Madsen v. Department of Agriculture
| Decision Date | 28 June 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 87-5476,87-5476 |
| Parties | Donald G. MADSEN, Appellant, v. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; Richard Lyng, Secretary of Department of Agriculture; United States Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Service, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture; Thomas Vongarlem, Deputy Administrator; Dale Anderson, State Executive Director; Donely Wilson, District Director; Manford Lomheim, County Executive Director; Jerry Hammerquist, Past Chairman County Committee; Dean Talty, Chairman County Committee; Gordon Babcock, Vice Chairman County Committee; Ann Knudson, Program Assistant; Department of Justice and Edwin Meese, Attorney General of the United States, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Donald G. Madsen, New Underwood, S.D., pro se.
Robert A. Mandel, Rapid City, S.D., for appellees.
Before ARNOLD, FAGG and WOLLMAN, Circuit Judges.
Donald G. Madsen filed this suit against the United States Department of Agriculture, Secretary of Agriculture Richard Lyng, and various officials of the Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) for the purpose of contesting the bushels-per-acre wheat yield assigned to his South Dakota farm. The district court dismissed the case on the ground that it lacked jurisdiction to review the agency's decision, and Madsen appeals. For different reasons, we affirm.
The ASCS, operating through its local county committee, lowered the wheat yields assigned to Madsen's farm for the years from 1981 to 1985. Although Madsen disagreed with the accuracy of these revised yields, he chose not to pursue fully administrative procedures available for challenging them. Congress later passed legislation that incorporated some of these unchallenged yields into an averaging formula used in making crop yield calculations for 1986 and later years. See 7 U.S.C. Sec. 1466 (Supp. IV 1986).
Madsen seeks in this action to contest the underlying annual yields that factor into the 1986 average yield computation. In response to the government's motion to dismiss or for summary judgment, the district court concluded that agency regulations prevented judicial review of the agency's decision. The court thus dismissed Madsen's complaint for lack of jurisdiction.
Madsen's complaint and other filings demonstrate that his claims are based principally on the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA), 5 U.S.C. Secs. 701-706. While the district court referred to agency regulations for its decision that it lacked jurisdiction over Madsen's case, the government on appeal contends the APA precludes judicial review because Madsen's claims arise from "agency action [that] is committed to agency discretion by law," id. Sec. 701(a)(2). The legal source for this commitment of discretion, according to the government, is a statute limiting intra-agency review of factual determinations that form the basis of Madsen's wheat program payments. See 7 U.S.C. Sec. 1385 (Supp. IV 1986).
Section 1385, however, is not a complete bar to judicial review of agency action related to farm program payments. See, e.g., Westcott v. United States Dep't of Agric., 611 F.Supp. 351, 353 (D.Neb.1984), aff'd, 765 F.2d 121 (8th Cir.1985) (per curiam). Although factual determinations of an agency are not subject to judicial review under section 1385, we are free under the APA to review legal questions or agency action asserted to be arbitrary or capricious. Id.; Robinson v. Block, 608 F.Supp. 817, 820 (W.D.Mich.1985) (); see also Garvey v. Freeman, 397 F.2d 600, 604-05 (10th Cir.1968) ().
Similarly, regulations covering appeals of agency determinations in specified farm programs, see 7 C.F.R. Secs. 780.1--780.12 (1988), do not preclude all judicial review of farm program payment decisions. Instead, these regulations limit the extent of review available within the administrative agency. See id. Secs. 780.3--780.5; see also Garvey, 397 F.2d at 604. Having reviewed the nature of Madsen's claims, we conclude neither section 1385 nor the regulations governing agency appeals prevents review of those claims under the APA.
Beyond this, the APA exception to judicial review for action committed by law to agency discretion is a "very narrow" one, Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 410, 91 S.Ct. 814, 820, 28 L.Ed.2d 136 (1971), and the exception applies only when statutes are so broadly drawn that there is " 'no law to apply,' " id. (quoted citation omitted). A statute fits into this category when it "is drawn so that a court would have no meaningful standard against which to judge the agency's exercise of discretion." Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 830, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 1655, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985). Because Congress has directed that crop yields be calculated according to a specific statutory formula and because the agency has adopted regulations describing the procedure for this calculation, there is "law to apply." We thus conclude Madsen's claims are properly subject to judicial review under the APA, and the district court had jurisdiction over Madsen's case.
On appeal, the government argues the district court nevertheless properly dismissed Madsen's complaint because he failed to exhaust available administrative remedies. In this regard, we believe the government's argument is well taken.
Madsen elected not to take full advantage of administrative procedures permitting him to challenge wheat yields assigned to his farm for the 1981-85 crop years. His request for judicial intervention at this stage is therefore at odds with established principles generally requiring prior exhaustion of administrative remedies. See, e.g., United States v. Bisson, 839 F.2d 418, 419-20 (8th Cir.1988), aff'g 646 F.Supp. 701, 706-07 (D.S.D.1986). Moreover, we have carefully considered the circumstances of this case, and we see nothing inherently unfair in holding Madsen accountable for his earlier choice--a choice that also allowed the government reasonably to rely on the uncontested yields in administering its ongoing farm programs.
We conclude Madsen's failure to exhaust available administrative remedies prevents belated judicial review of his claims in this case. For this reason, the district court's disposition of Madsen's case is appropriate, and we affirm the court's order dismissing Madsen's complaint.
I agree with the Court that the District Court erred in dismissing Madsen's complaint for lack of jurisdiction. I also agree with the Court's rejection of the government's position, asserted on appeal, that judicial review is unavailable. I disagree, however, with the Court's holding that failure to exhaust administrative remedies bars this action, and I therefore respectfully dissent from the judgment of affirmance. I would reverse and remand this case for further proceedings on the merits, in which Madsen would be given a chance to establish that the crop-yield determinations he seeks to challenge were mistaken.
Crop yields established by the ASCS are estimates of farm productivity used in wheat and feed-grain programs as a factor in determining the amount of deficiency and disaster payments to which a farmer is entitled. In 1981 the ASCS, operating through its Pennington County, South Dakota, committee, lowered the wheat yield assigned to Madsen's farm from 26 bushels to 20 bushels per acre. The committee indicated that the reduction was due to Madsen's decision to plant spring wheat rather than the winter wheat crop deemed to be more productive. Later, there was a reduction in wheat yields throughout the county, and Madsen's yield was lowered to 18 bushels per acre. Madsen complained to county committee members about these reductions, but did not appeal the decisions or provide evidence of his actual yield. In response to one of these complaints, the county committee in 1985 gave Madsen a list of five farms in the area. The committee indicated that, in accordance with ASCS rules, Madsen's yield was comparable to that of the listed farms, which assertedly had the same or similar yield capability. Appendix at 1-2. Madsen did not press his complaint further.
For the crop years 1982 to 1985, the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981, Sec. 301(d), 7 U.S.C. Sec. 1445b-1(d), provided that the yield for each year "shall be the yield established for the farm for the previous crop year, adjusted by the Secretary to provide a fair and reasonable yield." The statute also required the Secretary to consider actual yields proved by the producer. Id. The Food Security Act of 1985, Sec. 1031, 7 U.S.C. Secs. 1461-69, provided that farm-program yields for wheat crops in 1986 and 1987 were to be determined by taking the prior five yields, excluding the highest and lowest yields, and averaging the remaining three figures. Id. at Sec. 1466(b)(1); see 7 C.F.R. Sec. 713.6(a)(1) (1987). Using this formula, the Pennington County ASCS committee established Madsen's yield at 18 bushels for 1986.
Madsen contested his assigned 1986 wheat yield at the county and state levels. He then appealed unsuccessfully to the ASCS Deputy Administrator, State and County Operations. The gist of his challenge was that the county ASCS had arbitrarily given him a low yield and then selected five other farms with low yields as a sham basis for comparison.
Although he does not dispute that the ASCS complied fully with the three-year averaging formula provided by 7 U.S.C. Sec. 1466 for crop yields in 1986, Madsen appealed only the 1986 yield to the state ASCS and to the Deputy Administrator. The only basis for his challenge to the 1986...
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