Pat Huval Rest. & Oyster Bar, Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n

• Decision Date: 07 May 2015
• Docket Number: 2012–1347.,Nos. 2012–1250,s. 2012–1250
• Citation: 785 F.3d 638
• Parties: PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER BAR, INC., Aqua Farms Crawfish, Inc., Catfish Wholesale, Inc., Charles Bernard, dba Charles' Crawfish Pad, Andre Leger, dba Chez Francois, Jim Fruge, dba Fisherman's Cove, J. Bernard Seafood Processing, Inc., French's Enterprises Seafood Peeling Plant, Plaintiffs SKF USA Inc., JTEKT North America Corporation (Formerly Known as Koyo Corporation of U.S.A.), Plaintiffs–Appellants v. INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION, United States Customs and Border Protection, The Timken Company, MPB Corporation, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

785 F.3d 638

PAT HUVAL RESTAURANT & OYSTER BAR, INC., Aqua Farms Crawfish, Inc., Catfish Wholesale, Inc., Charles Bernard, dba Charles' Crawfish Pad, Andre Leger, dba Chez Francois, Jim Fruge, dba Fisherman's Cove, J. Bernard Seafood Processing, Inc., French's Enterprises Seafood Peeling Plant, PlaintiffsSKF USA Inc., JTEKT North America Corporation (Formerly Known as Koyo Corporation of U.S.A.), Plaintiffs–Appellants

v.INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION, United States Customs and Border Protection, The Timken Company, MPB Corporation, Defendants–Appellees.

Nos. 2012–1250

2012–1347.

United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit.

May 7, 2015.

Herbert C. Shelley, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant SKF USA Inc. Also represented by Christopher Gentile Falcone.

John M. Gurley, Arent Fox, LLP, Washington, DC, for plaintiff-appellant JTEKT North America Corporation. Also represented by Diana Dimitriuc–Quaia, Nancy Noonan.

Patrick Vincent Gallagher, Jr., Office of the General Counsel, United States International Trade Commission, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee International Trade Commission. Also represented by Neal J. Reynolds, James M. Lyons, Robin Lynn Turner, Dominic L. Bianchi.

Martin M. Tomlinson, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee United States Customs and Border Protection. Also represented by Alexander V. Sverdlov, Joyce R. Branda, Jeanne E. Davidson, Franklin E. White, Jr. ; Jessica Miller, Suzanna Hartzell–Ballard, Office of Assistant Chief Counsel, United States Customs and Border Protection, Indianapolis, IN.

Terence Patrick Stewart, Stewart & Stewart, Washington, DC, argued for defendants-appellees The Timken Company, MPB Corporation. Also represented by Patrick John McDonough, Geert M. De Prest.

Before LOURIE, BRYSON, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion

BRYSON, Circuit Judge.

This is another in a series of cases challenging the constitutionality of the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, 19 U.S.C. § 1675c(a) (2000), known as the CDSOA or “the Byrd Amendment.” We have previously upheld that statute against challenges based on the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. See SKF USA, Inc. v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot., 556 F.3d 1337 (Fed.Cir.2009) ; see also Giorgio Foods, Inc. v. United States, Nos. 2013–1304 et al., slip op. at 13–16 (Fed.Cir. Apr. 24, 2015); Ashley Furniture Indus., Inc. v. United States, 734 F.3d 1306, 1310–12 (Fed.Cir.2013), cert. denied, ––– U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 72, 190 L.Ed.2d 35 (2014) ; PS Chez Sidney, L.L.C. v. United States Int'l Trade Comm'n, 684 F.3d 1374, 1380–81 (Fed.Cir.2012). Today we address a challenge to the statute in which the appellants have asserted that the retroactive application of the Byrd Amendment violates due process. The Court of International Trade rejected that constitutional attack, and we affirm.

I

In the prior SKF appeal, we described the legislative background of the Byrd Amendment and litigation relating to that amendment in some detail. We therefore summarize that background only briefly here.

The Byrd Amendment provided for the distribution of antidumping duties collected by the United States to “affected domestic producers” of goods that are subject to an antidumping duty order. See 19 U.S.C. § 1675c(b)(1), (d). The statute defined an “affected domestic producer” as a party that either petitioned for an antidumping duty order or was an “interested party in support of the petition.” Id. § 1675c(b)(1)(A). The Byrd Amendment was repealed in 2006, Pub.L. 109–171, § 7601(a), 120 Stat. 4, 154 (2006), but the repealing statute provided that any duties paid on goods that entered the United States prior to the date of repeal would continue to be distributed in accordance with the pre-repeal statutory scheme. Id. § 7601(b), 120 Stat. at 154.

The Byrd Amendment provided for antidumping duties to be distributed to parties who supported the corresponding antidumping petitions that resulted in “orders or findings in effect on January 1, 1999, or thereafter.” 19 U.S.C. § 1675c(d)(1). Because the Byrd Amendment directed that distributions of antidumping duties be made only to petitioners and those interested parties “in support of the petition,” domestic producers who opposed antidumping petitions were not eligible for Byrd Amendment payments. Several ineligible domestic producers challenged the constitutionality of the Byrd Amendment on various grounds, leading to a number of decisions by both the Court of International Trade and this court.

The first challenge to the Byrd Amendment filed in this court was brought by SKF USA, Inc. A series of antidumping petitions had been filed seeking antidumping duty orders on two classes of imported antifriction bearings. SKF opposed the petitions, but the petitions were granted in 1989. When the Byrd Amendment was subsequently enacted in 2000, the Commerce Department distributed the duties collected under those antidumping duty orders to those domestic producers who had supported the petitions. Because SKF had opposed the petitions, the Byrd Amendment rendered SKF ineligible to receive a share of the collected duties. SKF then brought suit in the Court of International Trade, seeking a share of the duties collected under the antidumping duty orders on antifriction bearings for fiscal year 2005.

SKF's principal argument was that the Byrd Amendment impermissibly discriminates among participants in an antidumping investigation in violation of the First Amendment and equal protection principles. SKF prevailed in the Court of International Trade on its equal protection claim, see 451 F.Supp.2d 1355 (Ct. Int'l Trade 2006), but this court reversed. On appeal, SKF put forward its First Amendment argument as its primary theory for affirmance. We rejected that argument, holding that the Byrd Amendment's provision granting payments only to parties who supported the antidumping petition was not a penalty based on speech, but instead was a constitutionally permissible reward for supporting the enforcement of U.S. antidumping law. SKF USA, Inc. v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot., 556 F.3d 1337, 1355–60 (Fed.Cir.2009). We also rejected SKF's secondary argument that the Byrd Amendment denied it the equal protection of the laws, holding that the statute served a substantial governmental interest and was not unconstitutional under the “rational basis standard” typically applied to equal protection challenges to economic regulations. Id. at 1360.

In the two cases that led to this appeal, appellants JTEKT and SKF USA, Inc., filed constitutional challenges in 2006 to the petition-support requirement of the Byrd Amendment.¹ They were among those domestic producers who did not support the antidumping petitions relating to antifriction bearings and were therefore not awarded distributions of antidumping duties under the Byrd Amendment. They alleged that by depriving them of a share of those disbursements—while providing disbursements to their competitors who had supported the petitions—the statute violated their rights under the First Amendment and both the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment. The trial court stayed the action pending this court's disposition of the first SKF appeal.

After this court's decision in the first SKF case, the Court of International Trade dismissed the complaints filed by JTEKT and SKF in the present cases for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court also granted judgment as to several claims raised by JTEKT and SKF on timeliness and mootness grounds.

While SKF precluded the challenges on First Amendment and equal protection grounds, the complaints also alleged that the petition-support requirement of the Byrd Amendment is impermissibly retroactive. The Court of International Trade rejected that argument, holding that the retroactive reach of the petition-support requirement in the Byrd Amendment is justified by a rational legislative purpose and therefore is not vulnerable to attack on constitutional due process grounds. Pat Huval Rest. & Oyster Bar, Inc. v. U.S. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 823 F.Supp.2d 1365, 1377 (Ct. Int'l Trade 2012). The court explained that it “was not arbitrary or irrational for Congress to conclude that the legislative purpose of rewarding domestic producers who supported antidumping petitions ... would be more fully effectuated if the petition support requirement were applied both prospectively and retroactively.” 823 F.Supp.2d at 1377 (quoting N.H. Ball Bearing, Inc. v. United States, 815 F.Supp.2d 1301, 1309 (Ct. Int'l Trade 2012) ) (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the court ruled that it was not impermissible for Congress to base eligibility for Byrd Amendment disbursements “on a decision on whether to support the petition that Plaintiffs made prior to the enactment of the CDSOA.” Id.

The trial court also held that two of the claims—SKF's claim for fiscal year 2004 distributions and JTEKT's claim for fiscal year 2006 distributions—were barred by the two-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. § 2636(i). According to the trial court, those claims accrued when Customs and Border Protection published its notice of intent to distribute duties for the applicable fiscal year in the Federal Register, which was more than two years before SKF and JTEKT filed their complaints for the distributions attributable to those fiscal years. 823 F.Supp.2d at 1374.

SKF and JTEKT took appeals from the judgments against them. Their appeals were consolidated and then stayed pending this court's decision in the Ashley Furniture case, which involved a further First Amendment challenge to the petition-support requirement of the Byrd Amendment. In its decision in Ashley Furniture, this court affirmed the dismissal of the First Amendment...