explaining that the standard is “fundamentally deferential” but that “no deference is 67 owed to an agency action that is based on an agency’s purported expertise where the agency’s explanation for its action lacks any coherence” (internal citation and quotation marks omitted)
How later courts described this case
- explaining that the standard is “fundamentally deferential” but that “no deference is 67 owed to an agency action that is based on an agency’s purported expertise where the agency’s explanation for its action lacks any coherence” (internal citation and quotation marks omitted)
- holding that the State Department's denial of the appellant’s request for a certificate of loss of nationality that would acknowledge his surrender of U.S. citizenship was "arbitrary and capricious,” because it was not “logical,” "rational,” or "adequately explained”
- finding denial of a CLN to be arbitrary and capricious, but explaining that “[t]he Department, not the court, has the authority … to act in the first instance to address [expatriation] matters …. We will therefore pursue a course of prudence … and remand the case”
- holding that because the agency failed to offer any coherent explanation for its judgment denying the plaintiff’s application for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, the action was arbitrary and capricious for want of reasoned decisionmaking
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I do not understand us to be finding that decisions of the State Department’s Director, Office of Policy Review and Inter-agency Liaison Bureau of Consular Affairs, interpreting ambiguous provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1481 (a) in order to decide whether an applicant for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality is entitled to such a certificate, can never qualify for Chevron deference (in academic parlance the “Chevron Step Zero” issue). It is enough that the explanation offered here does not qualify as reasoned decisionmaking. Thus a remand is essential. See, e.g., Northern Air Cargo v. U.S. Postal Service, 674 F.3d 852, 860 (D.C.Cir.2012) (where the agency has made “no attempt ... to parse or reconcile the ambiguous statutory language,” the “proper course is ... to remand ... to gain authoritative and careful *84 interpretations of the disputed provisions”).