Cite as: 529 U. S. 1 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
pears to be simply a channeling requirement into complete preclusion of judicial review. See Haitian Refugee Center, supra, at 496-497. Of course, individual hardship may be mitigated in a different way, namely, through excusing a number of the steps in the agency process, though not the step of presentment of the matter to the agency. See supra, at 14-15; infra, at 24. But again, the Council has not shown anything other than potentially isolated instances of the inconveniences sometimes associated with the postponement of judicial review.
The Council complains that a host of procedural regulations unlawfully limit the extent to which the agency itself will provide the administrative review channel leading to judicial review, for example, regulations insulating from review decisions about a home's level of noncompliance or a determination to impose one, rather than another, penalty. See 42 CFR §§ 431.153(b), 488.408(g)(2), 498.3(d)(10)(ii) (1998). The Council's members remain free, however, after following the special review route that the statutes prescribe, to contest in court the lawfulness of any regulation or statute upon which an agency determination depends. The fact that the agency might not provide a hearing for that particular contention, or may lack the power to provide one, see Sanders, 430 U. S., at 109 ("Constitutional questions obviously are unsuited to resolution in administrative hearing procedures . . ."); Salfi, 422 U. S., at 764; Brief for Petitioners 45, is beside the point because it is the "action" arising under the Medicare Act that must be channeled through the agency. See Salfi, supra, at 762. After the action has been so channeled, the court will consider the contention when it later reviews the action. And a court reviewing an agency determination under § 405(g) has adequate authority to resolve any statutory or constitutional contention that the agency does not, or cannot, decide, see Thunder Basin Coal, 510
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