Posts Tagged: "Chenery"

More than half a century ago, the Supreme Court announced a “simple but fundamental rule” of administrative law: “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.” Chenery II, 332 U.S. at 196 (emphasis added). Thus, an agency’s “action must be measured by what [the agency] did, not by what it might have done,” SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 93–94 (1943) (Chenery I), so if the agency’s “grounds are inadequate or improper, the court is powerless to affirm the administrative action by substituting what it considers to be a more adequate or proper basis,” Chenery II, 332 U.S. at 196… Unfortunately, Chenery is yet another baseline legal norm that is not given due respect in the Federal Circuit. That court swims against the tide of Chenery’s expansion, enacting a restriction on its operation that dramatically reduces the rule’s scope.