Exhausation of administrative remedies is almost always a prerequisite to litigation
Petitioner, a coal miner, sought a writ of mandamus from the District Court directing the Secretary of Labor (Secretary), to promulgate lower limits for the amount of dust and silica allowed in the air in mines, asserting that the 1980 standards were too high and that the Secretary had violated her duty under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (Act), 30 U.S.C. § 801 et seq., to promulgate improved standards.
The Act authorized the Secretary to promulgate mandatory air quality standards for U.S. mines. The Secretary had not promulgated new standards for dust and silica since 1980, nor had she initiated rule-making for new permissible exposure limits (PELs). According to the Court, the Secretary had pursued other regulatory avenues to increase compliance with the present PELs and the identification of lung diseases in miners.
The complaint was originally brought in, and appealed from, the District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, but (as the Court of Appeals noted) judicial review of agency inaction vests in the Court of Appeals, not the District Court. The miner, however, had not petitioned the Agency for rule-making. As the Court noted, had he done so, he would either have been successful or would have obtained a “considered” agency denial on the record that would assist the Court in its review. Exhaustion of his administrative remedies was not deemed futile because the Secretary would have had the opportunity to explain her reasons for not promulgating new PELs.
Thus, the petition was dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.