reopen

In 1913 the State of Washington enacted a statute entitled An Act to establish a minimum wage for women and minors. The law created an Industrial Welfare Commission. A later statute transferred its duties to an Industrial Welfare Committee consisting of the Director of Labor and Industries, the Supervisor of Industrial Insurance, the Supervisor of Industrial Relations, the Industrial Statistician and the Supervisor of Women in Industry. The statute required the commission to investigate wages and conditions of labor for women and minors. It required public hearings. When wages were found inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and maintain workers in health, the commission was to convene conferences of employers, employees and public representatives before issuing obligatory orders fixing minimum wages. Special licenses were authorized for physically defective or apprentice workers at lower rates. The statute had remained in force for more than twenty-three years by the time of the present litigation. Elsie Parrish was employed by the West Coast Hotel Company as a chambermaid. She and her husband brought suit against the company to recover the difference between the wages actually paid and the minimum wage. The minimum wage was $14.50 per week of 48 hours fixed by the Industrial Welfare Committee pursuant to the statute. The company had paid her less than the prescribed minimum during her employment. The Supreme Court of Washington reversed the trial court judgment, sustained the statute, and directed entry of judgment for the plaintiffs. The West Coast Hotel Company appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The appeal brought before the Court the question of the constitutional validity of the Washington minimum wage statute. The Washington law was substantially identical to minimum wage statutes enacted in Oregon in the same year. Similar laws had been adopted in the District of Columbia in 1918 and in other states during the same period.

In 1967 the Atomic Energy Commission granted Vermont Yankee a construction permit for a nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vermont, after the required adjudicatory hearing and reviews. Vermont Yankee later applied for an operating license; NRDC intervened and objected to exclusion of fuel-reprocessing and waste-disposal impacts from the hearing. In November 1972 the Commission opened a separate rulemaking proceeding on those fuel-cycle issues, noticed two alternative approaches based on its Environmental Survey, and conducted a February 1973 hearing at which more than forty participants submitted comments but no discovery or cross-examination occurred. In April 1974 the Commission adopted a rule assigning numerical values to fuel-cycle impacts and applied it prospectively. In January 1969 Consumers Power applied for permits to build two nuclear reactors in Midland, Michigan. After staff and ACRS review, Saginaw and Mapleton intervened and raised 119 environmental contentions, including seventeen on energy conservation. The Licensing Board held hearings on radiological issues, the staff issued a final environmental impact statement in March 1972, and further hearings occurred in May and June 1972; Saginaw declined to participate in the later hearings or submit proposed findings. The Licensing Board granted the construction permit, the Appeal Board affirmed, and the Commission declined further review. In November 1973 the Commission ruled in another case that energy-conservation evidence meeting threshold tests could be considered, but it later refused Saginaw's motion to reopen the Consumers Power record. NRDC appealed the Vermont Yankee license and rule to the D.C. Circuit; Saginaw and others appealed the Consumers Power permit. In 1976 the Court of Appeals remanded both matters, holding the fuel-cycle rulemaking procedures inadequate, the Consumers Power environmental impact statement defective for omitting energy conservation, and the ACRS report insufficiently explained. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 1977. The Commission is the successor agency to the Atomic Energy Commission under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. All licensing proceedings followed the two-stage process of construction permit followed by operating license under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with NEPA environmental reviews added after 1969.