U.S. Steel Mining Company, LLC v. Cassandra M. Terry , 920 F.3d 1283 ( 2019 )

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 17-14468
________________________
Agency No. BRB 16-0570 BLA
OAK GROVE RESOURCES, LLC,
NATIONAL UNION FIRE INSURANCE/ AIG,
Petitioners,
versus
DIRECTOR, OWCP,
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,
Respondents.
________________________
No. 17-15782
________________________
Agency No. 17-0105
U.S. STEEL MINING COMPANY, LLC,
U.S. STEEL CORPORATION,
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Petitioners,
versus
CASSANDRA M. TERRY, O.B.O. and Widow of Luther Terry,
DIRECTOR, OWCP,
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,
Respondents.
________________________
Petitions for Review of a Decision of the
Benefits Review Board
________________________
(April 11, 2019)
Before TJOFLAT and NEWSOM, Circuit Judges, and ANTOON, * District Judge.
NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:
These consolidated Black Lung Benefits Act appeals present two
questions—both of which are important to the parties, and one of which turns out
to be pretty interesting. Starting with the important-but-relatively-uninteresting: In
one of the cases, a mining company contends, for a smattering of reasons, that an
ALJ’s decision that one of its former miners was entitled to benefits under the Act
isn’t supported by substantial evidence. To be brief, we disagree. Ample evidence
*
Honorable John Antoon II, United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida,
sitting by designation.
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supports the ALJ’s determination, and none of the company’s challenges to the
ALJ’s analysis withstands scrutiny.
Now, for the more interesting issue, which exists in both appeals: The Act
provides two means by which a deceased miner’s survivors can claim benefits.
First, the survivors can prove that the miner died due to a lung disease called
pneumoconiosis. See 30 U.S.C. §§ 922(a), 932(c). Alternatively, they can proceed
under the Act’s so-called “automatic entitlement” provision, 30 U.S.C. § 932(l),
which states that “[i]n no case shall the eligible survivors of a miner who was
determined to be eligible to receive benefits . . . at the time of his or her death be
required to file a new claim for benefits, or refile or otherwise revalidate the claim
of such miner.” These cases call on us to take a closer look at the italicized portion
of § 932(l). Under one reading—urged by the mining-companies here—the phrase
“at the time of his or her death” modifies the verb “determined,” such that a
miner’s survivors are entitled to benefits only if the pertinent government
decisionmaker issued a formal “determin[ation]” of the miner’s eligibility before
he or she died. Under an alternative reading—advanced by two surviving spouses,
with the support of the United States—“at the time of his or her death” modifies
the adjective “eligible,” such that survivors’ entitlement to benefits depends on
whether the miner was eligible before his or her death, not whether, by that time,
the pertinent decisionmaker had formally determined the miner to be so.
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We hold that the survivors and the government have the better of the
interpretive argument. Not only does their interpretation follow most naturally
from § 932(l)’s syntax and find support in the traditional “last antecedent” canon, it
also—and quite unlike the companies’ reading—squares with common sense by
avoiding arbitrary distinctions between identically situated claimants.
I
Before us are two consolidated cases—Oak Grove Resources, LLC, et al. v.
Director, OWCP (“Oak Grove”), and U.S. Steel Mining Company, LLC, et al. v.
Director, OWCP (“U.S. Steel”). We briefly review the facts of each case before
turning to a preliminary question posed only in U.S. Steel.
A
Starting with Oak Grove: In July 2012, Lee Ferguson, a coal miner with
more than three decades’ experience, sought benefits under the Black Lung
Benefits Act, 30 U.S.C. § 901 et seq., and its implementing regulations, 20 C.F.R.
§ 725.1 et seq. A District Director1 denied Lee’s claim, and Lee appealed.
Unfortunately, Lee died of mesenteric ischemia in November 2014, while his
appeal was pending. His widow, Carrie Ferguson, filed a claim for survivor
benefits in March 2015.
1
The Department of Labor includes the Division of Coal Mine Workers’ Compensation. This
Division has District Offices across the country, each led by a Regional and District Director.
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The following November, the ALJ handling Lee’s appeal overturned the
District Director’s decision and held that Lee’s employer, Oak Grove, was liable
for benefits from the date that Lee had initially filed his claim. Before us, Oak
Grove does not contest Lee’s own eligibility for benefits—only whether, under the
Act, those benefits are properly payable to Carrie as Lee’s surviving spouse.
In February 2016, the same District Director who had denied Lee’s claim
issued a decision in Carrie’s favor. In so doing, the District Director relied on 30
U.S.C. § 932(l)—which, as already noted, provides that “[i]n no case shall the
eligible survivors of a miner who was determined to be eligible to receive
benefits . . . at the time of his or her death be required to file a new claim for
benefits, or refile or otherwise revalidate the claim of such miner.”
Challenging the District Director’s decision before an ALJ, Oak Grove
argued that Carrie was not entitled to benefits under § 932(l) because Lee had not
been “determined to be eligible to receive benefits . . . at the time of his . . . death”
in November 2014. Rather, Oak Grove observed, the District Director had
determined Lee’s eligibility in February 2016, more than a year after his death.
Factually, Oak Grove was quite right—Lee hadn’t been formally determined to be
eligible before he died. As a matter of law, though, the ALJ concluded that the
timing of the District Director’s determination vis-à-vis Lee’s death was
inconsequential; all that mattered was that Lee was in fact eligible for benefits at
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the time he died. The Department of Labor’s Benefits Review Board affirmed the
ALJ’s decision in a published opinion. See Ferguson v. Oak Grove Res., LLC, No.
16-0570 BLA, 2017 WL 3953435 (Ben. Rev. Bd. 2017).
B
Turning to U.S. Steel: Luther Terry applied unsuccessfully for benefits under
the Act in 2006 and 2011. Luther succeeded in his third attempt in 2014, but he
didn’t survive to collect. A veteran miner and lifelong smoker, Luther died of
cardiopulmonary arrest the year before, in 2013. Luther’s widow, Cassandra
Terry, filed a claim for benefits shortly after his death, and a District Director
found that she was eligible, citing § 932(l)’s automatic-entitlement provision.
Luther’s employer, U.S. Steel, requested a hearing before an ALJ to contest that
conclusion on the same basis as in Oak Grove—namely, that Luther had died
before he was formally “determined” to be eligible for benefits. The ALJ affirmed
the District Director on the same ground as in Oak Grove—what mattered was that
before he died, Luther was eligible for benefits, not whether he had been
determined to be so. And as in Oak Grove, the Benefits Review Board affirmed
the ALJ’s decision. See Terry v. U.S. Steel Corp., Nos. 17-0105 BLA and 17-0107
BLA, 2017 WL 5898736 (Ben. Rev. Bd. 2017).
But U.S. Steel is different from Oak Grove in one key respect. Unlike Oak
Grove, U.S. Steel has not conceded that Luther was eligible for benefits in the first
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place. Accordingly, before turning to Cassandra’s entitlement to survivor benefits
under § 932(l), we must first address the preliminary question of Luther’s own
eligibility. Although something of a detour, the fact- and labor-intensive nature of
the eligibility inquiry usefully underscores what’s at stake in our subsequent
analysis of § 932(l). That provision is dubbed an “automatic entitlement” because,
where applicable, it allows a miner’s survivors to avoid the morass into which we
now descend.
II
The Act establishes a rebuttable presumption that a miner’s death or
disability is attributable to pneumoconiosis2—and thus compensable—if the miner
can show, as relevant here, that he or she “was employed for fifteen years or more
in one or more underground coal mines” and that the “evidence demonstrates the
existence of a totally disabling respiratory or pulmonary impairment.” 30 U.S.C.
§ 921(c)(4). U.S. Steel doesn’t dispute that it bears the burden of rebutting this
presumption with respect to Luther Terry.
Section 921(c)(4) and its implementing regulation, 20 C.F.R. § 718.305,
detail two means by which U.S. Steel can discharge its burden. First, it can
“establish[]” that Luther “does not, or did not, have” “[c]linical” or “[l]egal”
2
Pneumoconiosis is “a chronic dust disease of the lung and its sequelae, including respiratory
and pulmonary impairments, arising out of coal mine employment.” 20 C.F.R. § 718.201(a).
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pneumoconiosis. Id. § 718.305(d)(1)(i).3 For ease of reference, we’ll call this the
empirical method of rebuttal. Second, U.S. Steel can rebut the presumption by
“[e]stablishing” that “no part of the miner’s respiratory or pulmonary total
disability was caused by pneumoconiosis.” 20 C.F.R. § 718.305(d)(1)(ii). We’ll
call this the causal method. In order to “establish[]” non-liability via either
method, the employer must affirmatively disprove the miner’s presumptive
entitlement by a preponderance of the evidence. See United States Steel Corp. v.
Gray, 588 F.2d 1022, 1028 (5th Cir. 1979). 4
U.S. Steel offers a litany of reasons why the ALJ erred in concluding that
Luther was eligible for benefits. We needn’t respond point-by-point; an
assessment of U.S. Steel’s principal contentions will suffice.
1. U.S. Steel first assails the ALJ’s decision to assign greater weight to
credentialed radiologists’ interpretations of Luther’s chest x-rays than to those
offered by a “B-reader” pulmonologist.5 But the ALJ’s determination in that
3
“Clinical” pneumoconiosis “consists of those diseases recognized by the medical community as
pneumoconiosis.” 20 C.F.R. § 718.201(a)(1). The “legal” version broadens the scope to include
“any chronic lung disease or impairment and its sequelae arising out of coal mine employment.”
Id. § 718.201(a)(2).
4
In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc), this Court
adopted as binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Circuit handed down prior to
October 1, 1981.
5
Per the CDC’s description of “The NIOSH B Reader Program”: “The B Reader Program aims
to ensure competency in radiographic reading by evaluating the ability of readers to classify a
test set of radiographs, thereby creating and maintaining a pool of qualified readers having the
skills and ability to provide accurate and precise ILO [International Labour Office]
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respect is supported by both law and logic. As for law, one of the governing
regulations provides that “where two or more X-ray reports are in conflict, in
evaluating such X-ray reports consideration must be given to the radiological
qualifications of the physicians interpreting such X-rays.” 20 C.F.R.
§ 718.202(a)(1) (emphasis added). Another likewise requires that a chest x-ray
used as medical evidence include “the name and qualifications of the physician
who interpreted the X-ray”—and goes on to require a notation specifying “whether
he or she was a Board-certified radiologist, a Board-eligible radiologist, or a
Certified B-reader.” See id. § 718.102(e) (emphasis added). If the distinctions
between credentialed radiologists and B-readers didn’t matter, the regulations
wouldn’t draw them. Good old common sense reinforces the regulations’ line-
drawing and further supports the ALJ’s decision: reading x-rays, after all, is what
radiologists do. See, e.g., Webster’s Second New International Dictionary 2052
(1944) (defining “radiologist” as “[o]ne who practices or is versed in the use of X
rays”).
2. U.S. Steel also asserts that the ALJ erred in discounting the findings of
Dr. Michele Postma, who had been one of Luther’s treating physicians—and
whose testimony U.S. Steel introduced—on the ground that she stopped treating
classifications.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chest Radiography: The NIOSH B
Reader Program, https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/chestradiography/breader.html.
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Luther four years before his death. As U.S. Steel puts it, the ALJ’s “‘later is
better’ analysis is not allowed under 20 C.F.R. § 718.202.” The text of § 718.202
says nothing of the sort, so U.S. Steel draws our attention to the Fourth Circuit’s
decision in Adkins v. Director, 958 F.2d 49 (4th Cir. 1992). But Adkins doesn’t
hold—or even suggest—that a “later [evidence] is better [evidence]” rationale is
impermissible per se; rather, the Adkins court merely explained that later-is-better
logic may fail in certain circumstances. In particular, the court observed that
because pneumoconiosis is a progressive disease, privileging a later physician’s
opinion makes sense only where “the evidence, on its face, shows that the miner’s
condition has worsened.” Id. at 52. If, by contrast, the miner’s condition has
improved—as the evidence before the court in Adkins indicated—then later-is-
better reasoning loses its force: “Either the earlier or the later result must be wrong,
and it is just as likely that the later evidence is faulty as the earlier.” Id. What
about the medical evidence before the ALJ here? On balance, that evidence—
especially when weighted for physician expertise—indicated that Luther’s
condition probably had deteriorated over time. So, as it turns out, Adkins
boomerangs back around on U.S. Steel to support the ALJ’s decision to discount
Dr. Postma’s conclusions.
3. We’ll take one more: U.S. Steel contends that the ALJ erred in holding
that Dr. Postma’s and Dr. Allan Goldstein’s conclusions “c[ould not] be credited”
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because their negative findings as to the empirical method of rebuttal—i.e., that
Luther didn’t suffer from pneumoconiosis in the first place—undermined the basis
for their conclusions as to the causal method—“that no part of [Luther’s]
respiratory or pulmonary total disability was caused by pneumoconiosis.”
U.S. Steel sends us back to the Fourth Circuit for support, arguing that the
ALJ’s approach would be permissible only if Dr. Postma and Dr. Goldstein had
“failed to consider pneumoconiosis as an additional cause of [Luther’s] pulmonary
problems.” Island Creek Coal Co. v. Compton, 211 F.3d 203, 213 (4th Cir. 2000).
Of course, as an out-of-circuit case, Island Creek is only persuasive here, and we
find a later Fourth Circuit decision more persuasive on the very point that U.S.
Steel is raising.
In Hobet Mining, LLC v. Epling, 783 F.3d 498 (4th Cir. 2015), the court
found that “[l]ong-standing precedent establishes that a medical opinion premised
on an erroneous finding” under the empirical method of rebuttal “that a claimant
does not suffer from pneumoconiosis is not worthy of much, if any, weight,
particularly with respect to whether,” under the causal method, “a claimant’s
disability was caused by that disease.” Id. at 504 (quotation marks and citation
omitted). As the court explained, that’s because the “credibility of a doctor’s
judgment as to whether pneumoconiosis is a cause of a miner’s disability is
necessarily influenced by the accuracy of his underlying diagnosis.” Id. Because
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the doctor is essentially engaging in a counterfactual exercise as to the causal
method, the Hobet court concluded, “opinions that erroneously fail to diagnose
pneumoconiosis may not be credited at all, unless an ALJ is able to identify
specific and persuasive reasons for concluding that the doctor’s judgment on the
question of disability causation does not rest upon the predicate misdiagnosis.” Id.
at 505 (quotation marks and citations omitted). That seems eminently sensible to
us. And here, the ALJ didn’t find any “specific or persuasive reasons” to think that
Dr. Postma’s and Dr. Goldstein’s erroneous empirical-method conclusions hadn’t
infected their causal-method analysis—nor has U.S. Steel identified any such
reasons.
Enough. We hold that the ALJ’s determination that Luther was eligible for
benefits under the Act was consistent with the law and supported by substantial
evidence. We turn, then, to the question whether Luther’s widow, Cassandra—and
with her, Lee Terry’s widow, Carrie—qualifies for survivor benefits under §
932(l)’s automatic-entitlement provision.
III
If Part II of this opinion seemed sloggy, that’s because it was. The
eligibility-determining process that it chronicles is not just fact- and context-
intensive but also fiscally and emotionally exhausting. The object of 30 U.S.C.
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§ 932(l) is to free the survivors of a deceased miner whose benefits claim has
already run the eligibility gauntlet from the burden of having to run it again.
As already noted—twice now, but the language is critical—§ 932(l) states
that “[i]n no case shall the eligible survivors of a miner who was determined to be
eligible to receive benefits . . . at the time of his or her death be required to file a
new claim for benefits, or refile or otherwise revalidate the claim of such miner.”
The key phrase for our purposes—the hinge on which the dispute here turns—is “a
miner who was determined to be eligible to receive benefits . . . at the time of his
or her death.” There are two ways to understand that bit of text. Either “at the
time of his or her death” modifies the word “eligible”—such that a miner need
only have been eligible at the time he died, not formally determined to be
eligible—or it modifies the word “determined”—such that an eligibility
determination must have been made before the miner died. It matters here, of
course, because Lee Ferguson and Luther Terry were formally determined to be
eligible for benefits only after their deaths. They were eligible at the times that
they died, but only posthumously determined so.
Carrie and Cassandra—supported by the government—advocate the former
reading: The phrase “at the time of his or her death,” they say, modifies the term
“eligible.” Accordingly, their argument goes, it’s sufficient that their husbands
were eligible for benefits under the Act at the times of their deaths, and it doesn’t
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matter that the formal determinations of their husbands’ eligibility came only later.
That, they say for starters, is the most natural reading of the statute’s text. If “at
the time of his or her death” was intended to modify the word “determined,” the
provision would have been framed differently: “a miner who was determined at the
time of his or her death to be eligible to receive benefits at the time of his or her
death.” Relatedly, Carrie and Cassandra cite the “rule of the last antecedent,”
pursuant to which “‘a limiting clause or phrase . . . should ordinarily be read as
modifying only the noun or phrase that it immediately follows.’” Kehoe v. Fidelity
Fed. Bank & Trust, 421 F.3d 1209, 1215 (11th Cir. 2005) (quoting Barnhart v.
Thomas, 540 U.S. 20, 26 (2003)). They emphasize that the word nearest the
prepositional phrase “at the time of his or her death” (setting aside the irrelevant
“to receive benefits under this subchapter”) is “eligible,” not “determined.”
Finally, they point to the perverse consequences that would ensue from the
contrary reading: Imagine that two miners apply for benefits, and ALJs grant their
applications on the same day—say, a Tuesday. The lone difference is that the first
miner dies on Monday, just before his ALJ’s decision, whereas the second dies on
Wednesday, just afterward. There’s no rational basis, Carrie and Cassandra
contend, for treating the two miners’ survivors differently—particularly given that
doing so could well yoke a widow’s entitlement to benefits to the (in)efficiency of
the administrative process.
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The companies, by contrast, assert that “at the time of his or her death”
modifies the word “determined,” such that the formal determination of a miner’s
eligibility—and not just eligibility in the abstract—must have preceded his or her
death. Accordingly, they say, because Lee and Luther weren’t determined to be
eligible until after they died, Carrie and Cassandra aren’t entitled to benefits under
§ 932(l). The employers contend that an eligibility-focused reading violates the
rule against surplusage by depriving the phrase “at the time of his or her death” of
any real effect. See, e.g., United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 65 (1936) (“These
words cannot be meaningless, else they would not have been used.”). The reason,
they say, is that a miner’s eligibility is necessarily based on his or her condition
while alive—a deceased miner can’t be eligible—and so it adds nothing to specify
that the miner must have been eligible “at the time of his or her death.”
In our judgment, Carrie and Cassandra have the better of the interpretive
argument. On balance—and particularly in light of the “last antecedent” canon—
the phrase “at the time of his or her death” is most naturally read as modifying the
word “eligible” rather than the word “determined.” If Congress had intended
otherwise, it would (or should) have drafted the statute differently, and more
precisely, to refer to a “a miner who was determined at the time of his or her death
to receive benefits.” Moreover, as the Supreme Court has emphasized, “[w]e need
not leave our common sense at the doorstep when we interpret a statute,” Price
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Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), superseded by statute on other
grounds, Civil Rights Act of 1991, Tit. I § 107(a), 105 Stat. 1075, as recognized in
Burrage v. United States, 571 U.S. 204 (2014), and we can think of no common-
sense reason why Congress would have wanted to differentiate between two
otherwise-identical survivors solely by virtue of the fact that the ALJ in charge of
one miner’s case got around to determining eligibility before he died while the ALJ
handling the other’s case didn’t. The statutory language doesn’t require (or on
balance even support) that cruel-happenstance result, and we decline to insinuate it.
As to the employers’ surplusage-based argument, we think it enough to say
two things. First, linking “at the time of his or her death” to eligibility, rather than
to a formal determination, doesn’t render the phrase wholly meaningless—it just
makes the provision a little clumsy (in a “duh!” kind of way). Second, there are
instances in which a court may validly “prefer ordinary meaning to an unusual
meaning that will avoid surplusage.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading
Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 176 (2012). This is just one such instance.
There is one final point: Because we find that § 932(l)’s language is clear—
and that it clearly favors Carrie and Cassandra’s position—we have no occasion to
resort to the principles of deference embodied in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural
Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), and its progeny. Even so,
we note—are fortified in our view by the fact—that the Department of Labor sees
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it the same way. To obtain benefits under 20 C.F.R. § 725.212, which implements
§ 932(l), an otherwise eligible survivor must show (as relevant here) that the
deceased miner either:
(i) Is determined to have died due to pneumoconiosis; or
(ii) Filed a claim for benefits on or after January 1, 1982, which
results or resulted in a final award of benefits, and the surviving
spouse . . . filed a claim for benefits after January 1, 2005 which was
pending on or after March 23, 2010.
20 C.F.R. § 725.212 (2013) (emphasis added). The regulation thus mirrors the two
means that the Act itself specifies by which a survivor can demonstrate eligibility:
(1) proving that the deceased miner died as a result of pneumoconiosis, see 30
U.S.C. §§ 922(a), 932(c); and (2) satisfying the requirements of the automatic-
entitlement provision, see id. § 932(l). The Department’s interpretation of § 932(l)
in 20 C.F.R. § 725.212(ii) squares with our own. The logic runs as follows: The
regulation pertains to “surviving spouse[s]”—and thus, by definition, to deceased
miners. Within that class, there are claims that “resulted”—past tense—in an
award of benefits; those might (or might not) refer to pre-death eligibility
determinations. But there are also claims that “result[]”—present tense—in an
award; of necessity—the miner having died, such that he or she has a “surviving
spouse”—those refer to posthumous determinations. Indeed, that is exactly what
the Benefits Review Board said here; it construed the phrase “which results or
resulted in” as authorizing benefits regardless of whether the miner died before or
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after he was formally determined to be eligible. See Oak Grove, Doc. 23 at 18–19
(“In accord with the prior versions of the regulation, the plain language of the
current regulation covers awards that occur before a miner’s death (i.e., a miner’s
claim which ‘resulted’ in an award), as well as awards that occur after a miner’s
death (i.e., a miner’s claim which ‘results’ in an award).”).
In sum, we hold that careful attention to § 932(l)’s text requires a decision in
favor of Carrie and Cassandra: Because their husbands were eligible for benefits
under the Act at the times of their respective deaths—and despite the fact that the
men were only thereafter formally determined to be eligible—Carrie and
Cassandra are due survivor benefits under § 932(l)’s automatic-entitlement
provision.6
6
Separate from—and in addition to—their arguments from statutory text, the parties offer
dueling citations to off-point decisions and extensive examinations of § 932(l)’s drafting history.
As to the former, we think it sufficient to say that none of the parties’ cases squarely addresses
the issue before us today. The companies rely principally on U.S. Steel Mining Co., LLC v.
Director, OWCP [Starks]—where, in fairness to their position, the court did say that “[w]e hold
that, to obtain benefits under the amended § 932(l),” the widow there “was required to show only
that she met the appropriate relational and dependency requirements rendering her an ‘eligible
survivor’ and that [her deceased husband] was receiving benefits when he died.” 719 F.3d 1275,
1284 (11th Cir. 2013) (emphasis added). The italicized language might seem to suggest that
§ 932(l) requires proof of pre-death payments and, accordingly, a pre-death “determin[ation].”
But Starks had nothing to do with the “at the time of his or her death” issue; rather, it addressed
the separate question whether the survivor had to “prove that the miner spouse died due to
pneumoconiosis.” Id. at 1280. It so happened that the miner there had been determined to be
eligible before his death, but nothing in Starks turned on that fact, and we therefore reject the
suggestion that our “was receiving benefits when he died” reference binds us here. See Dantzler
v. I.R.S., 183 F.3d 1247, 1251 (11th Cir. 1999) (“A judicial opinion is not a statute, and not every
sentence in a judicial opinion is law.”). For their part, Carrie and Cassandra point to Drummond
Co., Inc. v. Dir., OWCP [Allred], 650 F. App’x 690, 691 (11th Cir. 2016). But Allred, too—in
addition to being unpublished—is distinguishable. It’s true, as one of the ALJs here explained,
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IV
For the foregoing reasons, the Board’s decisions in both cases before us are
AFFIRMED.
that Allred “affirmed a benefits award pursuant to the automatic entitlement provision where a
miner was awarded benefits posthumously.” U.S. Steel, Doc. 23 at 3. But the question presented
in Allred was different—namely, whether the ALJ in that case had applied the proper legal
standard in determining whether the employer had rebutted the presumption in 20 C.F.R. §
718.305 that the miner there had clinical or legal pneumoconiosis.
We can make even quicker work of the parties’ protracted battle over § 932(l)’s
legislative history. That history—which comprises amendments on top of amendments on top of
amendments—“could hardly be more complicated,” B & G Const. Co. v. Dir., Office of Workers’
Comp. Programs, 662 F.3d 233, 239 (3d Cir. 2011) (quoting Helen Mining Co. v. Dir., OWCP,
924 F.2d 1269, 1271 (3d Cir. 1991) (en banc)), and perhaps not surprisingly, we find it utterly
unenlightening. Hence our quaint fixation on § 932(l)’s enacted text. See generally CRI-Leslie
v. Comm’r, 882 F.3d 1026, 1033 (11th Cir. 2018) (“As a formal matter, it is of course only the
statutory text . . . that is ‘law’ in the constitutional sense—that’s all that was enacted through the
bicameral legislative process and presented to the President for his signature.”) (citing U.S.
Const. art. I § 7, cls. 2–3).
19