458
Opinion of the Court
cannot conclude that they compel it. The Secretary's view that public employers are not so differently situated with regard to disciplining their employees as to require wholesale revision of his time-tested rule simply cannot be said to be unreasonable. We agree with the Seventh Circuit that no "principle of public administration that has been drawn to our attention . . . makes it imperative" that public-sector employers have the ability to impose disciplinary pay deductions on individuals employed in genuine executive, administrative, or professional capacities. Mueller v. Reich, 54 F. 3d 438, 442 (1995), cert. pending, No. 95-586. Respondents appeal to the "quasi military" nature of law
enforcement agencies such as the St. Louis Police Department. The ability to use the full range of disciplinary tools against even relatively senior law enforcement personnel is essential, they say, to maintaining control and discipline in organizations in which human lives are on the line daily. It is far from clear, however, that only a pay deduction, and not some other form of discipline—for example, placing the offending officer on restricted duties—will have the necessary effect. Because the FLSA entrusts matters of judgment such as this to the Secretary, not the federal courts, we cannot say that the disciplinary-deduction rule is invalid as applied to law enforcement personnel.
B
The more fundamental objection respondents have to the disciplinary-deduction rule is a procedural one: The Secretary has failed to give adequate consideration to whether it really makes sense to apply the rule to the public sector. Respondents' amici make the claim more specific: The Secretary's failure to revisit the rule in the wake of our Garcia decision was "arbitrary" and "capricious" in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A).
It is certainly true that application of the disciplinary-deduction rule to public-sector employees raises distinct is-
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007