## Facts

- The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) granted Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation a license to operate a nuclear power plant after extensive adjudicatory hearings; the agency’s Appeal Board affirmed over objections by environmental intervenors.
- The AEC then initiated a rulemaking to address how environmental effects of the uranium fuel cycle (including reprocessing and waste disposal) should be considered in cost-benefit analyses for light-water nuclear reactors.
- The AEC conducted the fuel-cycle proceeding under informal rulemaking procedures rather than full trial-type adjudication, issued a “fuel cycle rule,” and found the record (including an Environmental Survey) adequate for the rule adopted.
- The AEC concluded the relevant fuel-cycle environmental effects were relatively insignificant and declined to apply the rule retroactively to revise Vermont Yankee’s earlier environmental submissions.
- In a separate matter, the AEC granted Consumers Power Company a construction permit for two reactors after reviewing an Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards report and holding extensive hearings; the Appeal Board affirmed over similar objections.
- The D.C. Circuit reversed in relevant part, holding that the fuel-cycle rulemaking procedures were inadequate despite compliance with APA notice-and-comment requirements, and it effectively required more extensive procedures and greater treatment of fuel-cycle impacts in individual licensing proceedings.
- The Supreme Court granted review to decide whether a court may invalidate agency action for failing to use procedures beyond those required by the APA and the agency’s governing statute.

## Issues

1. Whether a reviewing court may require an agency to use additional rulemaking procedures beyond those specified in the APA and the agency’s enabling statute, absent a constitutional or statutory command.
2. Whether the D.C. Circuit erred by setting aside the AEC’s fuel-cycle rule and related licensing/permitting outcomes based on the court’s demand for more elaborate, trial-type procedural devices.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the D.C. Circuit.
- The Court held that, although agencies may voluntarily provide procedures beyond APA minima, courts generally may not compel extra procedures not required by the APA, the agency’s statute, or the Constitution.
- The Court rejected the D.C. Circuit’s approach of requiring quasi-adjudicatory additions (such as expanded record development and trial-type testing of evidence) in informal rulemaking.
- The Court reinstated the fuel-cycle rule and the related agency decisions, subject to ordinary APA review standards rather than court-created procedural requirements.

## Legal Principles

- The APA and an agency’s enabling statute set the applicable procedural requirements for rulemaking and adjudication; courts may not add further procedural obligations based on judicial preferences about better decisionmaking.
- Judicial review distinguishes between evaluating the lawfulness and rationality of the agency’s substantive choice (including arbitrary-and-capricious review) and dictating procedural formats not required by governing law.
- An agency’s choice to provide more process than the APA requires in a given proceeding does not authorize courts to convert those additional steps into mandatory baselines for future agency action.
- The importance or complexity of a rule does not, by itself, permit courts to impose trial-type procedural mechanisms on informal rulemaking.

## Conclusion

The Court held that agency rulemaking procedures are controlled by the APA and the agency’s statute, and that courts exceed their reviewing role when they invalidate agency action for failing to employ extra, judge-made procedural requirements.


Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519 (1978)