The Supreme Court yesterday decided it could not decide whether courts should be required to accept and follow the legal interpretations and orders put forth by federal agencies, remanding the case back to the Appellate Court level to answer two “preliminary” questions before it could issue its ruling.
A copy of the ruling in the case of PDR Networks, LLC v. Harris Chiropractic, Inc., can be accessed by clicking here.
Harris sued PDR for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act after it was sent an unsolicited fax for a free eBook. A District Court sided with PDR and dismissed the case, ruling that something that was offered for free could not be a violation of the TCPA. The case was appealed to the Fourth Circuit, which reversed the decision, ruling that the lower court should have deferred to a 2006 order from the Federal Communications Commission that said faxes that offered free goods and services still counted as advertisements under the TCPA. The District Court should have followed what is known as the Hobbs Act, which requires challenges to regulatory decisions be brought exclusively to a federal appeals court, similar to what ACA International did in its lawsuit against the FCC.
In punting on its ruling, the Supreme Court said that it needed to know whether the 2006 order from the FCC was a “‘legislative rule,’ which is ‘issued by an agency pursuant to statutory authority’ and has the ‘force and effect of law’ ” or whether it was an “ ‘interpretive rule,’ which simply ‘advis[es] the public of the agency’s construction of the statutes and rules which it administers’ and lacks ‘the force and effect of law.’ ”
The second question the FCC said it needed answered was whether PDR had a “prior” and “adequate” opportunity to seek judicial review of the Order.
The opinion was written by Justice Breyer, who was joined by Justices Roberts, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Thomas filed his own opinion and was joined by Justice Gorsuch. Justice Kavanaugh filed his own opinion, and he was joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch.
