UNITED STATES SUGAR CORPORATION, Petitioner v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, Respondent
No. 11-1108
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Decided December 23, 2016
Consolidated with 11-1124, 11-1134, 11-1142, 11-1145, 11-1159, 11-1165, 11-1172, 11-1174, 11-1181, 13-1086, 13-1087, 13-1091, 13-1092, 13-1096, 13-1097, 13-1098, 13-1099, 13-1100, 13-1103
Before: HENDERSON, BROWN, and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges.
Appellants contend that it was not necessary for the Postal Service to require three tabs or glue lines to prevent hollow, circular mail pieces that might jam mail sorting equipment. This is not the point, however. There is no doubt that the sealing requirements as interpreted by the Postal Service effectively served to limit jams in mail sorting equipment. It does not matter that different requirements might have served the same purpose. What matters here is that the sealing requirements were reasonable and Appellants had clear notice of what was necessary in order to qualify for the discounted automation rate. Therefore, pursuant to the reasoned decision-making standard, we will not second-guess the Postal Service‘s reasonable judgments regarding Manual requirements. See, e.g., USPS v. Postal Regulatory Comm‘n, 785 F.3d 740, 750 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (“[W]e review the [Postal Regulatory] Commission‘s interpretation of its own regulations with substantial deference, allowing that interpretation to control unless plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)); Orengo Caraballo v. Reich, 11 F.3d 186, 193 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (“While we require the [Department of Labor] to offer a reasoned analysis ..., we do not sit in review to substitute our judgment for that of the agency“).
Finally, Appellants contend that sealing requirements adopted after 2009 would not pass muster under the Postal Service‘s construction of the 2009 requirements. This claim is self-evidently irrelevant because, as we have found, the 2009 requirements were reasonable and we have no occasion here to assess requirements adopted after 2009.
III. CONCLUSION
We hereby deny Appellants’ challenges to the PCSC‘s decisions and affirm the judgment of the District Court enforcing the revenue deficiencies against Appellants. We reverse and vacate the District Court‘s award of surcharges against Appellants.
So ordered.
PER CURIAM:
Among the many challenges to the EPA‘s Major Boilers Rule1 in these con-
On September 12, 2016, the EPA filed a petition for a panel rehearing asking that the major-boiler standards be “remanded to [the] EPA without vacatur for the Agency to conduct rulemaking to determine which standards are ‘affected’ and to modify them in accordance with the Court‘s opinion.” EPA Pet. Reh‘g 1. All relevant parties in this matter support the EPA‘s request. Joint Resp. Industry Pet‘rs 3; Envtl. Pet‘rs’ Resp. 1.
Although remand without vacatur may in some circumstances invite prejudicial agency delay, see, e.g., In re Core Commc‘ns, Inc., 531 F.3d 849, 862-63 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (Griffith, J., concurring), in other circumstances vacatur itself carries more-harmful consequences. We have therefore frequently remanded without vacating when a rule‘s defects are curable and “where vacatur ‘would at least temporarily defeat the enhanced protection of the environmental values covered by [the EPA rule at issue].‘” North Carolina v. EPA, 550 F.3d 1176, 1178 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (per curiam) (alterations in original) (quoting Envtl. Def. Fund, Inc. v. EPA, 898 F.2d 183, 190 (D.C. Cir. 1990)); see also Natural Res. Def. Council v. EPA, 489 F.3d 1250, 1265 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (“Where the court has concluded that a final rule is deficient, the court has traditionally not vacated the rule if doing so would have serious adverse implications for public health and the environment.“). Vacating the standards at issue here would unnecessarily remove many limitations on emissions of hazardous air pollutants from boilers and allow greater emissions of those pollutants until EPA completes another rulemaking and implements replacement standards. See EPA Pet. Reh‘g 6.
In light of our precedent and the parties’ agreement that this case presents one of the circumstances in which remand without vacatur makes the most sense, we remand without vacating the numeric MACT standards set in the Major Boilers Rule for new and existing sources in each of the eighteen subcategories.2 On remand, the EPA is to identify those standards for which the MACT floor would have differed if the EPA had included all best-performing sources in each subcategory in its MACT-floor analysis. The EPA must then revise those standards consistent with our July 29, 2016 opinion in this case.
Although the Industry Petitioners stress the importance of the EPA expeditiously completing the rulemaking, we have not been asked to impose a deadline by which the EPA must act. Even so, we expect the EPA to complete this rulemaking promptly. We also “remind the Petitioners that they may bring a mandamus petition to this court in the event that [the] EPA fails to” revise its standards on remand “in a manner consistent with our” earlier opinion. North Carolina, 550 F.3d at 1178 (citing Natural Res. Def. Council, 489 F.3d at 1264 (Randolph, J., concurring)).
So ordered.