138
Opinion of the Court
We therefore hold that a worker is entitled to nominal compensation when his work-related injury has not diminished his present wage-earning capacity under current circumstances, but there is a significant potential that the injury will cause diminished capacity under future conditions.
III
The application of this legal standard to the case before us depends in part on how the burden of persuasion is allocated. Section 7(c) of the APA, 5 U. S. C. § 556(d), which applies to adjudications under the Act, see Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Greenwich Collieries, 512 U. S. 267, 270 (1994), places the burden of persuasion on the proponent of an order, id., at 272-281; when the evidence is evenly
fice of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Greenwich Collieries, 512 U. S. 267, 281 (1994). Thus, under the preponderance standard, proof that a future decline in capacity is more likely than not (in the sense that the evidence predicting such a decline is more convincing than the evidence predicting none) would be required only if the fact of such a decline, rather than some degree of probability of its occurrence, were a substantive element of a claim for nominal compensation, which the Director does not maintain.
Even assuming that the Director's formally promulgated construction of the LHWCA would be entitled to deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), see Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 514 U. S. 122, 134 (1995), we do not defer to the Director's interpretation here of the APA's provision for allocating the burden of persuasion under the preponderance of the evidence standard, for three reasons. (1) The APA is not a statute that the Director is charged with administering. Cf. Ardestani v. INS, 502 U. S. 129, 148 (1991) (Blackmun, J., dissenting); Chevron, supra, at 842; Professional Reactor Operator Soc. v. NRC, 939 F. 2d 1047, 1051 (CADC 1991). (2) This interpretation does not appear to be embodied in any regulation or similar binding policy pronouncement to which such deference would apply. See Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740-741 (1996); 1 K. Davis & R. Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise § 3.5, p. 120 (3d ed. 1994). (3) The interpretation is couched in a logical non sequitur, as just explained.
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