Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 514 U.S. 122, 6 (1995)

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Cite as: 514 U. S. 122 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

torney General's Manual on the Administrative Procedure Act (1947) put it, "The determination of who is 'adversely affected or aggrieved . . . within the meaning of any relevant statute' has 'been marked out largely by the gradual judicial process of inclusion and exclusion, aided at times by the courts' judgment as to the probable legislative intent derived from the spirit of the statutory scheme.' " Id., at 96 (citation omitted). We have thus interpreted § 702 as requiring a litigant to show, at the outset of the case, that he is injured in fact by agency action and that the interest he seeks to vindicate is arguably within the "zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute" in question. Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150, 153 (1970); see also Clarke v. Securities Industry Assn., 479 U. S. 388, 395-396 (1987).

Given the long lineage of the text in question, it is signifi-cant that counsel have cited to us no case, neither in this Court nor in the courts of appeals, neither under the APA nor under individual statutory-review provisions such as the present one, which holds that, without benefit of specific authorization to appeal, an agency, in its regulatory or policy-making capacity, is "adversely affected" or "aggrieved." Cf. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Perini North River Associates, 459 U. S. 297, 302-305 (1983) (noting the issue of whether the Director has standing under § 921(c), but finding it unnecessary to reach the question).2

2 In addition to not reaching the § 921(c) question, Perini also took as a given (because it had been conceded below) the answer to another question: whether the Director (rather than the Benefits Review Board) is the proper party respondent to an appeal from the Board's determination. See 459 U. S., at 304, n. 13. Obviously, an agency's entitlement to party respondent status does not necessarily imply that agency's standing to appeal: The National Labor Relations Board, for example, is always the party respondent to an employer or employee appeal, but cannot initiate an appeal from its own determination. 29 U. S. C. §§ 152(1), 160(f). Indeed, it can be argued, as amici in this case have done, that if the Director is the proper party respondent in the court of appeals (as her

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