Cite as: 511 U. S. 431 (1994)
Thomas, J., dissenting
as they could on the date petitioner's tariff was filed. Under our prior filed rate cases, nothing more is required for the filed tariff to be enforced.
IV
The Court's refusal to apply American Trucking's two-step method of statutory analysis leads to a remarkable result: The Court upholds an agency regulation challenged as beyond the agency's statutory authority without ever considering whether any provision of the statute explicitly authorizes the regulation and, if not, whether the regulation is sufficiently related to an express statutory authority to be within the agency's implied powers. Indeed, much of the Court's analysis simply begs the question whether the Commission had authority to promulgate the void-fornonparticipation rule.4 In the Court's view, petitioner cannot appeal to our precedents governing the enforcement of filed tariffs because "under the regulations, distance tariffs are incomplete once the carrier's participation in the [HGCB] Mileage Guide has been canceled." Ante, at 443. Similarly, the Court concludes that Maislin requires that petitioner's tariff not be enforced because petitioner "had no rates on file because its tariff lacked an essential element." Ante, at 440. In both instances, the Court assumes that the void-fornonparticipation rule is valid, and that petitioner's tariff is therefore void. But whether the Commission may deem the tariff incomplete as a matter of law through 49 CFR
4 In considering the case closed after rejecting the contention that the void-for-nonparticipation rule is impermissibly retroactive under American Trucking, the Court also ignores petitioner's broader argument. Although petitioner does assert that the void-for-nonparticipation rule is "retroactive," see Brief for Petitioner 7-16, it also contends more generally that the rule is not within the Commission's authority. See id., at 17-24. Specifically, petitioner argues that the Act's "carefully integrated and complete system of procedures, remedies and penalties" does not "giv[e] the ICC the broad nullification power set forth in 49 C. F. R. § 1312.4(d)." Id., at 17, 20.
453
Page: Index Previous 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007