## Facts

- NHTSA administers the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, including oversight of manufacturer safety defect and noncompliance recalls that ordinarily provide a free remedy to affected owners.
- Beginning in the 1980s, manufacturers increasingly conducted “regional recalls,” limiting notice and remedy to certain geographic areas where a defect was thought more likely due to atypical environmental conditions.
- In 1998, NHTSA’s Associate Administrator for Safety Assurance issued “policy guidelines” describing circumstances and criteria under which NHTSA would accept geographically limited recall campaigns.
- The guidelines were not codified in the Code of Federal Regulations and were presented as guidance for how NHTSA would evaluate proposed regional recalls.
- Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen sued, alleging the 1998 guidelines (1) conflicted with the Safety Act’s recall obligations and (2) were, in substance, a legislative rule adopted without APA notice-and-comment procedures.
- NHTSA argued the guidelines were a nonbinding general statement of policy, not final agency action, and therefore not judicially reviewable; the district court dismissed on that ground.
- Petitioners appealed to the D.C. Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether NHTSA’s 1998 regional-recall guidelines constituted “final agency action” reviewable under the APA.
2. Whether the guidelines were a nonbinding general statement of policy or a binding legislative rule requiring notice-and-comment rulemaking.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal.
- The court held the 1998 regional-recall guidelines were not “final agency action” under the APA and therefore were not subject to judicial review.
- The court treated the guidelines as nonbinding general statements of policy, not legislative rules, so notice-and-comment rulemaking was not required.
- Because the case was resolved on finality, the court did not decide whether regional recalls permitted by the guidance were substantively consistent with the Safety Act.

## Legal Principles

- An agency action is final under the APA only if it (1) marks the consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking process and (2) determines rights or obligations, or legal consequences flow from it.
- General statements of policy that merely indicate how an agency expects to exercise enforcement or oversight discretion, while leaving the agency free to depart from the guidance, ordinarily do not create reviewable final agency action.
- Indicators that a document is nonbinding policy include permissive, nonmandatory language; lack of codification; presentation as guidance rather than a rule; and issuance by an official lacking authority to promulgate binding legislative regulations.
- Guidance that provides an evaluative framework but does not itself authorize, forbid, or compel regulated conduct, and does not independently alter legal rights or obligations, typically lacks the legal consequences required for APA finality.

## Conclusion

The court upheld NHTSA’s 1998 regional-recall guidance as nonbinding policy that did not itself determine legal rights or obligations; because it was not final agency action, it was not judicially reviewable and did not require APA notice-and-comment procedures.


Ctr. for Auto Safety v. Nat’l Hwy. Traffic Safety Admin., 452 F.3d 798 (D.C. Cir. 2006)