## Facts

- Federal credit unions are governed by the Federal Credit Union Act (FCUA), which historically limited membership to groups sharing a common bond or a defined geographic area.
- After litigation over multiple common-bond credit unions, Congress enacted the Credit Union Membership Access Act of 1998 (CUMAA), authorizing multiple common-bond credit unions subject to statutory conditions and membership-related limits, and including a grandfather provision for certain existing members and groups.
- The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), under its authority to issue rules administering the FCUA, promulgated a 1999 final rule implementing CUMAA’s field-of-membership standards.
- The rule interpreted statutory provisions concerning how to count group size for statutory limits, how family members are treated for those limits, and the scope and operation of the grandfather clause.
- The American Bankers Association (ABA) sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing parts of the rule conflicted with CUMAA and were not in accordance with law.
- The district court dismissed for failure to state a claim, concluding the statute was ambiguous and the agency’s interpretations were reasonable under Chevron; ABA appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether CUMAA unambiguously resolved the disputed field-of-membership and membership-limit questions such that NCUA had no interpretive discretion (Chevron step one).
2. If CUMAA was ambiguous, whether NCUA’s interpretations were a permissible construction of the statute (Chevron step two).
3. Whether particular challenges were nonjusticiable because they were moot or unripe.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed dismissal on the merits as to most claims, holding CUMAA was ambiguous on key disputed points and NCUA’s interpretations were reasonable under Chevron.
- The court dismissed one claim as moot because no live controversy remained.
- The court dismissed another claim as unripe because the challenged provision’s concrete application was too speculative or premature for review.

## Legal Principles

- Under Chevron, courts first ask whether Congress directly spoke to the precise question at issue; if not, courts defer to a reasonable agency interpretation.
- Statutory ambiguity may arise from text and structure that leave gaps on implementation details, including methods for counting membership and applying membership-related limits.
- In reviewing an agency’s construction under the APA, a court does not require the best interpretation, only a permissible one within the statute’s bounds.
- Mootness bars review where events eliminate a live dispute; ripeness bars review where a claim depends on uncertain future application and is not fit for judicial resolution.

## Conclusion

The court sustained NCUA’s principal interpretations implementing CUMAA’s field-of-membership regime, deferring to the agency’s reasonable readings of ambiguous statutory provisions, while terminating two discrete challenges on mootness and ripeness grounds.


Am. Bankers Ass’n v. Nat’l Credit Union Admin., 271 F.3d 262 (D.C. Cir. 2001)