reading the applicable Supreme Court precedent to say that “in cases involving straightforward mandates of cash payment to the government, courts may reasonably infer either that Tucker Act jurisdiction has been withdrawn or at least that any continued availability does not wipe out equitable jurisdiction.”
How later courts described this case
- reading the applicable Supreme Court precedent to say that “in cases involving straightforward mandates of cash payment to the government, courts may reasonably infer either that Tucker Act jurisdiction has been withdrawn or at least that any continued availability does not wipe out equitable jurisdiction.”
- holding that under certain circumstances an agency letter that adopts an interpretation of law is a final agency action
- Department of Education’s letters interpreting statute imposing offset fee on principal amount of each student loan held by Sallie Mae were final, for purposes of judicial review, as Secretary of Education endorsed interpretation set forth in letters, position was stated unequivocally, and interpretation was product of agency deliberation informed by Sallie Mae’s position
- entertaining declaratory relief request where alleged taking involved "straightforward mandate[] of cash payment to the government"
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ORDER ON REHEARING
March 11, 1997
Sallie Mae petitions for rehearing, noting that because the district court held that the statute did not embrace securitized loans, that court should not have addressed the constitutionality of the fee as applied to such loans. See Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 347 , 56 S.Ct. 466, 483 , 80 L.Ed. 688 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). We agree. Similarly, as we rejected the Secretary’s grounds for applying the fee to securitized loans, nothing in our decision should be taken as expressing any opinion on the constitutionality of the fee in that context, nor on whether there is any distinction, for constitutional purposes, between securitized loans and ones “held” by Sallie Mae in the most conventional sense of the term.