## Facts

- Federal law permits states to run occupational safety and health programs if the Secretary of Labor approves a state plan meeting statutory criteria, including standards “at least as effective” as federal standards and assurances of adequate funding and qualified enforcement personnel.
- The Secretary issued regulations to evaluate whether state plans had “adequate funds” and “qualified personnel necessary” for enforcement.
- The funding and staffing benchmarks were tied to projected federal enforcement levels that were intentionally low while the federal government awaited clearer information about state participation.
- Organized labor challenged the regulations and the Secretary’s initial approval of roughly 25 state plans, arguing the benchmarks were too low and lacked a mechanism to reach enforcement capacity consistent with the statute’s goal of an effective enforcement program.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the Secretary, upholding both the regulations and the plan approvals.

## Issues

1. Whether the Secretary could interpret statutory requirements for “adequate funds” and “qualified personnel” for state plans by using “at least as effective as” federal enforcement benchmarks.
2. Whether the Secretary’s funding and staffing criteria were arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to the statute because they relied on low federal projections and did not specify a progression toward fully effective enforcement.
3. Whether the regulations governing state inspector qualifications satisfied the statutory requirement for “qualified personnel necessary” for enforcement.

## Decision

- The court affirmed in part and reversed in part the summary judgment for the Secretary.
- The court upheld the Secretary’s general interim approach of evaluating state plans with “at least as effective as” comparative benchmarks.
- The court set aside the funding and staffing criteria because they were grounded in artificially low federal projections and failed to provide a coherent plan or timetable for reaching resource levels sufficient for effective enforcement.
- The court upheld the regulations addressing inspector qualifications as sufficiently detailed and consistent with the statutory requirement for qualified personnel.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.

## Legal Principles

- In cooperative federalism schemes, an agency may use comparative “at least as effective as” benchmarks as an interim measure, so long as implementation remains consistent with statutory objectives.
- Statutory purpose provisions informing “effective enforcement” give substantive meaning to terms like “adequate” and “necessary” in resource and staffing requirements.
- Agency rules are arbitrary and capricious when they rely on provisional, minimal baselines without a reasoned mechanism for progressing toward the statute’s required level of program effectiveness.
- Regulations specifying enforcement personnel qualifications may be sustained where they provide concrete, administrable assurances of competency consistent with statutory requirements.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit allowed the Secretary to use comparative effectiveness as an interim framework for state-plan approval under the occupational safety statute, but required revised funding and staffing criteria that rationally move state programs toward genuinely effective enforcement; it upheld the inspector-qualification regulations and remanded for further action.


Am. Fed’n of Lab. & Cong. of Indus. Orgs., Indus. Union Dep’t v. Marshall, 570 F.2d 1030 (D.C. Cir. 1978)