many penalties, see § 6664(c)(1). None of those issues can be conclusively determined at the partnership level. Yet notwithstanding that every penalty must be imposed in partner-level proceedings after partner-level determinations, TEFRA provides that the applicability of some penalties must be determined at the partnership level. The applicability determination is therefore inherently provisional; it is always contingent upon determinations that the court in a partnership-level proceeding does not have jurisdiction to make. Barring partnership-level courts from considering the applicability of penalties that cannot be imposed without partner-level inquiries would render TEFRA's authorization to consider some penalties at the partnership level meaningless.
Other provisions of TEFRA confirm that conclusion. One requires the IRS to use deficiency proceedings for computational adjustments that rest on "affected items which require partner level determinations (other than penalties... that relate to adjustments to partnership items)." § 6230(a)(2)(A)(i). Another states that while a partnership-level determination "concerning the applicability of any penalty... which relates to an adjustment to a partnership item" is "conclusive" in a subsequent refund action, that does not prevent the partner from "assert[ing] any partner level defenses that may apply." § 6230(c)(4). Both these provisions assume that a penalty can relate to a partnership-item adjustment even if the penalty cannot be imposed without additional, partner-level determinations.
These considerations lead us to reject Woods' interpretation of § 6226(f). We hold that TEFRA gives courts in partnership-level proceedings jurisdiction to determine the applicability of any penalty that could result from an adjustment to a partnership item, even if imposing the penalty would also require determining affected or non-partnership items such as outside basis. The partnership-level applicability determination, we stress, is provisional: the court may decide only whether adjustments properly made at the partnership level have the potential to trigger the penalty. Each partner remains free to raise, in subsequent, partner-level proceedings, any reasons why the penalty may not be imposed on him specifically.
Applying the foregoing principles to this case, we conclude that the District Court had jurisdiction to determine the applicability of the valuation-misstatement penalty-to determine, that is, whether the partnerships' lack of economic substance (which all agree was properly decided at the partnership level) could justify imposing a valuation-misstatement penalty on the partners. When making that determination, the District Court was obliged to consider Woods' arguments that the economic-substance determination was categorically incapable of triggering the penalty. Deferring consideration of those arguments until partner-level proceedings would replicate the precise evil that TEFRA sets out to remedy: duplicative proceedings, potentially leading to inconsistent results, on a question that applies equally to all of the partners.
To be sure, the District Court could not make a formal adjustment of any partner's outside basis in this partnership-level proceeding. See Petaluma, 591 F.3d, at 655. But it nonetheless could determine whether the adjustments it did make, including the economic-substance determination, had the potential to trigger a penalty; and in doing so, it was not required to shut its eyes to the legal impossibility of any partner's possessing an outside basis greater than zero in a partnership that, for tax purposes, did not exist. Each partner's outside basis still must be adjusted at the partner level before the penalty can be imposed, but that poses no obstacle to a partnership-level court's provisional consideration of whether the economic-substance determination is legally capable of triggering the penalty.2
III. Applicability of Valuation-Misstatement Penalty
A
Taxpayers who underpay their taxes due to a "valuation misstatement" may incur an accuracy-related penalty. A 20-percent penalty applies to "the portion of any underpayment which is attributable to... [a]ny substantial valuation misstatement under chapter 1." 26 U.S.C. § 6662(a), (b)(3). Under the version of the penalty statute in effect when the transactions at issue here occurred,
"there is a substantial valuation misstatement under chapter 1 if... the value of any property (or the adjusted basis of any property) claimed on any return of tax imposed by chapter 1 is 200 percent or more of the amount determined to be the correct amount of such valuation or adjusted basis (as the case may be)." § 6662(e)(1)(A) (2000 ed.).
If the reported value or adjusted basis exceeds the correct amount by at least 400 percent, the valuation misstatement is considered not merely substantial, but "gross," and the penalty increases to 40 percent. § 6662(h).3
The penalty's plain language makes it applicable here. As we have explained, the COBRA transactions were designed to generate losses by enabling the partners to claim a high outside basis in the partnerships. But once the partnerships were deemed not to exist for tax purposes, no partner could legitimately claim an outside basis greater than zero. Accordingly, if a partner used an outside basis figure greater than zero to claim losses on his tax return, and if deducting those losses caused the partner to underpay his taxes, then the resulting underpayment would be "attributable to" the partner's having claimed an "adjusted basis" in the partnerships that exceeded "the correct amount of such... adjusted basis." § 6662(e)(1)(A).
An IRS regulation provides that when an asset's true value or adjusted basis is zero, "[t]he value or adjusted basis claimed... is considered to be 400 percent or more of the correct amount," so that the resulting valuation misstatement is automatically deemed gross and subject to the 40-percent penalty. Treas. Reg. § 1.6662-5(g), 26 CFR § 1.6662-5(g) (2013). 4
B
Against this straightforward application of the statute, Woods' primary argument is that the economic-substance determination did not result in a "valuation misstatement." He asserts that the statutory terms "value" and "valuation" connote "a factual-rather than legal-concept," and that the penalty therefore applies only to factual misrepresentations about an asset's worth or cost, not to misrepresentations that rest on legal errors (like the use of a sham partnership). Brief for Respondent 35.
We are not convinced. To begin, we doubt that "value" is limited to factual issues and excludes threshold legal determinations. Cf. Powers v. Commissioner, 312 U.S. 259, 260, 61 S.Ct. 509, 85 L.Ed. 817 (1941) ("[W]hat criterion should be employed for determining the 'value' of the gifts is a question of law"); Chapman Glen Ltd. v. Commissioner, 140 T.C. No. 15, 2013 WL 2319282, at *17 (2013) ("[T]hree approaches are used to determine the fair market value of property," and "which approach to apply in a case is a question of law"). But even if "value" were limited to factual matters, the statute refers to "value" or "adjusted basis," and there is no justification for extending that limitation to the latter term, which plainly incorporates legal inquiries. An asset's "basis" is simply its cost, 26 U.S.C. § 1012(a) (2006 ed., Supp. V), but calculating its "adjusted basis" requires the application of a host of legal rules, see §§ 1011(a) (2006 ed.), 1016 (2006 ed. and Supp. V), including specialized rules for calculating the adjusted basis of a partner's interest in a partnership, see § 705 (2006 ed.). The statute contains no indication that the misapplication of one of those legal rules cannot trigger the penalty. Were we to hold otherwise, we would read the word "adjusted" out of the statute.
To overcome the plain meaning of "adjusted basis," Woods asks us to interpret the parentheses in the statutory phrase "the value of any property (or the adjusted basis of any property)" as a signal that "adjusted basis" is merely explanatory or illustrative and has no meaning independent of "value." The parentheses cannot bear that much weight, given the compelling textual evidence to the contrary. For one thing, the terms reappear later in the same sentence sans parentheses-in the phrase "such valuation or adjusted basis." Moreover, the operative terms are connected by the conjunction "or." While that can sometimes introduce an appositive-a word or phrase that is synonymous with what precedes it ("Vienna or Wien," "Batman or the Caped Crusader")-its ordinary use is almost always disjunctive, that is, the words it connects are to "be given separate meanings." Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330, 339, 99 S.Ct. 2326, 60 L.Ed.2d 931 (1979). And, of course, there is no way that "adjusted basis" could be regarded as synonymous with "value." Finally, the terms' second disjunctive appearance is followed by "as the case may be," which eliminates any lingering doubt that the preceding items are alternatives. See New Oxford American Dictionary 269 (3d ed. 2010). The parentheses thus do not justify "rob[bing] the term ['adjusted basis'] of its independent and ordinary significance." Reiter, supra, at 338-339, 99 S.Ct. 2326.
Our holding that the valuation-misstatement penalty encompasses legal as well as factual misstatements of adjusted basis does not make superfluous the new penalty that Congress enacted in 2010 for transactions lacking in economic substance, see § 1409(b)(2), 124 Stat. 1068-1069 (codified at 26 U.S.C. § 6662(b)(6) (2006 ed., Supp. V)). The new penalty covers all sham transactions, including those that do not cause the taxpayer to misrepresent value or basis; thus, it can apply in situations where the valuation-misstatement penalty cannot. And the fact that both penalties are potentially applicable to sham transactions resulting in valuation misstatements is not problematic. Congress recognized that penalties might overlap in a given case, and it addressed that possibility by providing that a taxpayer generally cannot receive more than one accuracy-related penalty for the same underpayment. See § 6662(b) (2006 ed. and Supp. V).5
C
In the alternative, Woods argues that any underpayment of tax in this case would be | What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations. | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | [
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68
] | sc_adminaction |
VILLAGE OF SCHAUMBURG v. CITIZENS FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT et al.
No. 78-1335.
Argued October 30, 1979
Decided February 20, 1980
White, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Burger, C. J., and BreNnan, Stewart, Marshall, BlacKMUN, Powell, and SteveNS, JJ., joined. RehNquist, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 639.
Jack M. Siegel argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
Milton I. Shadur argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Geraldine Soat Brown and David Goldberger.
Adam Yarmolinsky argued the cause and filed a brief for the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by J. Albert Woll and Laurence Gold for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations; by Barry A, Fisher for the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity; by Arnold H. Gold for the Los Angeles Council of National Voluntary Health Agencies; by Alan B. Morrison for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy et al.; and by Sanford Jay Rosen for the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U. S. A. et al.
Me. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue in this case is the validity under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of a municipal ordinance prohibiting the solicitation of contributions by charitable organizations that do not use at least 75 percent of their receipts for “charitable purposes,” those purposes being defined to exclude solicitation expenses, salaries, overhead, and other administrative expenses. The Court of Appeals held the ordinance unconstitutional. We affirm that judgment.
I
The Village of Schaumburg (Village) is a suburban community located 25 miles northwest of Chicago, Ill. On March 12, 1974, the Village adopted “An Ordinance Regulating Soliciting by Charitable Organizations,” codified as Art. Ill of Chapter 22 of the Schaumburg Village Code (Code), which regulates the activities of “peddlers and solicitors,” Code §22-1 et seq. (1975). Article III provides that “[e]very charitable organization, which solicits or intends to solicit contributions from persons in the village by door-to-door solicitation or the use of public streets and public ways, shall prior to such solicitation apply for.a permit.” § 22-20. Solicitation of contributions for charitable organizations without a permit is prohibited and is punishable by a fine of up to $500 for each offense. Schaumburg Ordinance No. 1052, §§ 1, 8 (1974).
Section 22-20 (g), which is the focus of the constitutional challenge involved in this case, requires that permit applications, among other things, contain “[satisfactory proof that at least seventy-five per cent of the proceeds of such solicitations will be used directly for the charitable purpose of the organization.” In determining whether an organization satisfies the 75-percent requirement, the ordinance provides that
“the following items shall not be deemed to be used for the charitable purposes of the organization, to wit:
“(1) Salaries or commissions paid to solicitors;
“(2) Administrative expenses of the organization, including, but not limited to, salaries, attorneys’ fees, rents, telephone, advertising expenses, contributions to other organizations and persons, except as a charitable contribution and related expenses incurred as administrative or overhead items.” § 22-20 (g).
Respondent Citizens for a Better Environment (CBE) is an Illinois not-for-profit corporation organized for the purpose of promoting “the protection of the environment.” CBE is registered with the Illinois Attorney General’s Charitable Trust Division pursuant to Illinois law, and has been afforded tax-exempt status by the United States Internal Revenue Service, and gifts to it are deductible for federal income tax purposes. CBE requested permission to solicit contributions in the Village, but the Village denied CBE a permit because CBE could not demonstrate that 75 percent of its receipts would be used for “charitable purposes” as required by § 22-20 (g) of the Code. CBE then sued the Village in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, charging that the 75-percent requirement of § 22-20 (g) violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Declaratory and injunctive relief was sought.
In its amended complaint, CBE alleged that “[i]t was organized for the purpose, among others, of protecting, maintaining, and enhancing the quality of the Illinois environment.” The complaint also alleged:
“That incident to its purpose, CBE employs 'canvassers’ who are engaged in door-to-door activity in the Chicago metropolitan area, endeavoring to distribute literature on environmental topics and answer questions of an environmental nature when posed; solicit contributions to financially support the organization and its programs; receive grievances and complaints of an environmental nature regarding which CBE may afford assistance in the evaluation and redress of these grievances and complaints.”
The Village’s answer to the complaint averred that the foregoing allegations, even if true, would not be material to the issues of the case, acknowledged that CBE employed “canvassers” to solicit funds, but alleged that “CBE is primarily devoted to raising funds for the benefit and salary of its employees and that its charitable purposes are negligible as compared with the primary objective of raising funds.” The Village also alleged “that more than 60% of the funds collected [by CBE] have been spent for benefits of employees and not for any charitable purposes.”
CBE moved for summary judgment and filed affidavits describing its purposes and the activities of its “canvassers” as outlined in the complaint. One of the affidavits also alleged that “the door-to-door canvass is the single most important source of funds” for CBE. A second affidavit offered by CBE stated that in 1975 the organization spent 23.3% of its income on fundraising and 21.5% of its income on administration, and that in 1976 these figures were 23.3% and 16.5%, respectively. The Village opposed the motion but filed no counteraffidavits taking issue with the factual representations in CBE’s affidavits.
The District Court awarded summary judgment to CBE. The court recognized that although “the government may regulate solicitation in order to protect the community from fraud,... [a]ny action impinging upon the freedom of expression and discussion... must be minimal, and intimately related to an articulated, substantial government interest.” The court concluded that the 75-percent requirement of § 22-20 (g) of the Code on its face was “a form of censorship” prohibited by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Section 22-20 (g) was declared void on its face, its enforcement was enjoined, and the Village was ordered to issue a charitable solicitation permit to CBE.
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed. 590 F. 2d 220 (1978). The court rejected the Village’s argument that summary judgment was inappropriate because material issues of fact were disputed. Because CBE challenged the facial validity of the village ordinance on First Amendment grounds, the court held that “any issue of fact as to the nature of CBE’s particular activities is not material... and is therefore not an obstacle to the granting of summary judgment.” Id., at 223. Like the District Court, the Court of Appeals recognized that the Village had a legitimate interest in regulating solicitation to protect its residents from fraud and the disruption of privacy, but that such regulation “must be done 'with narrow specificity’ ” when First Amendment interests are affected. Id., at 223-224. The court concluded that even if the 75-percent requirement might be valid as applied to other types of charitable solicitation, the Village’s requirement was unreasonable on its face because it barred solicitation by advocacy-oriented organizations even “where it is made clear that the contributions will be used for reasonable salaries of those who will gather and disseminate information relevant to the organization’s purpose.” Id., at 226. The court distinguished National Foundation v. Fort Worth, 415 F. 2d 41 (CA5 1969), cert. denied, 396 U. S. 1040 (1970), which upheld an ordinance authorizing denial of charitable solicitation permits to organizations with excessive solicitation costs, on the ground that although the Fort Worth ordinance deemed unreasonable solicitation costs in excess of 20 percent of gross receipts, it nevertheless permitted organizations that demonstrated the reasonableness of such costs to obtain solicitation permits.
We granted certiorari, 441 U. S. 922 (1979), to review the Court of Appeals’ determination that the village ordinance violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
II
It is urged that the ordinance should be sustained because it deals only with solicitation and because any charity is free to propagate its views from door to door in the Village without a permit as long as it refrains from soliciting money. But this represents a far too limited view of our prior cases relevant to canvassing and soliciting by religious and charitable organizations.
In Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147 (1939), a canvasser for a religious society, who passed out booklets from door to door and asked for contributions, was arrested and convicted under an ordinance which prohibited canvassing, soliciting, or distribution of circulars from house to house without a permit, the issuance of which rested much in the discretion of public officials. The state courts construed the ordinance as aimed mainly at house-to-house canvassing and solicitation. This distinguished the case from Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U. S. 444 (1938), which had invalidated on its face and on First Amendment grounds an ordinance criminalizing the distribution of any handbill at any time or place without a permit. Because the canvasser’s conduct “amounted to the solicitation... of money contributions without a permit” Schneider, supra, at 159, and because the ordinance was thought to be valid as a protection against fraudulent solicitations, the conviction was sustained. This Court disagreed, noting that the ordinance applied not only to religious canvassers but also to “one who wishes to present his views on political, social or economic questions,” 308 U. S., at 163, and holding that the city could not, in the name of preventing fraudulent appeals, subject door-to-door advocacy and the communication of views to the discretionary permit requirement. The Court pointed out that the ordinance was not limited to those “who canvass for private profit,” ibid., and reserved the question whether “commercial soliciting and canvassing” could be validly subjected to such controls. Id., at 165.
Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940), involved a state statute forbidding the solicitation of contributions of anything of value by religious, charitable, or philanthropic causes without obtaining official approval. Three members of a religious group were convicted under the statute for selling books, distributing pamphlets, and soliciting contributions or donations. Their convictions were affirmed in the state courts on the ground that they were soliciting funds and that the statute was valid as an attempt to protect the public from fraud. This Court set aside the convictions, holding that although a “general regulation, in the public interest, of solicitation, which does not involve any religious test and does not unreasonably obstruct or delay the collection of funds, is not open to any constitutional objection,” id., at 305, to “condition the solicitation of aid for the perpetuation of religious views or systems upon a license, the grant of which rests in the exercise of a determination by state authority as to what is a religious cause,” id., at 307, was considered to be an invalid prior restraint on the free exercise of religion. Although Cantwell turned on the Free Exercise Clause, the Court has subsequently understood Cantwell to have implied that soliciting funds involves interests protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U. S. 748, 761 (1976); Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350, 363 (1977).
In Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U. S. 52 (1942), an arrest was made for distributing on the public streets a commercial advertisement in violation of an ordinance forbidding this distribution. Addressing the question left open in Schneider, the Court recognized that while municipalities may not unduly restrict the right of communicating information in the public streets, the “Constitution imposes no such restraint on government as respects purely commercial advertising.” 316 U. S., at 54. The Court reasoned that unlike speech “communicating information and disseminating opinion” commercial advertising implicated only the solicitor’s interest in pursuing “a gainful occupation.” Ibid.
The following Term in Jamison v. Texas, 318 U. S. 413 (1943), the Court, without dissent, and with the agreement of the author of the Chrestensen opinion, held that although purely commercial leaflets could be banned from the streets, a State could not “prohibit the distribution of handbills in the pursuit of a clearly religious activity merely because the handbills invite the purchase of books for the improved understanding of the religion or because the handbills seek in a lawful fashion to promote the raising of funds for religious purposes.” 318 U. S., at 417. The Court reaffirmed what it deemed to be an identical holding in Schneider, as well as the ruling in Cantwell that “a state might not prevent the collection of funds for a religious purpose by unreasonably obstructing or delaying their collection.” 318 U. S., at 417. See also, Largent v. Texas, 318 U. S. 418 (1943).
In the course of striking down a tax on the sale of religious literature, the majority opinion in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943), reiterated the holding in Jamison that the distribution of handbills was not transformed into an unprotected commercial activity by the solicitation of funds. Recognizing that drawing the line between purely commercial ventures and protected distributions of written material was a difficult task, the Court went on to hold that the sale of religious literature by itinerant evangelists in the course of spreading their doctrine was not a commercial enterprise beyond the protection of the First Amendment.
On the same day, the Court invalidated a municipal ordinance that forbade the door-to-door distribution of handbills, circulars, or other advertisements. None of the justifications for the general prohibition was deemed sufficient; the right of the individual resident to warn off such solicitors was deemed sufficient protection for the privacy of the citizen. Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141 (1943). On its facts, the case did not involve the solicitation of funds or the sale of literature.
Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 (1945), held that the First Amendment barred enforcement of a state statute requiring a permit before soliciting membership in any labor organization. Solicitation and speech were deemed to be so intertwined that a prior permit could not be required. The Court also recognized that “espousal of the cause of labor is entitled to no higher constitutional protection than the espousal of any other lawful cause.” Id., at 538. The Court rejected the notion that First Amendment claims could be dismissed merely by urging “that an organization for which the rights of free speech and free assembly are claimed is one ‘engaged in business activities’ or that the individual who leads it in exercising these rights receives compensation for doing so.” Id., at 531. Concededly, the “collection of funds” might be subject to reasonable regulation, but the Court ruled that such regulation “must be done, and the restriction applied, in such a manner as not to intrude upon the rights of free speech and free assembly.” Id., at 540-541.
In 1951, Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U. S. 622, was decided. That case involved an ordinance making it criminal to enter premises without an invitation to sell goods, wares, and merchandise. The ordinance was sustained as applied to door-to-door solicitation of magazine subscriptions. The Court held that the sale of literature introduced “a commercial feature,” id., at 642, and that the householder’s interest in privacy outweighed any rights of the publisher to distribute magazines by uninvited entry on private property. The Court’s opinion, however, did not indicate that the solicitation of gifts or contributions by religious or charitable organizations should be deemed commercial activities, nor did the facts of Breará involve the sale of religious literature or similar materials. Martin v. Struthers, supra, was distinguished but not overruled.
Hynes v. Mayor of Oradell, 425 U. S. 610 (1976), dealt with a city ordinance requiring an identification permit for canvassing or soliciting from house to house for charitable or political purposes. Based on its review of prior cases, the Court held that soliciting and canvassing from door to door were subject to reasonable regulation so as to protect the citizen against crime and undue annoyance, but that the First Amendment required such controls to be drawn with “ ‘narrow specificity.’ ” Id., at 620. The ordinance was invalidated as unacceptably vague.
Prior authorities, therefore, clearly establish that charitable appeals for funds, on the street or door to door, involve a variety of speech interests — communication of information, the dissemination and propagation of views and ideas, and the advocacy of causes — that are within the protection of the First Amendment. Soliciting financial support is undoubtedly subject to reasonable regulation but the latter must be undertaken with due regard for the reality that solicitation is characteristically intertwined with informative and perhaps persuasive speech seeking support for particular causes or for particular views on economic, political, or social issues, and for the reality that without solicitation the flow of such information and advocacy would likely cease. Canvassers in such contexts are necessarily more than solicitors for money. Furthermore, because charitable solicitation does more than inform private economic decisions and is not primarily concerned with providing information about the characteristics and costs of goods and services, it has not been dealt with in our cases as a variety of purely commercial speech.
III
The issue before us, then, is not whether charitable solicitations in residential neighborhoods are within the protections of the First Amendment. It is clear that they are. “[0]ur cases long have protected speech even though it is in the form of... a solicitation to pay or contribute money, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, [376 U. S. 254 (1964)].” Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S., at 363.
The issue is whether the Village has exercised its power to regulate solicitation in such a manner as not unduly to intrude upon the rights of free speech. Hynes v. Mayor of Oradell, supra, at 616. In pursuing this question we must first deal with the claim of the Village that summary judgment was improper because there was an unresolved factual dispute concerning the true character of CBE’s organization. Although CBE’s affidavits in support of its motion for summary judgment and describing its interests, the activities of its canvassers, and the percentage of its receipts devoted to salaries and administrative expenses were not controverted, the District Court made no findings with respect to the nature of CBE’s activities; and the Court of Appeals expressly stated that the facts with respect to the internal affairs and operations of the organization were immaterial to a proper resolution of the case. The Village claims, however, that it should have had a chance to prove that the 75-percent requirement is valid as applied to CBE because CBE spends so much of its resources for the benefit of its employees that it may appropriately be deemed an organization existing for private profit rather than for charitable purposes.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that CBE was entitled to its judgment of facial invalidity if the ordinance purported to prohibit canvassing by a substantial category of charities to which the 75-percent limitation could not be applied consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, even if there was no demonstration that CBE itself was one of these organizations. Given a case or controversy, a litigant whose own activities are unprotected may nevertheless challenge a statute by showing that it substantially abridges the First Amendment rights of other parties not before the court. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 114-121 (1972); Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568 (1942); Schneider v. State, 308 U. S., at 162—165; Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U. S., at 451; Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, 97 (1940). See also the discussion in Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 612-616 (1973), and in Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U. S. 809, 815-817 (1975). In these First Amendment contexts, the courts are inclined to disregard the normal rule against permitting one whose conduct may validly be prohibited to challenge the proscription as it applies to others because of the possibility that protected speech or associative activities may be inhibited by the overly broad reach of the statute.
We have declared the overbreadth doctrine to be inapplicable in certain commercial speech cases, Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, supra, at 381, but as we have indicated, that limitation does not concern us here. The Court of Appeals was thus free to inquire whether § 22-20 (g) was overbroad, a question of law that involved no dispute about the characteristics of CBE. On this basis, proceeding to rule on the merits of the summary judgment was proper. As we have indicated, we also agree with the Court of Appeals’ ruling on the motion.
IV
Although indicating that the 75-percent limitation might be enforceable against the more “traditional charitable organizations” or “where solicitors represent themselves as mere conduits for contributions,” 590 F. 2d, at 225, 226, the Court of Appeals identified a class of charitable organizations as to which the 75-percent rule could not constitutionally be applied. These were the organizations whose primary purpose is not to provide money or services for the poor, the needy or other worthy objects of charity, but to gather and disseminate information about and advocate positions on matters of public concern. These organizations characteristically use paid solicitors who “necessarily combine” the solicitation of financial support with the “functions of information dissemination, discussion, and advocacy of public issues.” Id., at 225. These organizations also pay other employees to obtain and process the necessary information and to arrive at and announce in suitable form the organizations’ preferred positions on the issues of interest to them. Organizations of this kind, although they might pay only reasonable salaries, would necessarily spend more than 25 percent of their budgets on salaries and administrative expenses and would be completely barred from solicitation in the Village. The Court of Appeals concluded that such a prohibition was an unjustified infringement of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that the 75-percent limitation is a direct and substantial limitation on protected activity that cannot be sustained unless it serves a sufficiently strong, subordinating interest that the Village is entitled to protect. We also agree that the Village’s proffered justifications are inadequate and that the ordinance cannot survive scrutiny under the First Amendment.
The Village urges that the 75-percent requirement is intimately related to substantial governmental interests “in protecting the public from fraud, crime and undue annoyance.” These interests are indeed substantial, but they are only peripherally promoted by the 75-percent requirement and could be sufficiently served by measures less destructive of First Amendment interests.
Prevention of fraud is the Village’s principal justification for prohibiting solicitation by charities that spend more than one-quarter of their receipts on salaries and administrative expenses. The submission is that any organization using more than 25 percent of its receipts on fundraising, salaries, and overhead is not a charitable, but a commercial, for-profit enterprise and that to permit it to represent itself as a charity is fraudulent. But, as the Court of Appeals recognized, this cannot be true of those organizations that are primarily engaged in research, advocacy, or public education and that use their own paid staff to carry out these functions as well as to solicit financial support. The Village, consistently with the First Amendment, may not label such groups “fraudulent” and bar them from canvassing on the streets and house to house. Nor may the Village lump such organizations with those that in fact are using the charitable label as a cloak for profitmaking and refuse to employ more precise measures to separate one kind from the other. The Village may serve its legitimate interests, but it must do so by narrowly drawn regulations designed to serve those interests without unnecessarily interfering with First Amendment freedoms. Hynes v. Mayor of Oradell, 425 U. S., at 620; First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 786 (1978). “Broad prophylactic rules in the area of free expression are suspect. Precision of regulation must be the touchstone....” NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 438 (1963) (citations omitted).
The Village’s legitimate interest in preventing fraud can be better served by measures less intrusive than a direct prohibition on solicitation. Fraudulent misrepresentations can be prohibited and the penal laws used to punish such conduct directly. Schneider v. State, 308 U. S., at 164; Cantwell v. Connecticut. 310 U. S., at 306; Viroinia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U. S., at 771. Efforts to promote disclosure of the finances of charitable organizations also may assist in preventing fraud by informing the public of the ways in which their contributions will be employed. Such measures may help make contribution decisions more informed, while leaving to individual choice the decision whether to contribute to organizations that spend large amounts on salaries and administrative expenses.
We also fail to perceive any substantial relationship between the 75-percent requirement and the protection of public safety or of residential privacy. There is no indication that organizations devoting more than one-quarter of their funds to salaries and administrative expenses are any more likely to employ solicitors who would be a threat to public safety than are other charitable organizations. Other provisions in the ordinance that are not challenged here, such as the provision making it unlawful for charitable organizations to use convicted felons as solicitors, Code § 22-23, may bear some relation to public safety; the 75-percent requirement does not.
The 75-percent requirement is related to the protection of privacy only in the most indirect of ways. As the Village concedes, householders are equally disturbed by solicitation on behalf of organizations satisfying the 75-percent requirement as they are by solicitation on behalf of other organizations. The 75-percent requirement protects privacy only by reducing the total number of solicitors, as would any prohibition on solicitation. The ordinance is not directed to the unique privacy interests of persons residing in their homes because it applies not only to door-to-door solicitation, but also to solicitation on “public streets and public ways.” § 22-20. Other provisions of the ordinance, which are not challenged here, such as the provision permitting homeowners to bar solicitors from their property by posting signs reading “No Solicitors or Peddlers Invited,” § 22-24, suggest the availability of less intrusive and more effective measures to protect privacy. See Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U. S. 728 (1970); Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S., at 148.
The 75-percent requirement in the village ordinance plainly is insufficiently related to the governmental interests asserted in its support to justify its interference with protected speech. “Frauds may be denounced as offenses and punished by law. Trespasses may similarly be forbidden. If it is said that these means are less efficient and convenient than... [deciding in advance] what information may be disseminated from house to house, and who may impart the information, the answer is that considerations of this sort do not empower a municipality to abridge freedom of speech and press.” Schneider v. State, supra, at 164.
We find no reason to disagree with the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that § 22-20 (g) is unconstitutionally overbroad. Its judgment is therefore affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Article II of Chapter 22 regulates commercial solicitation by requiring “for profit peddlers and solicitors” to obtain a commercial license. For the purposes of Art. II, peddlers and solicitors are defined as any persons who, going from place to place without appointment, offer goods or services for sale or take orders for future delivery of goods or services. Code § 22-6. Section 22-7 requires any person “engage [d] in the business of a peddler or solicitor within the village” to obtain a license. Licenses can be obtained by application to the village collector and payment of an annual fee ranging from $10 to $25. License applications must contain a variety of information, including the kind of merchandise to be offered, the address of the applicant, the name of the applicant’s employer, and whether the applicant has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor or felony. § 22-8. A license must be denied to anyone “who is not found to be a person of good character and reputation.” § 22-9.
Solicitation is permitted between the hours of 9 a. m. and 6 p. m., Monday through Saturday. § 22-13. Cheating, deception, or fraudulent misrepresentation by peddlers or solicitors is prohibited by § 22-12. Peddlers and solicitors are required to depart “immediately and peacefully” from the premises of any home displaying a sign, “No Solicitors or Peddlers Invited,” near the main entrance. §§ 22-15 and 22-16.
Persons violating the provisions of Art. II may be fined up to $500 for each offense. § 22-18. The village manager may revoke the license of any peddler or solicitor who violates any village ordinance or any state or federal law or who ceases to possess good character. § 22-11.
Article III of Chapter 22 includes §§ 22-19 to 22-24 of the Code. Section 22-19 defines a “charitable organization” as “[a]ny benevolent, philanthropic, patriotic, not-for-profit, or eleemosynary group, association or corporation, or such organization purporting to be such, which solicits and collects funds for charitable purposes.” A “charitable purpose” is defined as “[a]ny charitable, benevolent, philanthropic, patriotic, or eleemosynary purpose.” A “contribution” is defined as “[t]he promise or grant of any money or property of any kind or value, including payments for literature in excess of | What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations. | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | [
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DAVIS et al. v. SCHERER
No. 83-490.
Argued April 16, 1984
Decided June 28, 1984
Powell, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Burger, C. J., and White, Rehnquist, and O’Connor, JJ., joined. Brennan, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ., joined, post, p. 197.
Mitchell D. Franks argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were Jim Smith, Attorney General of Florida, and Vicki Gordon Kaufman, Bruce A. Minnick, and Pamela Lutton-Shields, Assistant Attorneys General.
Richard G. Wilkins argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General Willard, Deputy Solicitor General Getter, Barbara L. Herwig, and John F. Cordes.
Bruce S. Rogow argued the cause and filed a brief for appellee.
Michael S. Heifer, Burt Neubome, and Charles S. Sims filed a brief for the American Civil Liberties Union as amicus curiae urging affirmance.
Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellants in this case challenge the holding of the Court of Appeals that a state official loses his qualified immunity from suit for deprivation of federal constitutional rights if he is found to have violated the clear command of a state administrative regulation.
I
The present controversy arose when appellee Gregory Scherer, who was employed by the Florida Highway Patrol as a radio-teletype operator, applied for permission from the Patrol to work as well for the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office as a reserve deputy. To avoid conflicts of interest, an order of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles required that proposed outside employment of Patrol members be approved by the Department. A letter from appellee’s troop commander, Capt. K. S. Sconiers, dated September 1, 1977, granted appellee permission to accept the part-time work. The letter noted that permission would be rescinded “should [the] employment interfere . . . with your duties with [the] department.” 543 F. Supp. 4, 8 (ND Fla. 1981). Later that month, Capt. Sconiers informed appellee by memorandum that permission to accept the employment was revoked. As Capt. Sconiers explained at trial, his superiors in the Highway Patrol had determined that appellee’s reserve deputy duties could conflict with his duties at the Highway Patrol.
Appellee continued to work at the second job, despite the revocation of permission. Oral discussions and an exchange of letters among appellee and his superiors ensued. Sgt. Clark, appellee’s immediate superior, advised appellee that he was violating instructions; appellee explained that he had invested too much money in uniforms to give up his part-time work. Lt. Wiggins, the next highest officer in the chain of command, then orally and by memorandum ordered appellee to quit his part-time job. Appellee explained to Lt. Wiggins that he saw no conflict between the two jobs and would not quit his second job.
Sgt. Clark and Lt. Wiggins had submitted memoranda to Capt. Sconiers that described appellee’s continued employment and their conversations with appellee. Appellee also wrote to Capt. Sconiers explaining that he saw no reason to resign his outside employment. So advised, Capt. Sconiers recommended to Col. J. E. Beach, director of the Florida Highway Patrol, that appellee be suspended for three days for violation of the dual-employment policy. Capt. Sconiers submitted a number of documents, including his own letters approving appellee’s request and rescinding the approval; ap-pellee’s letter of request and subsequent letter explaining his refusal to quit his job; and the memoranda of Sgt. Clark and Lt. Wiggins. On the basis of these documents, Col. Beach on October 24, 1977, ordered that appellee’s employment with the Florida Highway Patrol be terminated.
On November 10, 1977, appellee filed an appeal with the Florida Career Service Commission. Before the Commission had heard appellee’s administrative appeal from his dismissal, appellee and the Department settled the dispute. The settlement reinstated appellee with backpay. But friction between appellee and his superiors continued, and in January 1979, after appellee was suspended from the Patrol, he resigned “to avoid further harassment and to remove a cloud over his employability.” Id., at 11.
Appellee then filed the present suit against appellants in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, seeking relief under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. Appellee’s complaint alleged that appellants in 1977 had violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by discharging appellee from his job without a formal pre-termination or a prompt post-termination hearing. Appel-lee requested a declaration that his rights had been violated and an award of money damages.
The District Court granted the requested relief for violation of appellee’s Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court found that appellee had a property interest in his job and that the procedures followed by appellants to discharge appellee were constitutionally “inadequate” under the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 14. Further, the court declared unconstitutional Florida’s statutory provisions governing removal of state employees, Fla. Stat. §110.061 (1977). Finally, the District Court concluded that appellants had forfeited their qualified immunity from suit under §1983 because appellee’s “due process rights were clearly established at the time of his October 24, 1977, dismissal.” Id., at 16.
Five days after entry of the District Court’s order, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided Weisbrod v. Donigan, 651 F. 2d 334 (1981). The Court of Appeals there held that Florida officials in 1978 had-violated no well-established due process rights in discharging a permanent state employee without a pretermination or a prompt post-termination hearing. On motion for reconsideration, the District Court found that Weisbrod required it to vacate its prior holding that appellants had forfeited their immunity by violating appellee’s clearly established constitutional rights. The court nevertheless reaffirmed its award of monetary damages. It reasoned that proof that an official had violated clearly established constitutional rights was not the “sole way” to overcome the official’s claim of qualified immunity. Applying the “totality of the circumstances” test of Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232, 247-248 (1974), the District Court held that “if an official violates his agency’s explicit regulations, which have the force of state law, [that] is evidence that his conduct is unreasonable.” 543 F. Supp., at 19. In this respect, the court noted that the personnel regulations of the Florida Highway Patrol clearly required “a complete investigation of the charge and an opportunity [for the employee] to respond in writing.” Id., at 20. The District Court concluded that appellants in discharging appellee had “followed procedures contrary to the department’s rules and regulations”; therefore, appellants were “not entitled to qualified immunity because their belief in the legality of the challenged conduct was unreasonable.” Ibid. The court explicitly relied upon the official violation of the personnel regulation, stating that “[i]f [the] departmental order had not been adopted . . . prior to [appellee’s] dismissal, no damages of any kind could be awarded.” Ibid. The District Court’s order amending the judgment did not discuss the issue whether appellants violated appellee’s federal constitutional rights. On that issue, the District Court relied upon its previous opinion; the court did not indicate that the personnel regulation was relevant to its analysis of appellee’s rights under the Due Process Clause.
The District Court also amended its judgment declaring the Florida civil service statute unconstitutional. The State’s motion for reconsideration had informed the court that the statute had been repealed by the Florida Legislature. The District Court therefore declared unconstitutional the provisions of the newly enacted civil service statute, Fla. Stat., ch. 110 (1982 and Supp. 1983), insofar as “they fail to provide a prompt post-termination hearing.” Id., at 21.
The Court of Appeals affirmed on the basis of the District Court’s opinion. Scherer v. Graham, 710 F. 2d 838 (CA11 1983). We noted probable jurisdiction, 464 U. S. 1017 (1983), to consider whether the Court of Appeals properly had declared the Florida statute unconstitutional and denied appellants’ claim of qualified immunity. Appellants do not seek review of the District Court’s finding that appellee’s constitutional rights were violated. As appellee now concedes that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the constitutionality of the Florida statute enacted in 1981, we consider only the issue of qualified immunity. We reverse.
II
In the present posture of this case, the District Court’s decision that appellants violated appellee’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment is undisputed. This finding of the District Court—based entirely upon federal constitutional law—resolves the merits of appellee’s underlying claim for relief under § 1983. It does not, however, decide the issue of damages. Even defendants who violate constitutional rights enjoy a qualified immunity that protects them from liability for damages unless it is further demonstrated that their conduct was unreasonable under the applicable standard. The precise standard for determining when an official may assert the qualified immunity defense has been clarified by recent cases, see Wood v. Strickland, 420 U. S. 308 (1975); Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478 (1978); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982). The present case requires us to consider the application of the standard where the official’s conduct violated a state regulation as well as a provision of the Federal Constitution.
The District Court’s analysis of appellants’ qualified immunity, written before our decision in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, supra, rests upon the “totality of the circumstances” surrounding appellee’s separation from his job. This Court applied that standard in Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S., at 247-248. As subsequent cases recognized, Wood v. Strickland, supra, at 322, the “totality of the circumstances” test comprised two separate inquiries: an inquiry into the objective reasonableness of the defendant official’s conduct in light of the governing law, and an inquiry into the official’s subjective state of mind. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, supra, rejected the inquiry into state of mind in favor of a wholly objective standard. Under Harlow, officials “are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” 457 U. S., at 818. Whether an official may prevail in his qualified immunity defense depends upon the “objective reasonableness of [his] conduct as measured by reference to clearly established law.” Ibid.(footnote deleted). No other “circumstances” are relevant to the issue of qualified immunity.
Appellee suggests, however, that the District Court judgment can be reconciled with Harlow in two ways. First, appellee urges that the record evinces a violation of constitutional rights that were clearly established. Second, in appellee’s view, the District Court correctly found that, absent a violation of clearly established constitutional rights, appellants’ violation of the state administrative regulation— although irrelevant to the merits of appellee’s underlying constitutional claim — was decisive of the qualified immunity question. In our view, neither submission is consistent with our prior cases.
A
Appellee contends that the District Court’s reliance in its qualified immunity analysis upon the state regulation was “superfluous,” Brief for Appellee 19, because the federal constitutional right to a pretermination or a prompt post-termination hearing was well established in the Fifth Circuit at the time of the conduct in question. As the District Court recognized in rejecting appellee’s contention, Weisbrod v. Donigan, 651 F. 2d 334 (CA5 1981), is authoritative precedent to the contrary. The Court of Appeals in that case found that the State had violated no clearly established due process right when it discharged a civil service employee without any pretermination hearing.
Nor was it unreasonable in this case, under Fourteenth Amendment due process principles, for the Department to conclude that appellee had been provided with the fundamentals of due process. As stated above, the District Court found that appellee was informed several times of the Department’s objection to his second employment and took advantage of several opportunities to present his reasons for believing that he should be permitted to retain his part-time employment despite the contrary rules of the Patrol. Appel-lee’s statement of reasons and other relevant information were before the senior official who made the decision to discharge appellee. And Florida law provided for a full evi-dentiary hearing after termination. We conclude that the District Court correctly held that appellee has demonstrated no violation of his clearly established constitutional rights.
B
Appellee’s second ground for affirmance in substance is that upon which the District Court relied. Appellee submits that appellants, by failing to comply with a clear state regulation, forfeited their qualified immunity from suit for violation of federal constitutional rights.
Appellee makes no claim that the appellants’ violation of the state regulation either is itself actionable under § 1983 or bears upon the claim of constitutional right that appellee asserts under §1983. And appellee also recognizes that Harlow v. Fitzgerald makes immunity available only to officials whose conduct conforms to a standard of “objective legal reasonableness.” 457 U. S., at 819. Nonetheless, in appel-lee’s view, official conduct that contravenes a statute or regulation is not “objectively reasonable” because officials fairly may be expected to conform their conduct to such legal norms. Appellee also argues that the lawfulness of official conduct under such a statute or regulation may be determined early in the lawsuit on motion for summary judgment. Appellee urges therefore that a defendant official’s violation of a clear statute or regulation, although not itself the basis of suit, should deprive the official of qualified immunity from damages for violation of other statutory or constitutional provisions.
On its face, appellee’s reasoning is not without some force. We decline, however, to adopt it. Even before Harlow, our cases had made clear that, under the “objective” component of the good-faith immunity test, “an official would not be held liable in damages under § 1983 unless the constitutional right he was alleged to have violated was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the violation.” Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S., at 498 (emphasis added); accord, Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U. S. 555, 562 (1978). Officials sued for constitutional violations do not lose their qualified immunity merely because their conduct violates some statutory or administrative provision.
We acknowledge of course that officials should conform their conduct to applicable statutes and regulations. For that reason, it is an appealing proposition that the violation of such provisions is a circumstance relevant to the official’s claim of qualified immunity. But in determining what circumstances a court may consider in deciding claims of qualified immunity, we choose “between the evils inevitable in any available alternative.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 813-814. Appellee’s submission, if adopted, would disrupt the balance that our cases strike between the interests in vindication of citizens’ constitutional rights and in public officials’ effective performance of their duties. The qualified immunity doctrine recognizes that officials can act without fear of harassing litigation only if they reasonably can anticipate when their conduct may give rise to liability for damages and only if unjustified lawsuits are quickly terminated. See Butz v. Economou, supra, at 506-507; Harlow v. Fitzgerald, supra, at 814, 818-819. Yet, under appellee’s submission, officials would be liable in an indeterminate amount for violation of any constitutional right — one that was not clearly defined or perhaps not even foreshadowed at the time of the alleged violation — merely because their official conduct also violated some statute or regulation. And, in § 1983 suits, the issue whether an official enjoyed qualified immunity then might depend upon the meaning or purpose of a state administrative regulation, questions that federal judges often may be unable to resolve on summary judgment.
Appellee proposes that his new rule for qualified immunity be limited by requiring that plaintiffs allege clear violation of a statute or regulation that advanced important interests or was designed to protect constitutional rights. Yet, once the door is opened to such inquiries, it is difficult to limit their scope in any principled manner. Federal judges would be granted large discretion to extract from various statutory and administrative codes those provisions that seem to them sufficiently clear or important to warrant denial of qualified immunity. And such judgments fairly could be made only after an extensive inquiry into whether the official in the circumstances of his decision should have appreciated the applicability and importance of the rule at issue. It would become more difficult, not only for officials to anticipate the possible legal consequences of their conduct, but also for trial courts to decide even frivolous suits without protracted litigation.
Nor is it always fair, or sound policy, to demand official compliance with statute and regulation on pain of money damages. Such officials as police officers or prison wardens, to say nothing of higher level executives who enjoy only qualified immunity, routinely make close decisions in the exercise of the broad authority that necessarily is delegated to them. These officials are subject to a plethora of rules, “often so voluminous, ambiguous, and contradictory, and in such flux that officials can only comply with or enforce them selectively.” See P. Schuck, Suing Government 66 (1983). In these circumstances, officials should not err always on the side of caution. “[Officials with a broad range of duties and authority must often act swiftly and firmly at the risk that action deferred will be futile or constitute virtual abdication of office.” Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S., at 246.
I — I I — < H — I
A plaintiff who seeks damages for violation of constitutional or statutory rights may overcome the defendant official’s qualified immunity only by showing that those rights were clearly established at the time of the conduct at issue. As appellee has made no such showing, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
One memorandum reported to Capt. Sconiers that appellee had continued to work at his second job; a second had been addressed by Lt. Wiggins to appellee; other memoranda summarized Lt. Wiggins’ and Sgt. Clark’s discussions with appellee.
Appellant Ralph Davis was Executive Director of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles at the time of appellee’s discharge from employment. Appellant Chester Blakemore succeeded Davis to that position and is a party only in his official capacity. Appellant Col. J. Eldridge Beach is Director of the Florida Highway Patrol, a division of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles; as noted above, he held that position at the time of appellee’s discharge.
The complaint also alleged that appellants, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, had coerced appellee to accept an inadequate settlement and had infringed upon appellee’s right of privacy guaranteed by the First and Ninth Amendments.
The District Court rejected appellee’s other constitutional claims.
The District Court relied in part on the reasoning of Williams v. Treen, 671 F. 2d 892 (CA5 1982), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 1126 (1983), that had held that official conduct in violation of an explicit and clearly established state regulation was per se unreasonable. 671 F. 2d, at 899.
These regulations specified in pertinent part:
“Upon receiving a report of... a violation of Department or Division rules and regulations . . . , the Director shall order a complete investigation to determine the true facts concerning the circumstances surrounding the alleged offense. The completed investigation report will also contain a written statement made by the employee against whom the complaint was made. If after a thorough study of all information concerning the violation, the Director decides that a . . . dismissal will be in order, he will present the employee in writing with the reason or reasons for such actions.” General Order No. 43, §1.C (Sept. 1, 1977), quoted in 543 F. Supp., at 19-20.
The Florida civil service statute now in force replaced the statute under which appellee’s employment was terminated. As the current state statute was never applied to appellee, he lacks standing to question its constitutionality. Cf. Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U. S. 103 (1969).
Appellee’s concession does not deprive the Court of appellate jurisdiction over the remaining issue in the case. In cases where the Court of Appeals has declared a state statute unconstitutional, this Court may decide the “Federal questions presented,” 28 U. S. C. §1254(2). Cf. Flournoy v. Wiener, 321 U. S. 253, 263 (1944); Leroy v. Great Western United Corp., 443 U. S. 173 (1979). Under § 1254(2), the Court retains discretion to decline to consider those issues in the case not related to the declaration that the state statute is invalid. In the present casé, however, we choose to consider the important question whether the District Court and the Court of Appeals properly denied appellants’ good-faith immunity from suit.
As we discuss below, it is contested whether these constitutional rights were clearly established at the time of appellants’ conduct.
We see no reason to doubt, as does the partial dissent, that the Court of Appeals in Weisbrod had full knowledge of its own precedents and correctly construed them.
As the partial dissent explains at some length, the decisions of this Court by 1978 had required “some kind of a hearing,” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 570, n. 7 (1972), prior to discharge of an employee who had a constitutionally protected property interest in his employment. But the Court had not determined what kind of a hearing must be provided. Such a determination would require a careful balancing of the competing interests — of the employee and the State — implicated in the official decision at issue. See Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 335 (1976). As the Court had considered circumstances in which no hearing at all had been provided prior to termination, Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593 (1972), or in which the requirements of due process were met, Board of Regents v. Roth, supra; Arnett v. Kennedy, 416 U. S. 134 (1974); Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341 (1976); Codd v. Velger, 429 U. S. 624 (1977), there had been no occasion to specify any minimally acceptable procedures for termination of employment. The partial dissent cites no case establishing that appellee was entitled to more elaborate notice, or a more formal opportunity to respond, than he in fact received.
State law may bear upon a claim under the Due Process Clause when the property interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment are created by state law. See Board of Regents v. Roth, supra, at 577. Appellee’s property interest in his job under Florida law is undisputed. Appellee does not contend here that the procedural rules in state law govern the constitutional analysis of what process was due to him under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In Harlow, the Court acknowledged that officials may lose their immunity by violating “clearly established statutory . . . rights.” 457 U. S., at 818. This is the case where the plaintiff seeks to recover damages for violation of those statutory rights, as in Harlow itself, see id., at 820, n. 36, and as in many §1983 suits, see, e. g., Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1 (1980) (holding that § 1983 creates cause of action against state officials for violating federal statutes). For the reasons that we discuss, officials sued for violations of rights conferred by a statute or regulation, like officials sued for violation of constitutional rights, do not forfeit their immunity by violating some other statute or regulation. Rather, these officials become liable for damages only to the extent that there is a clear violation of the statutory rights that give rise to the cause of action for damages. And if a statute or regulation does give rise to a cause of action for damages, clear violation of the statute or regulation forfeits immunity only with respect to damages caused by that violation. In the present case, as we have noted, there is no claim that the state regulation itself or the laws that authorized its promulgation create a cause of action for damages or provide the basis for an action brought under § 1983.
Harlow was a suit against federal, not state, officials. But our cases have recognized that the same qualified immunity rules apply in suits against state officers under § 1983 and in suits against federal officers under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971). See Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S., at 504. Neither federal nor state officials lose their immunity by violating the clear command of a statute or regulation — of federal or of state law — unless that statute or regulation provides the basis for the cause of action sued upon.
Officials would be required not only to know the applicable regulations, but also to understand the intent with which each regulation was adopted. Such an understanding often eludes even trained lawyers with full access to the relevant legislative or administrative materials. It is unfair and impracticable to require such an understanding of public officials generally.
Appellee urges as well that appellants’ violation of the personnel regulation constituted breach of their “ministerial” duty — established by the regulation — to follow various procedures before terminating appellee’s employment. Although the decision to discharge an employee clearly is discretionary, appellee reasons that the Highway Patrol regulation deprived appellants of all discretion in determining what procedures were to be followed prior to discharge. Under this view, the Harlow standard is inapposite because this Court’s doctrine grants qualified immunity to officials in the performance of discretionary, but not ministerial, functions.
Appellee’s contention mistakes the scope of the “ministerial duty” exception to qualified immunity in two respects. First, as we have discussed, breaeh of a legal duty created by the personnel regulation would forfeit official immunity only if that breach itself gave rise to the appellee’s cause of action for damages. This principle equally applies whether the regulation created discretionary or ministerial duties. Even if the personnel regulation did create a ministerial duty, appellee makes no claim that he is entitled to damages simply because the regulation was violated. See supra, at 193-194, and n. 12.
In any event, the rules that purportedly established appellants’ “ministerial” duties in the present ease left to appellants a substantial measure of discretion. Cf. Amy v. The Supervisors, 11 Wall. 136, 138 (1871); Kendall v. Stokes, 3 How. 87, 98 (1845). Appellants were to determine, for example, what constituted a “complete investigation” and a “thorough study of all information” sufficient to justify a decision to terminate ap-pellee’s employment. See n. 6, supra. And the District Court’s finding that appellants ignored a clear legal command does not bear on the “ministerial” nature of appellants’ duties. A law that fails to specify the precise action that the official must take in each instance creates only discretionary authority; and that authority remains discretionary however egregiously it is abused. Cf. Kendall v. Stokes, supra. | What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations. | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | [
"Army and Air Force Exchange Service",
"Atomic Energy Commission",
"Secretary or administrative unit or personnel of the U.S. Air Force",
"Department or Secretary of Agriculture",
"Alien Property Custodian",
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] | [
116
] | sc_adminaction |
RICHARDSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE v. BELCHER
No. 70-53.
Argued October 13, 1971
Decided November 22, 1971
Richard B. Stone argued the cause for appellant. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Griswold, Assistant Attorney General Gray, and Kathryn H. Baldwin.
John Charles Harris argued the cause and filed a brief for appellee.
William E. Miller and Richard A. Whiting filed a brief for the American Mutual Insurance Alliance et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Edward J. Kionka for the American Trial Lawyers Association, and by Edward L. Carey, Harrison Combs, and M. E. Boiarsky for United Mine Workers of America.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The appellee was granted social security disability benefits effective in October 1968, in the amount of $329.70 per month for himself and his family. In January 1969, the federal payment was reduced to $225.30 monthly under the “offset” provision of Section 224 of the Social Security Act, 79 Stat. 406, 42 U. S. C. § 424a, upon a finding that the appellee was receiving workmen’s compensation benefits from the State of West Virginia in the amount of $203.60 per month. After exhausting his administrative remedies, the appellee brought this action challenging the reduction of payments required by § 224 on the ground that the statutory provision deprived him of the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. The District Judge, disagreeing with other courts that have considered the question, held the statute unconstitutional. 317 F. Supp. 1294. The Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare appealed directly to this Court under 28 U. S. C. § 1252. We noted probable jurisdiction, 401 U. S. 935, and the case was briefed and argued on the merits. We now reverse the judgment of the District Court.
In our last consideration of a challenge to the constitutionality of a classification created under the Social Security Act, we held that “a person covered by the Act has not such a right in benefit payments as would make every defeasance of ‘accrued’ interests violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603, 611. The fact that social security benefits are financed in part by taxes on an employee’s wages does not in itself limit the power of Congress to fix the levels of benefits under the Act or the conditions upon which they may be paid. Nor does an expectation of public benefits confer a contractual right to receive the expected amounts. Our decision in Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254, upon which the District Court relied, held that as a matter of procedural due process the interest of a welfare recipient in the continued payment of benefits is sufficiently fundamental to prohibit the termination of those benefits without a prior evidentiary hearing. But there is no controversy over procedure in the present case, and the analogy drawn in Goldberg between social welfare and “property,” 397 U. S., at 262 n. 8, cannot be stretched to impose a constitutional limitation on the power of Congress to make substantive changes in the law of entitlement to public benefits.
To characterize an Act of Congress as conferring a “public benefit” does not, of course, immunize it from scrutiny under the Fifth Amendment. We have held that “[t]he interest of a covered employee under the [Social Security] Act is of sufficient substance to fall within the protection from arbitrary governmental action afforded by the Due Process Clause.” Flemming v. Nestor, supra, at 611. The appellee argues that the classification embodied in § 224 is arbitrary because it discriminates between those disabled employees who receive workmen’s compensation and those who receive compensation from private insurance or from tort claim awards. We cannot say that this difference in treatment is constitutionally invalid.
A statutory classification in the area of social welfare is consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if it is “rationally based and free from invidious discrimination.” Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 487. While the present case, involving as it does a federal statute, does not directly implicate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, a classification that meets the test articulated in Dand-ridge is perforce consistent with the due process requirement of the Fifth Amendment. Cf. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 499.
To find a rational basis for the classification created by § 224, we need go no further than the reasoning of Congress as reflected in the legislative history. The predecessor of § 224, enacted in 1956 along with the amendments first establishing the federal disability insurance program, required a full offset of state or federal workmen’s compensation payments against benefits payable under federal disability insurance. 70 Stat. 816. It is self-evident that the offset reflected a judgment by Congress that the workmen’s compensation and disability insurance programs in certain instances served a common purpose, and that the workmen’s compensation programs should take precedence in the area of overlap. The provision was repealed in 1958, 72 Stat. 1025, because Congress believed that “the danger that duplication of disability benefits might produce undesirable results [was] not of sufficient importance to justify reduction of the social security disability benefits.” H. R. Rep. No. 2288, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 13.
In response to renewed criticism of the overlap between the workmen’s compensation and the social security disability insurance programs, Congress re-examined the problem in 1965. Data submitted to the legislative committees showed that in 35 of the 50 States, a typical worker injured in the course of his employment and eligible for both state and federal benefits received compensation for his disability in excess of his take-home pay prior to the disability. Hearings on H. R. 6675 before the Senate Committee on Finance, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, p. 904. It was strongly urged that this situation reduced the incentive of the worker to return to the job, and impeded the rehabilitative efforts of the state programs. Furthermore, it was anticipated that a perpetuation of the duplication in benefits might lead to the erosion of the workmen’s compensation programs. The legislative response was § 224, which, by limiting total state and federal benefits to 80% of the employee’s average earnings prior to the disability, reduced the duplication inherent in the programs and at the same time allowed a supplement to workmen’s compensation where the state payments were inadequate.
The District Court apparently assumed that the only basis for the classification established by § 224 lay in the characterization of workmen’s compensation as a "public benefit.” Because the state program was financed by employer contributions rather than by taxes, the court held that the “public” characterization afforded no rational basis to distinguish workmen’s compensation from private insurance. We agree that a statutory discrimination between two like classes cannot be rationalized by assigning them different labels, but neither can two unlike classes be made indistinguishable by attaching to them a common label. The original purpose of state workmen’s compensation laws was to satisfy a need inadequately met by private insurance or tort claim awards. Congress could rationally conclude that this need should continue to be met primarily by the States, and that a federal program that began to duplicate the efforts of the States might lead to the gradual weakening or atrophy of the state programs.
We have no occasion, within our limited function under the Constitution, to consider whether the legitimate purposes of Congress might have been better served by applying the same offset to recipients of private insurance, or to judge for ourselves whether the apprehensions of Congress were justified by the facts. If the goals sought are legitimate, and the classification adopted is rationally related to the achievement of those goals, then the action of Congress is not so arbitrary as to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The judgment is
Reversed.
Section 224 provides, in pertinent part:
“(a) If for any month prior to the month in which an individual attains the age of 62—
“(1) such individual is entitled to benefits under section 423 of this title, and
“(2) such individual is entitled for such month, under a workmen’s compensation law or plan of the United States or a State, to periodic benefits for a total or partial disability (whether or not permanent), and the Secretary has, in a prior month, received notice of such entitlement for such month,
“the total of his benefits under section 423 of this title for such month and of any benefits under section 402 of this title for such month based on his wages and self-employment income shall be reduced (but not below zero) by the amount by which the sum of—
“(3) such total of benefits under sections 423 and 402 of this title for such month, and
“(4) such periodic benefits payable (and actually paid) for such month to such individual under the workmen’s compensation law or plan,
“exceeds the higher of—
“(5) 80 percentum of his ‘average current earnings,’. . .
“For purposes of clause (5), an individual’s average current earnings means the larger of (A) the average monthly wage used for purposes of computing his benefits under section 423 of this title, or (B) one-sixtieth of the total of his wages and self-employment income (computed without regard to the limitations specified in sections 409 (a) and 411 (b) (1) of this title) for the five consecutive calendar years after 1950 for which such wages and self-employment income were highest. . . .” 42 U. S. C. §424a (a).
E. g., Gambill v. Finch, 309 F. Supp. 1 (ED Tenn. 1970); Lofty v. Cohen, 325 F. Supp. 285, aff’d sub nom. Lofty v. Richardson, 440 F. 2d 1144 (CA6 1971); Bartley v. Finch, 311 F. Supp. 876 (ED Ky. 1970); Bailey v. Finch, 312 F. Supp. 918 (ND Miss. 1970); Benjamin v. Finch, Civ. No. 32816, ED Mich., May 26, 1970, aff’d sub nom. Benjamin v. Richardson, No. 20,714, CA6, Apr. 29, 1971; Gooch v. Finch, Civ. No. 6840, SD Ohio, July 13, 1970; Rodatz v. Finch, Civ. No. 69-170, ED Ill., Sept. 4, 1970, aff’d sub nom. Rodatz v. Richardson (CA7 1971).
“Any party may appeal to the Supreme Court from an interlocutory or final judgment, decree or order of any court of the United States . . . , holding an Act of Congress unconstitutional in any civil action, suit, or proceeding to which the United States or any of its agencies, or any officer or employee thereof, as such officer or employee, is a party.”
The primary federal workmen's compensation programs are the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 44 Stat. 1424, 33 U. S. C. § 901 et seq., applicable to employees in the District of Columbia and in maritime-related occupations, and the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act, 80 Stat. 532, 5 U. S. C. § 8101 et seq., applicable to employees of the Federal Government. The overwhelming majority of workers in the United States are covered by state rather than federal programs, and thus we may refer generally to workmen’s compensation as a program of the States.
The Senate Committee on Finance, with which the 1965 amendment originated, took note of “the concern that has been expressed by many witnesses in the hearings about the payment of disability benefits concurrently with benefits payable under State workmen’s compensation programs.” S. Rep. No. 404, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 100. Testimony concerning the anticipated effects of duplication upon the future of the state programs appears in Hearings on H. R. 6675 before the Senate Committee on Finance, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, pp. 252, 259, 366, pt. 2, pp. 540, 738-740, 892-897, 949-954, 990. | What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations. | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | [
"Army and Air Force Exchange Service",
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"Alien Property Custodian",
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PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK v. MID-LOUISIANA GAS CO. et al.
No. 81-1889.
Argued March 22, 1983 —
Decided June 28, 1983
Jerome M. Feit argued the cause for petitioners in all cases. With him on the briefs for petitioner in No. 82-19 were Solicitor General Lee, Elliott Schulder, and Charles A. Moore. David E. Blabey, Richard A. Solomon, and David DAles-sandro filed briefs for petitioner in No. 81-1889. Arnold
D. Berkeley and Richard I. Chaifetz filed briefs for petitioner in No. 81-1958. Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General of Michigan, Louis J. Caruso, Solicitor General, and Arthur
E. D’Hondt and R. Philip Brown, Assistant Attorneys General, filed a brief for petitioner in No. 81-2042.
James D. McKinney argued the cause for respondents in all cases. With him on the brief for respondents Mid-Louisiana Gas Co. et al. were George W. McHenry, Jr., John H. Bumes, Jr., Alan C. Wolf, C. Frank Reifsnyder, Richard C. Green, Donald J. Maclver, Jr., Richard Owen Baish, Scott D. Fobes, William M. Lange, Augustine A. Mazzei, Jr., Morris Kennedy, William R. Mapes, Jr., and Larry D. Hall. William W. Brackett, Daniel F. Collins, Terry 0. Vogel, and Gary L. Cowan filed a brief for respondent Michigan Wisconsin Pipe Line Co. John E. Holtzinger, Jr., Karol Lyn Newman, David E. Weatherwax, and Philip L. Jones filed a brief for respondent Consolidated Gas Supply Corp.
Together with No. 81-1958, Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. v. Mid-Louisiana Gas Co. et al.; No. 81-2042, Michigan v. Mid-Louisiana Gas Co. et al.; and No. 82-19, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission v. Mid-Louisiana Gas Co. et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
Briefs of amid curiae urging reversal were filed by Byron S. Georgiou for Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Governor of California; and by Daniel E. Gib son, Robert B. McLennan, Janice E. Kerr, J. Calvin Simpson, Randolph W. Deutsch, Gordon Pearce, and Thomas D. Clarke for the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California et al.
Richard H. Silverman and Morton L. Simons filed a brief for the Public Power Group as amicus curiae.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
By enacting the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 (NGPA), 92 Stat. 3350, 15 U. S. C. §3301 et seq. (1976 ed., Supp. V), Congress comprehensively and dramatically changed the method of pricing natural gas produced in the United States. In Title I of that Act, Congress defined eight categories of natural gas production, specified the maximum lawful price that may be charged for “first sales” in each category, and prescribed rules for increasing first sale prices each month and passing them on to downstream purchasers. The question presented in these cases is whether the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has the authority to exclude from this scheme most of the gas produced from wells owned by interstate pipelines and to prescribe a different method of setting prices for that gas. The answer is provided by the Act’s definition of a “first sale” and by the scheme of the entire NGPA.
Respondents are interstate pipeline companies that transport natural gas from the wellhead to consumers. They purchase most of their gas from independent producers. In addition, they acquire a significant amount of gas from wells that they own themselves or that their affiliates own. Gas from all three sources is usually commingled in the pipelines before being delivered to their customers downstream. Thus, at the time of delivery it is often impossible to identify the producer of a particular volume of gas.
On November 14, 1979, the Commission entered Order No. 58, promulgating final regulations to implement the definition of “first sale” under the NGPA. The first category of producers — independent producers — is assigned a “first sale” for all natural gas transferred to interstate pipelines. The second category of producers — pipeline affiliates that are not themselves pipelines or distributors — is also assigned a “first sale” for all natural gas transferred to interstate pipelines, unless the Commission specifically rules to the contrary. In contrast, the third category of producers — pipelines themselves — is not automatically assigned a “first sale” for its production. A pipeline does enjoy a “first sale” for any gas it sells at the wellhead. Similarly, it enjoys a “first sale” for any gas it sells downstream that consists solely of its own production. It also enjoys a “first sale” for any downstream sales of commingled independent-producer and pipeline-producer gas, as long as it dedicated an equivalent volume of its own production to that purchaser by contract. Finally, it enjoys a “first sale” for any downstream sales of commingled gas in an otherwise unregulated intrastate market. However, if a pipeline producer sells commingled gas in an interstate market without having dedicated a particular volume of its production to that particular sale, it does not enjoy first sale treatment.
On August 4,1980, the Commission entered Order No. 98. The Commission noted that its construction of the NGPA in Order No. 58 had left most interstate pipeline production outside the Act’s coverage, since so much of it is commingled with purchased gas. It announced that such production and its downstream sale remain subject to the Commission’s regulatory jurisdiction under the Natural Gas Act (NGA), 52 Stat. 821, 15 U. S. C. §717 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. V). In order to provide pipelines with an incentive to compete with independent producers in acquiring new leases and drilling new wells, the Commission decided that pipeline production should receive treatment under the NGA that is comparable to the treatment given independent production under the NGPA. It therefore promulgated regulations under the NGA providing that the NGPA’s first sale pricing should apply to all pipeline production on leases acquired after October 8, 1969, and to all pipeline production from wells drilled after January 1, 1973, regardless of when the underlying lease had been acquired. All other pipeline production would be priced for ratemaking purposes just as it had been before the NGPA was enacted.
Respondents petitioned for review of both Commission orders, contending that Order No. 58 was based on a misreading of the NGPA and that in Order No. 98 the Commission had acted arbitrarily in refusing to authorize NGPA pricing for all pipeline production. The Court of Appeals held that the NGPA was intended to provide the same incentives to pipeline production as to independent production, that there were no practical obstacles to treating the transfer of gas from a pipeline’s production division to its transportation division as a first sale, and that the Commission’s reading of the NGPA was inconsistent with the goals of Congress. 664 F. 2d 530 (CA5 1981). It held Order No. 58 invalid and therefore did not review Order No. 98 separately.
We granted petitions for certiorari filed by the Commission and by state regulatory Commissions, which contend that the Court of Appeals’ holding will provide the pipelines with windfall profits that Congress did not intend. 459 U. S. 820 (1982). In explaining why we are in general agreement with the Court of Appeals, we first review the statutory definition of “first sale,” then consider the history and structure of the NGPA, and finally examine the specific arguments on behalf of the Commission’s position.
The respondents seek first sale treatment for one of two transfers of natural gas: the intracorporate transfer from a pipeline-owned production system to the pipeline, or the downstream transfer of commingled gas from the pipeline to a customer. If either transfer is treated as a first sale, respondents would be able to include an NGPA rate for production among their costs of service, just as they do when they acquire natural gas from independent producers. They contend initially that Congress has authorized the Commission, in the exercise of its sound discretion, to treat either transfer as a first sale. They contend further that Congress has not authorized the Commission to reject both possibilities.
The definition of a “first sale” is found in §2(21) of the NGPA. 92 Stat. 3355, 15 U. S. C. §3301(21) (1976 ed., Supp. V). It takes the form of a general rule, qualified by an exclusion. The general rule sweeps broadly, providing:
“(A) General rule. — The term ‘first sale’ means any sale of any volume of natural gas—
“(i) to any interstate pipeline or intrastate pipeline;
“(ii) to any local distribution company;
“(iii) to any person for use by such person;
“(iv) which precedes any sale described in clauses (i),
(ii), or (iii); and
“(v) which precedes or follows any sale described in clauses (i), (ii), (iii), or (iv) and is defined by the Commission as a first sale in order to prevent circumvention of any maximum lawful price established under this Act.” 92 Stat. 3355,15 U. S. C. §3301(21)(A) (1976 ed., Supp. V) (emphasis added).
Under the terms of the general rule, a transfer that falls within any one of its five clauses is presumptively a first sale. This means that there can be many first sales of a single volume of gas between the well and the pipeline’s customers. In this case, the downstream transfer plainly satisfies the general rule. The only obstacle to including the intracorporate transfer within the general rule is the question whether it may properly be deemed a “sale.” That obstacle, however, is insubstantial. The legislative history clearly demonstrates that the statute was not intended to prohibit the Commission from deeming it a sale; the Conference Committee Report provides that the Commission may “establish rules applicable to intracorporate transactions under the first sale definition.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-1752, p. 116 (1978). Thus, if the first sale definition consisted only of the general rule, the Commission would plainly be authorized to treat either transfer as a first sale.
The exception to the general rule provides:
“(B) Certain sales not included. — Clauses (i), (ii), (iii), or (iv) of subparagraph (A) shall not include the sale of any volume of natural gas by any interstate pipeline, intrastate pipeline, or local distribution company, or any affiliate thereof, unless such sale is attributable to volumes of natural gas produced by such interstate pipeline, intrastate pipeline, or local distribution company, or any affiliate thereof.” 92 Stat. 3355, 15 U. S. C. §3301(21)(B) (1976 ed., Supp. V).
This language does not diminish the Commission’s authority to treat the intracorporate transfer as a first sale. Whether it affects the Commission’s authority to treat the downstream transfer as a first sale depends on the meaning of the words “attributable to.” Although the Commission interpreted them as meaning “solely attributable to,” it would be at least as consistent with the ordinary understanding of the words to interpret them as meaning “measurably attributable to.” Furthermore, it would have been fully consistent with the spirit of the exemption if the Commission had adopted the latter interpretation and had given “first sale” treatment to a percentage of the downstream sale — the percentage that pipeline production forms of all the gas in the pipeline.
Thus, we agree with the respondents that the Commission has the authority to treat either the intracorporate transfer or the downstream transfer as a first sale. That, however, does not dispose of this litigation. For there is a substantial difference between holding that the Commission had the authority to treat either transfer as a first sale and holding that the Commission was required so to treat one or the other.
II
In order to determine whether the Commission was obligated to treat either the intracorporate transfer or the relevant portion of the downstream transfer as a first sale, it is necessary to examine the purposes of the NGPA. Those purposes are rooted in the history of federal natural gas regulation before 1978 and in the overall structure of the statute.
A
Between 1938 and 1978, the Commission regulated sales of natural gas in interstate commerce pursuant to the NGA. The NGA was enacted in response to reports suggesting that the monopoly power of interstate pipelines was harming consumer welfare. Initially, the Commission construed the NGA to require only regulation of gas sales at the downstream end of interstate pipelines. E. g., Natural Gas Pipeline Co., 2 F. P. C. 218 (1940). It authorized rates that were “just and reasonable” within the meaning of §4(a) of the NGA, 52 Stat. 822, 15 U. S. C. § 717c(a), by examining whatever costs the pipeline had incurred in acquiring and transporting the gas to the consumer. If the pipeline itself or a pipeline affiliate had produced the gas, the actual expenses historically associated with production and gathering were included in the rate base to the extent proper and reasonable. See FPC v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U. S. 591, 614-615, and n. 25 (1944); Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. FPC, 324 U. S. 581, 604-606 (1945). However, if the pipeline had purchased the gas from an independent producer, the Commission did not take jurisdiction over the producer to evaluate the reasonableness of its rates; it only considered the broad issue of whether, from the pipeline’s perspective, the purchase price was “collusive or otherwise improperly excessive.” Phillips Petroleum Co., 10 F. P. C. 246, 280 (1951).
In 1954, this Court rejected the Commission’s approach. We held that the NGA required the Commission to take jurisdiction over independent gas producers and to scrutinize the reasonableness of the rates they charged to interstate pipelines. Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, 347 U. S. 672 (1954). We interpreted the purpose of the NGA as being “to give the Commission jurisdiction over the rates of all wholesales of natural gas in interstate commerce, whether by a pipeline company or not and whether occurring before, during, or after transmission by an interstate pipeline company,” id., at 682, and concluded that, for regulatory purposes, there was no essential difference between the gas a pipeline obtains from independent producers and the gas it obtains from its own affiliates, id., at 685.
The problems of regulating the natural gas industry grew steadily between Phillips and the passage of the NGPA. At first, the Commission attempted to follow the Phillips mandate by applying the same regulatory technique it had always applied to pipeline-produced natural gas. It calculated just and reasonable rates for each company — whether pipeline, pipeline affiliate, or independent producer — by studying the costs of production that had historically been incurred by that particular company. But that so-called “cost of service” approach quickly proved impractical. See Atlantic Refining Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of New York, 360 U. S. 378, 389 (1959). Whereas there were relatively few interstate pipelines, the vast number of natural gas producers threatened to overwhelm the Commission’s administrative capacity. See Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, 390 U. S. 747, 757, and n. 13 (1968).
The Commission then shifted to an “area rate” approach. See Statement of General Policy 61-1, 24 F. P. C. 818 (1960). Instead of establishing individual rates for each company on the basis of its own costs of service, it established a single rate schedule for each producing region. Two elements of the area rate method bear mention. First, the Commission continued to base its computations on historical costs, rather than on projections of future costs. And second, it established two maximum rates for each area: a “new gas” rate for gas produced independently of oil from wells drilled after a given date, and an “old gas” rate for all other gas. The two-tiered structure, which priced gas on the basis of its “vintage,” rested on the theory that for already-flowing gas “price could not serve as an incentive, and... any price above average historical costs, plus an appropriate return, would merely confer windfalls.” Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, supra, at 797.
The Permian Basin area rate proceeding governed only production by independent producers. The Commission undertook a separate proceeding to consider whether it remained appropriate to treat pipelines and pipeline affiliates on a company-by-company basis. On October 7, 1969, 17 months after this Court approved the use of area rates, the Commission concluded that for leases acquired from that date on, pipeline gas should receive pricing on a “parity” basis; such gas would be eligible for the same area rate as independently produced gas of the same vintage. Pipeline Production Area Rate Proceeding (Phase I), 42 P. P. C. 738, 752 (Opinion No. 568). Gas produced from already-acquired leases would continue to be priced on the old single-company cost-of-service method “in order to expedite the proceedings and to avoid complications and evidentiary problems.” Id., at 753. Significantly, gas produced by pipeline affiliates would be treated in precisely the same manner as gas produced by the pipelines themselves.
In the early 1970’s, it became apparent that the regulatory structure was not working. The Commission recognized that the historical-cost-based, two-tiered rate scheme had led to serious production shortages. See Southern Louisiana Area Rate Proceeding, 46 F. P. C. 86, 110-111 (1971). See generally Breyer & MacAvoy, The Natural Gas Shortage and the Regulation of Natural Gas Producers, 86 Harv. L. Rev. 941, 965-979 (1973). Therefore, the Commission modified its practices, shifting from an “area rate” to a “national rate” approach. National Rates for Natural Gas, 51 F. P. C. 2212 (1974) (Opinion No. 699). The national rate became effective for all wells drilled after January 1, 1973, and applied equally to production by independent producers, pipelines, and pipeline affiliates. A few months later, the Commission responded further by shifting from a pure historical-cost-based to an incentive-price-based approach, National Rates for Natural Gas, 52 F. P. C. 1604, 1615-1618 (1974) (Opinion No. 699-H), and by temporarily abandoning the practice of vintaging, id., at 1636.
These measures did not prove sufficient. The interstate rates remained substantially below the unregulated prices available for intrastate sales, and the interstate supply remained inadequate. Throughout 1977 and 1978, the 95th Congress studied the situation. During the closing hours of the Second Session, it enacted a package of five Acts, one of which was the NGPA. The NGPA is designed to preserve the Commission’s authority under the NGA to regulate natural gas sales from pipelines to their customers; however, it is designed to supplant the Commission’s authority to establish rates for the wholesale market, the market consisting of so-called “first sales” of natural gas.
B
The NGPA was the product of a Conference Committee’s careful reconciliation of two strong, but divergent, responses to the natural gas shortage.
The House bill had proposed “a single uniform price policy for natural gas produced in the United States.” H. R. Rep. No. 95-496, pt. 4, p. 96 (1977). A key element of that policy had been the establishment of a statutory incentive price structure that would simultaneously promote production and reduce the regulatory burden:
“[0]ther controversial aspects of current Federal regulation are not perpetuated. The uncertainties associated with lengthy judicial review of Federal Power Commission wellhead price determinations are avoided by use of a statutorily established maximum lawful price. Regulatory lag and other problems associated with reliance upon historical costs to establish just and reasonable wellhead prices are similarly avoided. Vintaging of new natural gas prices would also terminate.” Id., at 97.
The Senate bill, passed on the floor, would have maintained Natural Gas Act regulation for all gas sold or delivered in interstate commerce before January 1, 1977, and steadily cut back on Commission jurisdiction so that all natural gas sold after January 1, 1982, would have been completely deregulated. S. 2104, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., 123 Cong. Rec. 32306 (1977).
The Conference Committee’s compromise has been justly described as “a comprehensive statute to govern future natural gas regulation.” Note, Legislative History of the Natural Gas Policy Act, 59 Texas L. Rev. 101, 116 (1980). In Title I, it establishes an exhaustive categorization of natural gas production, and sets forth a methodology for calculating an appropriate ceiling price within each category: Section 102 covers “new natural gas and certain natural gas produced from the Outer Continental Shelf”; §103 covers “new, onshore production wells”; § 104 covers “natural gas committed or dedicated to interstate commerce on the day before the date of the enactment of [the NGPA]”; § 105 covers “sales under existing intrastate contracts”; § 106 covers “sales under rollover contracts”; § 107 covers “high-cost natural gas”; § 108 covers “stripper well natural gas”; and § 109 is a catchall, covering “any natural gas which is not covered by any maximum lawful price under any other section of this subtitle.” 92 Stat. 3358-3368, 15 U. S. C. §§3312-3319 (1976 ed., Supp. V).
In each category of gas, the statute explicitly establishes an incentive pricing scheme that is wholly divorced from the traditional historical-cost methods applied by the Commission in implementing the NGA. The price is established either in terms of a dollar figure per million Btu’s, or in terms of a previously existing price, and is inflated over time according to a statutory formula. See § 101. For three categories of gas, the statute recognizes that the ceiling may be too low and authorizes the Commission to raise it whenever traditional NGA principles would dictate a higher price. See §§ 104, 106, and 109. The Commission is also given a somewhat ambiguous mandate to authorize increases above the ceiling for the other five categories. See § 110(a)(2). In none of the eight categories, however, is the Commission given authority to require a rate lower than the statutory ceiling.
Several features of this comprehensive scheme bear directly on the question whether Congress intended the Commission to be able to exclude pipeline production from its coverage completely. To begin with, the categories are defined on the basis of the type of well and the past uses of its gas, not on the basis of who owns the well. And since it is drafted in a manner that is designed to be exhaustive, all natural gas production falls within at least one of the categories.
Moreover, the statute replaces the Commission’s authority to fix rates of return to gas producers according to what is “just and reasonable” with a precise schedule of price ceilings. Section 601(b)(1)(A) provides that, “[sjubject to paragraph (4), for purposes of sections 4 and 5 of the Natural Gas Act, any amount paid in any first sale of natural gas shall be deemed to be just and reasonable if... such amount does not exceed the applicable maximum lawful price established under Title I of this Act.” 92 Stat. 3410, 15 U. S. C. § 3431(b)(1)(A) (1976 ed., Supp. V). The new statutory rates are intended to provide investors with adequate incentives to develop new sources of supply. As the Commission itself recognized in Order No. 98: “The Congressional decision to reorder the economic regulation of natural gas prices to provide a uniform system of statutorily prescribed price incentives was based on a... belief that such incentives are necessary to secure continued development and additional production of natural gas.” 45 Fed. Reg. 53093 (1980).
The statute evinces careful thought about the extent to which producers of “old gas” — gas already dedicated to interstate commerce before passage of the NGPA — would be able to enjoy incentive pricing. Section 104 of the statute directly incorporates part of the “vintaging” pattern that previously existed under the NGA. Thus, most old gas continues to receive the price it received under the NGA, increased over time in accordance with the inflation formula found in § 101. However, § 101(b)(5) of the Act specifies that if a volume of gas fits into more than one category, “the provision which could result in the highest price shall be applicable.” 92 Stat. 3357, 15 U. S. C. §3311(b)(5) (1976 ed., Supp. V). Thus, old gas that would be subject to the old NGA vintaging rules may be entitled to a higher rate if it falls within one or more of the other Title I categories, in particular § 107 (high-cost natural gas) and § 108 (stripper well gas). Whether or not the old NGA rates were in fact sufficient to stimulate some production from those categories, Congress concluded that the Nation’s energy needs justified the higher, statutory rates.
In addition, the costs of providing these production incentives are plainly to be shouldered by downstream consumers, not by pipelines. Title II of the Act establishes a complicated structure, to be implemented by the Commission, for determining which consumers are to face the bulk of the price increases. 92 Stat. 3371-3381, 15 U. S. C. §§3341-3348 (1976 ed., Supp. V). That Title is designed to allocate the burden among categories of consumers; it is not designed to diminish in any way the incentive for producers or to force pipelines to bear any part of that burden. As the Conference Report makes plain:
“The conference agreement guarantees that interstate pipelines may pass through costs of natural gas purchases if the price of the purchased natural gas does not exceed the ceiling price levels established under the legislation.... This recovery must be consistent with the incremental pricing provisions of Title II; however, Title II is structured to permit recovery of all costs which a pipeline is entitled to recover.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-1752, p. 124 (1978).
Given such a comprehensive scheme, we conclude that Congress would have clearly identified, either in the statutory language or in the legislative history, any significant source of production that was intended to be excluded. For the usefulness of natural gas does not depend on who produces it, and there is no reason to believe that any one group of producers is less likely to respond to incentives than any other. Yet nowhere in the NGPA do we find any expression of a desire to exclude pipeline production.
Indeed, three statutory provisions combine to give a clear signal that the statute was intended to include such production. Section 203, which defines the acquisition costs subject to passthrough requirements, specifically states:
“Interstate pipeline production. — For purposes of this section, in the case of any natural gas produced by any interstate pipeline or any affiliate of such pipeline, the first sale acquisition cost of such natural gas shall be determined in accordance with rules prescribed by the Commission.” 92 Stat. 3375, 15 U. S. C. § 3343(b)(2) (1976 ed., Supp. V).
This provision expressly mentions pipeline production as a matter subject to NGPA jurisdiction. Perhaps even more significantly, it makes clear that Congress intended to continue a policy that had been in effect since 1938: a policy of drawing no distinction between wells owned by a pipeline itself and those owned by an affiliate. That point is equally apparent from the exemption half of the definition of “first sale” in Title I. That provision requires first sale treatment of a sale that is “attributable to volumes of natural gas produced by such interstate pipeline... or any affiliate thereof.” § 2(21)(B) (emphasis added). See supra, at 326. Given that pipelines are to be treated in the same manner as pipeline affiliates, and given that pipeline affiliates are explicitly covered under the NGPA, see § 601(b)(1)(E), it follows directly that pipeline production is covered.
In sum, the Court of Appeals correctly concluded that Congress intended pipeline production to receive first sale pricing. The Commission had no authority to ignore that intention absent a persuasive justification for doing so.
l ) — I
Of course, “the interpretation of an agency charged with the administration of a statute is entitled to substantial deference.” Blum v. Bacon, 457 U. S. 132, 141 (1982). It is therefore incumbent upon us to consider carefully the Commission’s arguments that Congress implicitly intended to exempt pipeline production from an otherwise comprehensive regulatory scheme. We think it important to address three of the Commission’s arguments explicitly: one is aimed at the propriety of giving first sale treatment to the intra-corporate transfer, one at the propriety of giving first sale treatment to the downstream sale, and the third at the propriety of any form of first sale treatment for pipeline production.
The Commission suggests that it would be wrong to assign the intracorporate transfer a first sale price “automatically” because not even independent producers receive such automatic treatment. It emphasizes the Conference Committee’s admonition that “maximum lawful prices are ceiling prices only. In no case may a seller receive a higher price than his contract permits.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-1752, p. 74 (1978). Since arm’s-length contractual bargaining may reduce the price for independent producers, the Commission suggests that “[i]t would be anomalous in the extreme to conclude that Congress nonetheless meant to permit pipeline producers to qualify automatically for full NGPA prices by virtue of intracorporate transfers that are not covered by contracts.” Brief for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 31-32.
This argument refutes a position that no one advocates. We agree completely that the intracorporate transfer should not “automatically” receive the NGPA ceiling price. Congress undoubtedly intended pipeline producers to be treated in the same manner as pipeline affiliate producers. The latter group is subjected to market control, through the application of § 601(b)(1)(E), which provides that, “in the case of any first sale between any interstate pipeline and any affiliate of such pipeline, any amount paid in any first sale shall be deemed to be just and reasonable if, in addition to satisfying the requirements of [Title I], such amount does not exceed the amount paid in comparable | What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the federal agency involved in the administrative action that occurred prior to the onset of litigation. If the administrative action occurred in a state agency, respond "State Agency". Do not code the name of the state. The administrative activity may involve an administrative official as well as that of an agency. If two federal agencies are mentioned, consider the one whose action more directly bears on the dispute;otherwise the agency that acted more recently. If a state and federal agency are mentioned, consider the federal agency. Pay particular attention to the material which appears in the summary of the case preceding the Court's opinion and, if necessary, those portions of the prevailing opinion headed by a I or II. Action by an agency official is considered to be administrative action except when such an official acts to enforce criminal law. If an agency or agency official "denies" a "request" that action be taken, such denials are considered agency action. Exclude: a "challenge" to an unapplied agency rule, regulation, etc.; a request for an injunction or a declaratory judgment against agency action which, though anticipated, has not yet occurred; a mere request for an agency to take action when there is no evidence that the agency did so; agency or official action to enforce criminal law; the hiring and firing of political appointees or the procedures whereby public officials are appointed to office; attorney general preclearance actions pertaining to voting; filing fees or nominating petitions required for access to the ballot; actions of courts martial; land condemnation suits and quiet title actions instituted in a court; and federally funded private nonprofit organizations. | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | [
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"National Mediation Board",
"National Railroad Adjustment Board",
"Nuclear Regulatory Commission",
"National Security Agency",
"Office of Economic Opportunity",
"Office of Management and Budget",
"Office of Price Administration, or Price Administrator",
"Office of Personnel Management",
"Occupational Safety and Health Administration",
"Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission",
"Office of Workers' Compensation Programs",
"Patent Office, or Commissioner of, or Board of Appeals of",
"Pay Board (established under the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970)",
"Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation",
"U.S. Public Health Service",
"Postal Rate Commission",
"Provider Reimbursement Review Board",
"Renegotiation Board",
"Railroad Adjustment Board",
"Railroad Retirement Board",
"Subversive Activities Control Board",
"Small Business Administration",
"Securities and Exchange Commission",
"Social Security Administration or Commissioner",
"Selective Service System",
"Department or Secretary of the Treasury",
"Tennessee Valley Authority",
"United States Forest Service",
"United States Parole Commission",
"Postal Service and Post Office, or Postmaster General, or Postmaster",
"United States Sentencing Commission",
"Veterans' Administration or Board of Veterans' Appeals",
"War Production Board",
"Wage Stabilization Board",
"State Agency",
"Unidentifiable",
"Office of Thrift Supervision",
"Department of Homeland Security",
"Board of General Appraisers",
"Board of Tax Appeals",
"General Land Office or Commissioners",
"NO Admin Action",
"Processing Tax Board of Review"
] | [
43
] | sc_adminaction |
"COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM, INC. v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE\nNo. 71-863.\nArgued October 16(...TRUNCATED) | "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify th(...TRUNCATED) | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | ["Army and Air Force Exchange Service","Atomic Energy Commission","Secretary or administrative unit (...TRUNCATED) | [
37
] | sc_adminaction |
"CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION et al. v. GTE SYLVANIA, INC., et al.\nNo. 79-521.\nArgued April (...TRUNCATED) | "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify th(...TRUNCATED) | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | ["Army and Air Force Exchange Service","Atomic Energy Commission","Secretary or administrative unit (...TRUNCATED) | [
17
] | sc_adminaction |
"ARKANSAS ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE CORP. v. ARKANSAS PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION\nNo. 81-731.\nArgued Janu(...TRUNCATED) | "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify th(...TRUNCATED) | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | ["Army and Air Force Exchange Service","Atomic Energy Commission","Secretary or administrative unit (...TRUNCATED) | [
116
] | sc_adminaction |
"SULLIVAN, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES v. ZEBLEY et al.\nNo. 88-1377.\nArgued November 28(...TRUNCATED) | "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify th(...TRUNCATED) | What is the agency involved in the administrative action? | ["Army and Air Force Exchange Service","Atomic Energy Commission","Secretary or administrative unit (...TRUNCATED) | [
62
] | sc_adminaction |
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