INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION v. BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS ET AL.
No. 85-792
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 10, 1986—Decided June 8, 1987
482 U.S. 270
*Together with No. 85-793, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
Henri F. Rush argued the cause for petitioner in No. 85-792. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Fried, Deputy Solicitor General Cohen, Robert S. Burk, and
Harold A. Ross argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in both cases.
John O‘B. Clarke, Jr., argued the cause for respondent United Transportation Union in both cases. With him on the brief was Robert L. Hart. Charles A. Miller, Gregg H. Levy, and Mark B. Goodwin filed a brief for respondents Union Pacific Railroad Co. et al.†
JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
On September 15, 1980, Union Pacific Railroad Co. (UP) and Missouri Pacific Railroad Co. (MP) and their respective corporate parents filed a joint application with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC or Commission) seeking permission for UP to acquire control of MP. The same day, a similar but separate application was jointly filed by UP and the Western Pacific Railroad Co. (WP). In a consolidated proceeding, the control applications were opposed by a number of labor organizations, including respondents Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) and United Transportation Union (UTU), as well as several competing railroads, including petitioner Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. (MKT) and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Co. (DRGW). MKT and DRGW, in addition to opposing the mergers, filed responsive applications seeking the right to conduct operations using the track of the new consolidated carrier in the event that the control applications were approved. MKT‘s request for trackage rights specified that “MKT, with its own employees, and at its sole cost and expense, shall operate its engines, cars and trains on and along Joint Track.” Proposed Trackage Rights Agreement § 5, Fi-
On October 20, 1982, the ICC approved UP‘s control acquisitions and granted MKT‘s application for trackage rights over 200 miles of MP and UP track in four States and DRGW‘s application for rights over 619 miles of MP track between Pueblo and Kansas City. See Union Pacific Corp., Pacific Rail System, Inc. & Union Pacific R. Co.—Control—Missouri Pacific Corp. & Missouri Pacific R. Co., 366 I. C. C. 459 (1982), aff‘d sub nom. Southern Pacific Transportation Co. v. ICC, 237 U. S. App. D. C. 99, 736 F. 2d 708 (1984), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 1208 (1985). The approved trackage rights were to become effective “immediately upon consummation of the consolidations.” 366 I. C. C., at 590.
It is the Commission‘s standard practice, in pursuit of its statutory responsibility to shield railroad employees from dislocations resulting from actions that it approves, see
The control transactions among UP, MP, and WP were consummated on December 22, 1982, at which point the grants of trackage rights also became effective. MKT commenced its operations, using its own crews, on or about January 6, 1983; and DRGW shortly thereafter entered into an agreement with MP providing “for using MP crews on [DRGW] trains for a temporary, interim period, after which [DRGW] will operate the trains with [its] own crews.” App. in Nos. 83-2290 and 83-2317 (CADC), p. 6. Although numerous parties, including BLE, had petitioned for review of the Commission‘s October 20, 1982, order (which was affirmed in most respects some 18 months later, see Southern Pacific Transportation Co. v. ICC, supra), no question concerning the crewing of MKT or DRGW trains was raised at that time. However, on April 4, 1983, BLE filed with the Commission a “Petition for Clarification,” contending that the Commission had no jurisdiction to, and as a matter of consistent practice did not, inject itself into labor matters such as crew selection, and asking the Commission to declare that its October 20, 1982, order did not have the intent or effect of authorizing the tenant carriers to use their own crews on routes that they had not previоusly served.1 In a brief order served May 18, 1983, the Commission denied the petition, ruling that its prior decision “does not require clarification.” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 85-793, p. A38. The
†Richard T. Conway, William F. Sheehan, and Kenneth P. Kolson filed a brief for the Association of American Railroads et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.
Within the period prescribed by Commission rules for filing petitions for administrative review, see
On December 16, 1983, BLE petitioned for judicial review of the May 18, 1983, and October 25, 1983, orders; UTU petitioned for review of the latter order on December 23, 1983. The cases were consolidated, and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated both orders. 245 U. S. App. D. C. 311, 761 F. 2d 714 (1985). The court rejected the threshold claim that the appeals were time barred, and concluded on the merits that if the ICC intended to exempt the railroads from the requirements of the RLA, it was required to explain, as it had not done, why that exemp-
MKT and the Commission filed petitions for certiorari on the question of the proper construction of
I
The petitions fоr review and the Court of Appeals’ order encompass both the May 18, 1983, order refusing to clarify the Commission‘s prior approval order, and the October 25, 1983, order refusing to reconsider that refusal to clarify. We consider first the appeal of the latter order.
With certain exceptions not relevant here, see
The Commission‘s authority to reopen and reconsider its prior actions stems from
“The Commission may, аt any time on its own initiative because of material error, new evidence, or substantially changed circumstances—
“(A) reopen a proceeding;
“(B) grant rehearing, reargument, or reconsideration of an action of the Commission; and
“(C) change an action of the Commission.
“An interested party may petition to reopen and reconsider an action of the Commission under this paragraph under regulations of the Commission.”
When the Commission reopens a proceeding for any reason and, after reconsideration, issues a new and final order setting forth the rights and obligations of the parties, that order—even if it merely reaffirms the rights and obligations set forth in the original order—is reviewable on its merits. See, e. g., United States v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 329 U. S. 424 (1947). Where, however, the Commission refuses to reopen a proceeding, what is reviewable is merely the lawfulness of the refusal. Absent some provision of law requiring a reopening (which is not asserted to exist here), the basis for challenge must be that the refusal to reopen was “arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion.”
For these reasons, we agree with the conclusion reached in an earlier case by the Court of Appeals that, where a party petitions an agency for reconsideration on the ground of “material error,” i. e., on the same record that was before the agency when it rendered its original decision, “an order which merely denies rehearing of . . . [the prior] order is not itself reviewable.” Microwave Communications, Inc. v. FCC, 169 U. S. App. D. C. 154, 156, n. 7, 515 F. 2d 385, 387, n. 7 (1974). See also SEC v. Louisiana Public Service Comm‘n, 353 U. S. 368, 371-372 (1957); National Bank of Davis v. Comptroller of Currency, 233 U. S. App. D. C. 284, 285, and n. 3, 725 F. 2d 1390, 1391, and n. 3 (1984);
It is irrelevant that the Commission‘s order refusing reconsideration discussed the merits of the unions’ claims at length. Where the Commission‘s formal disposition is to deny reconsideration, and where it makes no alteration in the underlying order, we will not undertakе an inquiry into whether reconsideration “in fact” occurred. In a sense, of course, it always occurs, since one cannot intelligently rule upon a petition to reconsider without reflecting upon, among
That portion of the concurrence which deals with the issue of jurisdiction (Part I) consists largely of the citation and discussion of numerous cases affording judicial review of agency refusals to reopen. In the third from last paragraph, however, one finds the acknowledgment that all these cases involved refusals “based upon new evidence or changed circumstances” rather than upon “material error,” post, at 293-294, and are therеfore fully in accord with the principle set forth in the present opinion. The only point of dispute between this opinion and the concurrence is whether separate treatment of refusals to reopen based on material error has some basis in statute or is rather, as the concurrence would have it, “a pure creature of judicial invention.” Post, at 294.
Even if our search for statutory authorization were limited to the text of the Hobbs Act, it seems to us not inventiveness but the most plebeian statutory construction to find implicit in the 60-day limit upon judicial review a prohibition against the agency‘s permitting, or a litigant‘s achieving, perpetual availability of review by the mere device of filing a suggestion that the agency has made a mistake and should consider the matter again. Substantial disregard of the Hobbs Act is effected, not by our opinion, but by what the concurrence delivers (after having rejected our views) in Part II of its opinion: on-the-merits review of an agency decision of law rendered 14 months before the petition for review was filed, using the same standard of review that would have been
Statutory authority for preventing this untoward result need not be sought solely in the Hobbs Act, however. While the Hobbs Act specifies the form of proceeding for judicial review of ICC orders, see
The concurrence‘s effort to bring SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194 (1947), into the present discussion is mis-
Finally, we may note that the concurrence‘s solution to review of denials of reconsideration, in addition to nullifying limitation periods, is simply not workable (or not workable on any basis the concurrence has explained) in the vast majority of cases. The concurrence reviews the Commission‘s stated conclusions regarding
II
There remains BLE‘s appeal from the May 18, 1983, order denying its petition for clarification. While the petition for review was filed more than 60 days after that order was served, we conclude that it was nonetheless effective, because the timely petition for administrative reconsideration stayed the running of the Hobbs Act‘s limitation period until the petition had been acted upon by the Commission. A contrary conclusion is admittedly suggested by the language of the Hobbs Act and of
As with the Commission‘s denial of reconsideration, however, its denial of clarification was not an appealable order. If BLE‘s motion is treated as a genuine “Petition for Clarification“—i. e., as seeking nothing more than specification, one way or the other, of what the original order meant with regard to crewing rights—then the denial is unappealable because BLE was not “aggrieved” by it within the meaning of the Hobbs Act. BLE could have been aggrieved by a refusal to clarify in this narrow sense only if the refusal left it uncertain as to the Commission‘s view of its rights or obligations, which plainly was not the case. Though the May 18, 1983, order denied the petition for clarification, the text of the denial made it unmistakably clear that the Commission interpreted the October 20, 1982, order as authorizing MKT and DRGW to use their own crews. BLE could, of course, disagree with that construction, but it could hardly complain that the clarification it sought had not been provided.
In fact, however, we think that BLE‘s petition was understood by all of the parties to be in effect a petition to reopen. BLE did not merely ask the Commission for clarification; it asked for clarification “in the manner set forth [in the petition],” App. in Nos. 83-2290 and 83-2317 (CADC), p. 5, i. e., for “clarification” that the October 20, 1982, order meant
We are not prepared to acknowledge an exception to that requirement where an order is ambiguous, so that а party might think that its interests are not infringed. The remedy for such ambiguity is to petition the Commission for reconsideration within the 60-day period, enabling judicial review to be pursued (if Commission resolution of the ambiguity is adverse) after disposition of that petition. Otherwise, the time limits of the Hobbs Act would be held hostage to ever-present ambiguities. If, of course, the ICC‘s action here had gone beyond what was (at most) clarification of an ambiguity, and in the guise of interpreting the original order in fact revised it, that would have been a new order immediately appealable. It is impossible to make such a contention here. It was, at the very most, arguable that the Commission‘s routine reference to the general NW-BN-Mendocino conditions was meant to cause those conditions to supersede, in the event of conflict, the specific terms of the trackage rights applications that the Commission generally approved—and also far from certain that any conflict between the two existed, since it was unclear whether the protective conditions extended to the situation in which the landlord and tenant railroads conduct no joint operations and the tenant carries only traffic for its own account.
Vacated and remanded.
JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN, JUSTICE MARSHALL, and JUSTICE BLACKMUN join, concurring in the judgment.
Congress has authorized interested parties to petition the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC or Commission) to reopen a proceeding, grant rehearing or reconsideration, or change an action of the Commission “because of material error, new evidence, or substantially changed circumstances.”
The Court holds that agency decisions denying petitions for reopening based on “material error” are not subject to judicial review, even if the denial is arbitrary or contrary to law. Because this holding is not supported by the relevant statutes, and is contrary to longstanding principles of administrative law, I cannot subscribe to it. Addressing the merits, I conclude that the Court of Appeals erred in reversing the ICC‘s decisions not to reopen the matter before it. To the extent that the Commission based those decisions on its reading of the statute, its reading was correct; to the extent that it refused to consider issues not raised previously, it did not abuse its discretion.
I
The Administrative Orders Review Act,
“Any party aggrieved by the final order may, within 60 days after its entry, file a petition to review the order in the court of appeals where venue lies.”
28 U. S. C. § 2344 .
The Court appears to agree that all of these elements were satisfied here. The denials of reopening and reconsideration constituted final orders; respondents were aggrieved parties; the petitions were filed within the required time period; and venue was appropriate in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Nonetheless, the Court concludes that the Court of Appeals should have dismissed the petitions for want of jurisdiction.
I agree with the Court that the only agency actions properly before the Court of Appeals were the ICC‘s denial of clarification served on May 18, 1983 (which the Court properly treats as a motion to reopen), and the ICC‘s denial of reconsideration served on October 25, 1983. I also agree that, depending on an agency‘s regulations, a decision whether to reopen may be based on discretionary factors that will virtually always survive judicial review. But this does not divest the courts of appeals of jurisdiction; it simply means that an agency‘s decision based on such discretionary considerations will almost always, if not always, be upheld as not “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
Not every denial of a petition for reopening is premised on discretionary considerations. In many contexts the agency‘s
One of the basic tenets of judicial review of agency decisions is that “an agency‘s order must be upheld, if at all, ‘on the same basis articulated in the order by the agency itself.‘” FPC v. Texaco, Inc., 417 U. S. 380, 397 (1974), quoting Burlington Truck Lines, Inc. v. United States, 371 U. S. 156, 168-169 (1962). As the Court explained in SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194 (1947):
“[A] simple but fundamental rule of administrative law . . . is . . . that a reviewing court, in dealing with a determination or judgment which an administrative agency alone is authorized to make, must judge the propriety of such action solely by the grounds invoked by the agency. If those grounds are inadequate or improper, the court is powerless to affirm the administrative action.” Id., at 196.2
Consequently, when an agency explains that it has denied a petition for reopening based on its understanding of the underlying statute, a reviewing court may only uphold the agency decision if that reasoning withstands review. To be sure, an agency may announce that it has declined to consider the petition for reopening because it is duplicative, because it was filed so late in the day, or for some other discretionary consideration. If the agency explains its decision on such grounds, its reasoning must be scrutinized under an abuse-of-discretion standard. But if the agency chooses not to pro3
The Court argues that it would be more prudent to require the parties to seek review in the court of appeals immediately after an agency‘s initial decision. This may or may not be true.5 But our view of efficient procedure does not give us the power to rewrite the United States Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. Nor does it justify ignoring this Court‘s decisions explicitly holding that a denial of a petition for reopening is reviewable, see Giova v. Rosenberg, 379 U. S. 18 (1964); reversing an agency for failing to reopen a
“The fact that reopening is a matter of agency discretion to a considerable extent . . . does not lead inevitably to a conclusion that such an exercise of administrative power is wholly immune from judicial examination; § 10(e) of the APA expressly authorizes the courts to set aside any administrative decision constituting an abuse of discretion. The question is whether the Secretary in deciding not to reopen enjoys absolute discretion. . . . Absent any evidence to the contrary, Congress may rather be presumed to have intended that the courts should fulfill their traditional role of defining and maintaining the proper bounds of administrative discretion.” Cappadora v. Celebrezze, 356 F. 2d 1, 5-6 (CA2 1966).8
The Court brushes off the many cases reviewing denials of petition for reopening by distinguishing between petitions for reopening based upon new evidence or changed circumstances and those based upon claims of material error.
The Court‘s reliance on
It seems clear to me that neither the Hobbs Act nor the Administrative Procedure Act recognizes the distinction that
II
The Commission‘s decisions denying the petitions for clarification and reconsideration in this case were based partly on discretionary considerations and partly on the Commission‘s interpretation of the relevant law. The Commission read the statute as not requiring it to make a “necessity” finding (which it had not made), and concluded that any deficiencies in the “public interest” findings that it was required to make (and had made) were attributable to the unions’ failure to raise the issue in the initial proceeding. I believe that the Commission‘s legal conclusion was sound, and that it did not abuse its discretion in refusing to consider facts and theories that the unions could have brought up in their original objections to the transactions.
The petitions for clarification and reconsideration apparently were prompted by the unions’ belated realization that the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. (MKT) and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Co. (DRGW) believed that they had the right to use their own crews to operate trains pursuant to their newly granted trackage rights over the Union Pacific Railroad Company‘s (UP) and Missouri Pacific Railroad Company‘s (MP) tracks. The unions argued that the Railway Labor Act (RLA), certain provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act (ICA), and their collective-bargaining agreements, gave UP and MP employees certain rights with respect to working those tracks. The MKT and DRGW, on the other hand, argued that even if such rights existed, the ICC had approved MKT‘s and DRGW‘s aрplications for trackage rights, and the applications had specified that the two railroads had the right to utilize their own
“A carrier, corporation, or person participating in [an] approved or exempted transaction is exempt from the antitrust laws and from all other law, including State and municipal law, as necessary to let that person carry out the transaction, hold, maintain, and operate property, and exercise control or franchises acquired through the transaction.”
In its denials of the petitions for clarification and reconsideration, the ICC rejected the unions’ argument that in order for the exemption provision of § 11341 to come into play, the ICC must make an actual, on the record, determination that the exemption is “necessary” to the transaction. The Commission explained:
“The terms of Section 11341 immunizing an approved transaction from any other laws are self-executing and there is no need for us expressly to order or to declare that a carrier is specifically relieved from certain restraints. See Brotherhood of Loc. Eng. [v. Chicago & N. W. R. Co., 314 F. 2d 424, 430-431 (CA8), cert denied, 375 U. S. 819 (1963)], citing Chicago, St. P., M. & O. Ry. Lease, 295 I. C. C. 696, at 432 (1958).
“In evaluating a transaction under the criteria of
49 U. S. C. 11344 , we must consider the policies of statutes other than the Interstate Commerce Act to the extent that those policies are relevant to the determination of whether a proposal is consistent with the public interest. For example, the public interest evaluation must include consideration of the policies of the antitrust laws. See McLean Trucking Co. v. United States, 321 U. S. 67, 87 (1944).
“While the RLA, like the antitrust laws, embodies certain public policy considerations, the Interstate Commerce Act also specifies that interests of affected employees must be considered. In these proceedings, we gave full consideration to the impact of the consolidation on railroad employees in accordance with our established policies. 366 I. C. C. 618-22.
“The record in these proceedings is devoid of any suggestion by BLE, UTU, or any other party that the approval of the responsive trackage rights applications, subject to the usual labor protective conditions, would be in any way inconsistent with thе policies of the RLA. In these circumstances, we can find no merit in UTU‘s argument that we improperly failed to reconcile the policies of the RLA with our decision.” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 85-793, pp. A44-A45.
The Court of Appeals reversed, rejecting the ICC‘s argument that § 11341 is self-executing and that the Commission need not make any explicit necessity findings. 245 U. S. App. D. C. 311, 320, 761 F. 2d 714, 723 (1985). The court explained that “Congress has given ICC broad powers to immunize transactions from later legal obstacles, but this delegation by Congress is explicitly qualified by a necessity component. . . . In exercising its waiver authority ICC must do more than shake a wand to make a law go away. It must supply a reasoned basis for that exercise of its statutory authority.” Ibid. Because it did not believe that the ICC had supplied justification for the necessity of waiving any RLA provisions regarding crew selection, the Court remanded the case for the ICC to determine whether it should “exercise its exemption authority.” Id., at 322, 761 F. 2d, at 725. Judge MacKinnon dissented, arguing that the statute is self-executing, and that the ICC is not required to make
The Court of Appeals’ holding was based on a misunderstanding of
“[A]pproval of a voluntary railroad merger which is within the scope of the Act is dependent upon three, and upon only three, considerations: First, a finding that it ‘will be consistent with the public interest.’ (§ 5 (2)(b).) Second, a finding that, subject to any modification made by the Commission, it is ‘just and reasonable.’ (§ 5 (2)(b).) Third, assent of a ‘majority . . . of the holders of the shares entitled to vote.’ (§ 5 (11).) When these
conditions have been complied with, the Commission-approved transaction goes into effect without the need for invoking any аpproval under state authority, and the parties are relieved of ‘restraints, limitations, and prohibitions of law, Federal, State, or municipal, insofar as may be necessary to enable them to carry into effect the transaction so approved. . . .’ (§ 5 (11)).” Schwabacher v. United States, 334 U. S. 182, 194 (1948).
See also Seaboard Air Line R. Co. v. Daniel, 333 U. S. 118, 124 (1948) (not necessary for Commission‘s order to manifest “a clear purpose to authorize the exemption“);
It is on this last point that the special considerations involving review of an agency‘s refusal to reopen a mattеr come into play. The agency clearly has the right to deny reopening to a party who failed to present evidence or to raise an objection that could have been presented or raised before the agency‘s initial decision was reached.15 Indeed, even at the
“BLE, UTU, and various other railway labor organizations participated in these proceedings, and none made any argument or presented any evidence that the responsive trackage rights proposals would violate any applicable labor agreement. Rather, the record supports the conclusion that the trackage rights operations, using the tenants’ crews, could be implemented as approved without raising any dispute over crew assignments between the employees of different railroads.” App. to Pet for Cert. in No. 85-793, p. A45.
It is thus clear that the agency‘s refusal to take action based on the unions’ new claim that the use of the tenants’ crews conflicted with various laws was based on the premise that
I would therefore reverse the Court of Appeals on these grounds, not because it lacked jurisdiction.
Notes
Of course, an agency may, if it chooses, deny the petition on discretionary grounds without considering whether the petition makes a showing sufficient to support reopening under the statute or regulations. See INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 U. S. 24, 24, 26 (1976).
“(a) A discretionary appeal is permitted. It will be designated a ‘petition for administrative review,’ except that, when it is related to an action of the entire Commission in the first instance, it must be designated a ‘petition to reopen.’
“(b) The petition will be granted only upon a showing of one or more of the following points:
. . . . .
“(3) The prior action was taken by the entire Commission in the first instance, and involves material error.
. . . . .
“(e) Petitions must be filed within 20 days after the service of the action or within any further period (not to exceed 20 days) as a division or the Commission may authorize.”
The Cоurt‘s citation of Court of Appeals decisions supporting its non-review position, ante, at 280, is not at all conclusive. Many decisions have held that such petitions are indeed reviewable. See Carter/Mondale Presidential Committee, Inc. v. FEC, 249 U. S. App. D. C. 349, 353-354, 775 F. 2d 1182, 1186-1187 (1985); Wausau v. United States, 703 F. 2d 1042 (CA7 1983); Virginia Appalachian Lumber Corp. v. ICC, 197 U. S. App. D. C. 13, 19, 606 F. 2d 1385, 1391 (1979); Provisioners Frozen Express, Inc. v. ICC, 536 F. 2d 1303, 1305 (CA9 1976); B. F. Goodrich Co. v. Northwest Industries, Inc., 424 F. 2d 1349, 1355 (CA3), cert. denied, 400 U. S. 822 (1970); Northeast Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 130 U. S. App. D. C. 278, 287-288, 400 F. 2d 749, 758-759 (1968). Cases reviewing denials of reopening in the immigration context are too common to require citation.
In Provisioners Frozen Express, supra, the court dealt with a petition for review which, like the one here, had been filed more than 60 days after the initial decision, but within 60 days of the petition for reopening. The court held that the Commission‘s refusal to entertain the petition for reopening “did not create a new final order which would give the Court jurisdiction to review some five years of proceedings in this matter.” Id., at 1305. But, the court hastened to add, it did have jurisdiction to determine “whether the Commission abused its discretion in rejecting [the] petition to reopen.” Ibid.
“The carriers affected by any order made under the foregoing provisions of this section . . . shall be, and they are hereby, relieved from the operation of the ‘antitrust laws,’ . . . and of all other restraints or prohibitions by law, State, or Federal, in so far as may be necessary to enable them to do anything authorized or required by an order made under and pursuant to the foregoing provisions of this section.” 41 Stat. 482, amending § 5(8) of the Interstate Commerce Act.The operative language, with its self-executing phraseology, was incorporated into the 1940 amendment and recodification of the Transportation Act. See § 7 of the Transportation Act of 1940, ch. 722, 54 Stat. 908-909, amending § 5 (11). Again, when the Act was recodified as
In addition, the Commission has consistently treated the exemption as automatically flowing from an approval. See, e. g., Railway Express Agency, Inc., Notes, 348 I. C. C. 157, 215 (1975); Ex Parte No. 260, Revised Regulations Governing Interlocking Officers, 336 I. C. C. 679, 681-682 (1970); Texas Turnpike Authority Abandonment by St. Louis Southwestern R. Co., 328 I. C. C. 42, 46 (1965); Chicago, St. P., M. & O. R. Co. Lease, 295 I. C. C. 696, 702 (1958); Control of Central Pacific by Southern Pacific, 76 I. C. C. 508, 515-517 (1923). A number of Courts of
This does not mean, as respondents fear, that a party claiming an exemption on the basis of § 11341 need merely assert that its conduct is “necessary” in order to prevail in its claim. Any tribunal that is faced with a claim that a party is violating some “other law” has the responsibility of determining whether an exemption is “necessary to let that person carry out the transaction, hold, maintain, and operate property, and exercise control or franchises acquired through the transaction.”