Heckler v. Chaney

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1985 United States Supreme Court case

Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821 (1985), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that a federal agency 's decision to not take an enforcement action is presumptively unreviewable by the courts under section 701(a)(2) of title 5, United States Code , which is part of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The case arose out of a group of death row inmates' petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seeking to have the agency thwart the state governments' plans to execute the inmates by lethal injection . The FDA declined to interfere, a decision the inmates appealed unsuccessfully to the District Court for the District of Columbia . On further review, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the FDA's action was reviewable and that its denial was "arbitrary and capricious". The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the appeals court and declared in an 8–1 decision that agency nonenforcement decisions were presumptively unreviewable.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reacted to Overton Park by holding that practical considerations should be used in determining whether to grant review, rather than looking at the laws relevant to the agency in question – in Chaney, they did precisely this in overturning the district court. The Supreme Court overturned the appeals court's decision and upheld Overton Park's emphasis on statutory considerations, but the presumption of unreviewability it created in this case was largely based on practical factors rather than statutory factors. It reasoned that, in general, an agency's decision not to enforce does not easily lend itself to manageable standards of judicial review, likening such a decision to one a prosecutor might make . It highlighted, however, that the presumption of unreviewability can be rebutted where the plaintiffs provide a relevant statute ("law to apply") that limits the discretion of the agency.

Justice William J. Brennan Jr. concurred with the majority and emphasized that the court was not closing off all avenues of review for nonenforcement decisions. Justice Thurgood Marshall concurred in the judgment only, criticizing the majority's decision to create a presumption of unreviewability and instead arguing that the FDA's decision should have been held to be reviewable and upheld on the merits. Lower courts largely accepted the ruling, albeit with varying interpretations of scope; the wider legal community criticized the majority's rationale for a presumption of unreviewability while agreeing with the result immediately concerning the inmates.

Background

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Case

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Larry Leon Chaney (pictured left in 1977) was the lead plaintiff in this case.

Prior to the 1970s, U.S. states primarily executed prisoners with either the electric chair or the gas chamber . Supporters of lethal injection said it was more dignified and less painful than electrocution.

In 1977, Oklahoma became the first U.S. state to pass a law authorizing execution via lethal injection. A day after Oklahoma passed its statute, Texas passed its own version. By 1984, fifteen states had adopted lethal injection as a method of execution.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and two people sentenced under these statutes petitioned the FDA asserting that the use of barbiturates and derivatives of curare for executions by untrained personnel "may actually result in agonizingly slow and painful deaths". These petitioners were Larry Leon Chaney of Jenks, Oklahoma , who was convicted of the 1977 murder of Kendal Ashmore , and Doyle Skillern , who was convicted of the 1974 murder of Patrick Randel .

Chaney was the second person in the state to be sentenced to death by lethal injection; his protracted legal battle in state and federal courts was met with little initial luck, including the U.S. Supreme Court thrice declining to review Chaney's case.

Per the petitioners, their states were planning to use drugs for lethal injection that had not been approved by the FDA for that purpose, in violation of two provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act 's (FDCA). First, they contended, their states had violated the FDCA by distributing a "new drug" by way of interstate commerce . While the drugs were FDA-approved, the petitioners argued they were "new drugs" under the statutory requirements because they were not approved by the FDA as "safe and effective" for lethal injections. Second, they said that their states' use of approved drugs for unapproved purposes violated the "misbranding" provisions of the act. They requested that the FDA affix warning labels stating that the drugs were not approved for human execution, notify state corrections officials that the drugs should not be used, seize prison stockpiles and recommend the prosecution of those who knowingly continued to sell the drugs for use in executions.

That July, in a letter to the inmates' lawyer, the FDA declined. The head of the FDA wrote that the FDA did not have clear jurisdiction to interfere with state criminal justice systems and was authorized by its "inherent discretion to decline to pursue certain enforcement matters" even if the requested actions were within the scope of the agency's jurisdiction.

The inmates appealed the FDA's refusal to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Chaney v. Schweiker.

By this time, the number of petitioners had increased to eight. Five of them were from Oklahoma, including Chaney, Alton C. Franks , Carl Morgan , Charles William Davis , and Robyn Leroy Parks ; three were from Texas, including Skillern, Jerry Joe Bird , and Henry Martinez Porter .

Administrative Procedure Act

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The Court has held since _Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner _ (1967) that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (codified as 5 USC §§ 701-706) provides a "basic presumption" of pre-enforcement reviewability for agency rules. An agency's di

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