Don’t Mess With Texas - The Supreme Court Of The United States Reaffirms Deference To Administrative Tribunals

In City of Arlington, Texas v. Federal Communications Commission, 569 U.S. (2013), the unanimous Supreme Court of the United States clarified the limits of judicial deference to administrative tribunals' decisions. In doing so, it reaffirmed a conceptual rift between Canadian and American jurisprudence on the issue.

Background

At issue in Arlington was the provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in which Congress required state and local governments to act on wireless "siting applications within a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed". "Siting applications" are applications by telecommunications networks to place towers and antennae within local zoning authorities' jurisdiction. Such applications have frequently faced long delays. In July 2008, wireless service providers petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to clarify the meaning of the statutory requirement that zoning authorities act on siting requests "within a reasonable period of time". The Commission issued a declaratory ruling finding that "unreasonable delays in the personal wireless service facility siting process have obstructed the provision of wireless services" and that such delays are unreasonable presumptively (but rebuttably) 90 days following the commencement of an application to place new antenna on an existing tower and 150 days following the commencement of any other application.

Some state and local governments opposed the adoption of this declaratory ruling on the ground that the Commission lacked the authority to interpret the ambiguous statutory provision at issue. Texas petitioned for a review of the declaratory ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Court of Appeals applied the framework established in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defence Council, Inc.,

Introduction

467 U.S. 837 (1984). The Chevron case mandates a deferential approach to judicial review of administrative tribunals' decisions. It states that where a statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to a specific issue, "the question for the court is whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute". The Chevron approach is based on the presumption that to the extent Congress left ambiguity in a statute, it wished that ambiguity to be resolved first and foremost by the administrative agency entrusted to interpret that statute, rather than the courts. Relying on the Chevron precedent, the Court of...