First Nat. Bank and Trust Co. v. National Credit Union Admin., 94-5295

Citation90 F.3d 525
Decision Date23 October 1996
Docket NumberNo. 94-5295,94-5295
Parties, 65 USLW 2106 FIRST NATIONAL BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, et al., Appellants, v. NATIONAL CREDIT UNION ADMINISTRATION, Appellee, and AT&T Family Federal Credit Union and Credit Union National Association, Appellees.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 90cv02948).

Christopher R. Lipsett, Washington, DC, argued the cause, for appellants, with whom Michael S. Helfer, Leon B. Greenfield, John J. Gill, III and Michael F. Crotty were on the briefs.

Jacob M. Lewis, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause, for appellees, with whom Frank W. Hunger, Assistant Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, Jr., United States Attorney, Douglas N. Letter, Litigation Counsel, Washington, DC, U.S. Department of Justice, and John K. Ianno, Counsel, Alexandria, VA, National Credit Union Administration, were on the brief, for appellee National Credit Union Administration.

Paul J. Lambert and Teresa Burke, Washington, DC, were on the brief, for appellees AT&T Family Federal Credit Union and Credit Union National Association.

Edward C. Winslow, III and William C. Scott, Greensboro, NC, were on the brief, for amicus curiae North Carolina Alliance of Community Financial Institutions.

Before: BUCKLEY, GINSBURG, and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge:

Section 109 of the Federal Credit Union Act (FCUA), 12 U.S.C. § 1759, provides that "Federal credit union membership shall be limited to groups having a common bond of occupation or association, or to groups within a well-defined neighborhood, community, or rural district." The question presented in this appeal is whether the members of an occupational FCU must all share a single "common bond of occupation" or, as the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) contends, membership may be drawn from multiple unrelated groups, each with its own common bond. The district court held that the NCUA reasonably interpreted that Act to allow members of unrelated groups to join the same credit union, provided only that a common bond exists among the members of each constituent group. 863 F.Supp. 9 (1994). Because the Congress resolved this very issue the other way, we reverse the district court and disapprove the decision of the NCUA under step one of Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-43, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-82, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984).

I. Background

The plaintiffs-appellants are the American Bankers Association and several North Carolina banks, including First National Bank and Trust Company BT. They brought this suit against the NCUA, the federal regulatory agency that administers the FCUA, seeking to overturn that agency's approval of certain applications filed by AT&T Family Federal Credit Union (ATTF) to expand its field of membership to include employees of various small businesses in North Carolina and Virginia that are unaffiliated with the credit union's existing membership base. ATTF and the Credit Union National Association, a trade association, have intervened in support of the agency.

Under the FCUA, an FCU is, like a mutual association or a cooperative, owned and controlled by its members, see 12 U.S.C. § 1757(6); it can make loans to and take deposits from (formally, sell shares to) only its own members and other credit unions, see id. § 1757(5). The Congress expected that the Act, by "guaranteeing democratic self-government[,] would infuse the credit union with a spirit of cooperative self-help and ensure that the credit union would remain responsive to its members' needs." First Nat'l Bank and Trust Co. v. NCUA, 988 F.2d 1272, 1274 (D.C.Cir.1993).

The "common bond" provision has been part of the FCUA since the statute was enacted in 1934. The Congress did not fully explicate the purpose or limits of that provision, but "assumed implicitly that a common bond amongst members would ensure both that those making lending decisions would know more about applicants and that borrowers would be more reluctant to default.... The common bond was seen as the cement that united credit union members in a cooperative venture." Id. at 1276.

From 1934 until 1982 the NCUA interpreted the common bond requirement to mean that the members of each occupational FCU--we put aside the associational alternative, which plays no role in this case--must be drawn from a single occupational group, defined to mean the employees of a single employer. 58 Fed.Reg. 40473 (July 28, 1993). In 1982, however, the NCUA altered its interpretation of nearly 50-years' standing to allow an FCU to comprise not just one but "multiple occupational groups." Interpretive Ruling and Policy Statement (IRPS) 82-1, 47 Fed.Reg. 16775 (Apr. 20, 1982). Each such group need only be within a "well-defined area," IRPS 82-3, 47 Fed.Reg. 26808 (June 22, 1982), by which the NCUA means an area served by an actual or planned office (of which there may be any number) of the credit union, IRPS 89-1, 54 Fed.Reg. 31165, 31170 (July 27, 1989).

The 1982 change of interpretation was intended to enable each FCU to realize economies of scale and to facilitate occupational diversification within the ranks of its membership. See Letter from E.F. Callahan Chairman of the NCUA, to Congressman Fernand J. St Germain, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 8-9 (Oct. 28, 1983). The new policy also made it possible for the employees of a company with fewer than 500 employees, the minimum for forming a new FCU, to join an existing FCU. 54 Fed.Reg. at 31171. The NCUA reiterated its new position through policy statements issued in 1989, when ATTF filed the first of the applications that FNBT here challenges, and most recently in 1994. See id. at 31165; IRPS 94-1, 59 Fed.Reg. 29066 (June 3, 1994). The agency explained in 1989 that "[a] select group of persons seeking credit union service from an occupational, associational or multiple group Federal credit union must have its own common bond," but "[t]he group's common bond need not be similar to the common bond(s) of the existing Federal credit union." 54 Fed.Reg. at 31176.

FNBT's complaint is at bottom that Interpretive Ruling 89-1 violates the FCUA by allowing groups lacking any common bond among them to join together in a credit union, ATTF in particular. Originally chartered in 1952 as the Radio Shops Federal Credit Union, the common bond of ATTF members was that they were "[e]mployees of the Radio Shops of Western Electric Company, Inc., who work in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Burlington, North Carolina; employees of this credit union; members of their immediate families; and organizations of such persons." ATTF has since grown to have 112,000 members in more than 150 disparate occupational groups spread across all 50 states, including the employees of a major tobacco company, an auto supply chain, and a television station. Its potential membership exceeds 357,000. As of January 1994 ATTF had more than 63,000 loans outstanding, totaling over $268 million. FNBT maintains that by allowing ATTF to accept members from among the employees of any number of employers, the NCUA has in effect opened the membership to anyone with a job.

Initially, the district court dismissed this case for lack of standing, 772 F.Supp. 609, 612-13 (1991); on appeal, however, we reversed on the ground that the banks are "what we have termed suitable challengers, that is ... their interests are sufficiently congruent with those of the intended beneficiaries that [they] are not more likely to frustrate than to further the statutory objectives." 988 F.2d at 1275. We remanded for a determination on the merits, as to which the district court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment. 863 F.Supp. 9. The district court held that the common bond requirement is ambiguous and that the NCUA's interpretation of the provision to mean that "a credit union may have several groups, each with its own common bond" is reasonable.

II. Analysis

We review an agency's interpretation of a statute entrusted to its administration under the familiar rubric of the Chevron case: If the Congress has "directly spoken to the precise question at issue," the court "must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress"; if, however, the statute is silent or ambiguous on the question at issue, then the court will defer to the agency's interpretation if it is permissible in light of the structure and purpose of the statute. 467 U.S. at 842-43, 104 S.Ct. at 2781-82. In resolving the threshold question whether congressional intent is sufficiently clear for us to review the case under step one of Chevron, "we are not required to grant any particular deference to the agency's parsing of statutory language or its interpretation of legislative history." Rettig v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 744 F.2d 133, 141 (D.C.Cir.1984).

FNBT argues this case under step one of Chevron only. According to FNBT, the intent of the Congress is clearly discernible from the statutory text and the purpose of the statute. We agree.

A. Section 109 by Its Terms

To repeat, § 109 provides in relevant part that "Federal credit union membership shall be limited to groups having a common bond of occupation ... or to groups within a well-defined neighborhood, community, or rural district." FNBT contends, first, that the article "a" in the phrase "groups having a common bond" means that all members of an FCU must be united by a single occupation. The NCUA counters that the plural noun "groups" in the same phrase indicates that there may be multiple groups in an FCU, so that the statute makes sense only if it is understood to contemplate multiple bonds, each uniting a single group even if the same bond does not unite all...

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