Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. NRDC
Citation: 435 U.S. 519 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1978)
Facts
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) conducted informal notice-and-comment rulemaking under the APA to develop a rule for evaluating the environmental effects of nuclear fuel reprocessing. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals set the rule aside, holding that the agency’s procedures — though compliant with the APA — were insufficient given the complexity and importance of the issues and that more elaborate procedures (cross-examination, etc.) were required.
Issue
May a reviewing court require an agency to use rulemaking procedures beyond those mandated by the APA and the agency’s own governing statute?
Holding
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Courts may not impose additional procedural requirements on agencies beyond what the APA or the agency’s organic statute requires. The APA sets minimum procedural floors, and absent a specific constitutional requirement, courts have no authority to require agencies to use procedures they have not chosen to employ.
Rule
The APA establishes procedural minima for rulemaking (notice-and-comment under § 553) that agencies must satisfy, but courts may not require agencies to engage in additional procedures beyond those floors. Agency choice of procedure, within the statutory minimum, is committed to agency discretion.
Significance
Vermont Yankee is one of the most important administrative law decisions for understanding the relationship between courts and agencies in the rulemaking process. It rejected the D.C. Circuit’s “hybrid rulemaking” jurisprudence and firmly limited judicial authority to supervise agency procedure. The decision also constrains the “hard look” doctrine by confirming that hard look review is substantive, not procedural — courts may scrutinize the quality of an agency’s reasoning but may not mandate particular procedures to generate that reasoning.