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Before we consider that issue, which is the issue on the merits, we must satisfy ourselves that the plaintiffs have a right to seek judicial review of the Agriculture Department's order amending the Mideast milk marketing order. The district judge, as we mentioned, thought they did not. The circuits have divided over the question. Compare Minnesota Milk Producers Ass'n v. Madigan, 956 F.2d 816, 817-18 (8th Cir.1992); Farmers Union Milk Marketing Co-op v. Yeutter, 930 F.2d 466, 471-74 (6th Cir.1991), and Suntex Dairy v. Bergland, 591 F.2d 1063, 1065-67 (5th Cir. 1979), all holding that milk producers (dairy farmers) do have a right to judicial review of milk marketing orders, with United Dairymen of Arizona v. Veneman, 279 F.3d 1160, 1165 (9th Cir.2002), and Pescosolido v. Block, 765 F.2d 827, 832- 33 (9th Cir.1985), holding that they do not. The judge thought that this court had taken the latter position in Uelmen v. Freeman, 388 F.2d 308 (7th Cir.1967) (see also United Milk Producers v. Benson, 225 F.2d 527, 529 (D.C.Cir. 1955), a similar case), and he felt bound by that decision, which in addition he thought bolstered by the Supreme Court's ruling in Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U.S. 340, 104 S.Ct. 2450, 81 L.Ed.2d 270 (1984), that consumers do not have standing to challenge milk market orders.

Uelmen is not controlling. The Supreme Court had held in Stark v. Wickard, 321 U.S. 288, 64 S.Ct. 559, 88 L.Ed. 733 (1944), that even though the milk marketing law did not in so many words confer on producers a right to judicial review of milk marketing orders, they could challenge such an order if in issuing it the Agriculture Department had exceeded the authority delegated to it by Congress and in doing so had infringed a definite right of the producer, id. at 307-10, 64 S.Ct. 559, criteria not satisfied in Uelmen. The plaintiffs in our case seek judicial review not on the basis of the extrastatutory rule of Stark, 321 U.S. at 307-10, 64 S.Ct. 559, but on the basis of the Administrative Procedure Act, which confers a right to mount a judicial challenge to agency action on persons "adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute," 5 U.S.C. § 702, unless the statute in question "preclude[s] judicial review." 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(1). Section 702 certainly describes these plaintiffs, who are injured in their pocketbooks by having their access to the Mideast blended price, which is higher than the blended price in their region, curtailed. Moreover, dairy farmers, the plaintiffs in this case, are, as the Court noted in Stark, 321 U.S. at 305-06, 64 S.Ct. 559, the very group that the milk marketing law seeks to protect. "The right of judicial review is ordinarily inferred where congressional intent to protect the interests of the class of which the plaintiff is a member can be found; in such cases, unless members of the protected

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class may have judicial review the statutory objectives might not be realized." Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 167, 90 S.Ct. 832, 25 L.Ed.2d 192 (1970); see also American Federation of Government Employees, Local 2119 v. Cohen, 171 F.3d 460, 469 (7th Cir. 1999); First National Bank & Trust Co. v. National Credit Union Administration, 988 F.2d 1272, 1275 (D.C.Cir.1993).

The Agriculture Department argues that the milk marketing law repeals so much of the APA as would otherwise entitle dairy farmers to challenge a milk marketing order that harmed them. The milk marketing law expressly authorizes judicial review of milk marketing orders at the behest of handlers, 7 U.S.C. § 608c(15), but is silent on the right of a dairy farmer (that is, a producer, rather than a purchaser from the producer) to get judicial review. The Department asks us to infer from this silence that Congress meant to preclude judicial review by farmers, thus bringing this case within 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(1). But inferences from congressional silence are treacherous; oversights are common in the hurly-burly of congressional enactment; omissions are not enactments; and even deliberate omissions are often subject to alternative interpretations, as here. Handlers are not indifferent to the price of milk, since they are the purchasers of milk from the dairy farmers. But as middlemen, able to pass on a portion, maybe a very large portion, of any higher price to their customers--the milk distributors, cheese factories, and so forth--they may be indifferent to many changes in milk marketing orders, including the one at issue in this case, which basically transfers wealth from Mideast to Wisconsin dairy farmers. No such indifference can attend the farmers who have brought the present suit; every additional cent they receive for their milk goes directly to their bottom line. Congress may have thought it obvious that as the intended beneficiaries of milk marketing orders, dairy farmers could challenge those orders in court, but not obvious that handlers could, and so it expressly authorized suits by them as well.

History supports this interpretation. What is now the milk marketing law was originally a part of the first Agricultural Adjustment Act, passed in 1933, 48 Stat. 31, and that act contained no provision for judicial review of pricing orders issued under it, including milk marketing orders. The statutory provision authorizing handlers to sue was added to the AAA in 1935 and was retained when the Act's provisions dealing with milk marketing were split off and made the subject of a separate statute, the statute involved in this case, the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, supra, 467 U.S. at 346, 104 S.Ct. 2450. This was years

before the Administrative Procedure Act was enacted. After it was enacted, with the provision quoted earlier (5 U.S.C. § 702) that by its terms would have seemed to entitle milk producers as persons aggrieved by adverse milk marketing orders to obtain judicial review, there was no urgent need for Congress to revisit the milk marketing law and add a provision expressly authorizing that review.

Now it is true that in denying standing to milk consumers, the Supreme Court in Block had emphasized that allowing them to challenge milk marketing orders in court would cause the administrative remedies that the milk marketing law had created to be bypassed; and the concern extends to producers (though not in every case, and specifically, as we'll see, not in this case). The provision entitling handlers to judicial review starts off by saying that "any handler subject to [a milk marketing order] may file a written petition with the Secretary of Agriculture, stating that any such order or any provision of any such order or any obligation imposed in connection therewith is not in accordance with law and praying for a modification thereof or to be exempted therefrom. He shall thereupon be given an opportunity for a hearing upon such petition, in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of Agriculture, with the approval of the President. After such hearing, the Secretary shall make a ruling upon the prayer of such petition which shall be final, if in accordance with law." 7 U.S.C. § 608c(15)(A). The handler can seek review of that ruling in federal district court. Id., § 608c(15)(B). There is no similar provision regarding petitions for administrative review by consumers--or producers. So if permitted to sue, consumers or producers might raise in court objections to the milk marketing order that the regulators had not had a chance to consider. "Nowhere in the [milk marketing] Act is there an express provision for participation by consumers in any proceeding. In a complex scheme of this type, the omission of such a provision is sufficient reason to believe that Congress intended to foreclose consumer participation in the regulatory process." Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, supra, 467 U.S. at 347, 104 S.Ct. 2450.

The implication is less that judicial review should be denied to all aggrieved persons except handlers than that aggrieved persons should be required to exhaust administrative remedies before suing. The distinction was not important in Block. Consumers' interests are aligned with handlers' interests, and handlers, who have to exhaust their administrative remedies as we have just seen, have express authority to sue. So there was little need to complicate the administrative scheme by allowing (more precisely, by

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imputing to Congress an intent to allow) consumers to sue as well. Cf. Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720, 745-47, 97 S.Ct. 2061, 52 L.Ed.2d 707 (1977), denying indirect purchasers (generally consumers) the right to bring antitrust suits seeking damages from remote sellers since direct purchasers can do so. Milk producers' interests, however, tend to be antagonistic to handlers' interests, producers being the sellers and handlers the buyers.

All this is made clear in Block. "The structure of this Act indicates that Congress intended only producers and handlers, and not consumers, to ensure that the statutory objectives would be realized. Respondents [i.e., the consumers who had brought the suit in Block ] would have us believe that, while Congress unequivocally directed handlers first to complain to the Secretary that the prices set by milk market orders are too high, it was nevertheless the legislative judgment that the same challenge, if advanced by consumers, does not require initial administrative scrutiny .... Allowing consumers to sue the Secretary [of Agriculture] would severely disrupt this complex and delicate administrative scheme. It would provide handlers with a convenient device for evading the statutory requirement that they first exhaust their administrative remedies. A handler ... would need only to find a consumer who is willing to join in or initiate an action in the district court. The consumer or consumer-handler could then raise precisely the same exceptions that the handler must raise administratively. Consumers or consumer-handlers could seek injunctions against the operation of market orders that 'impede, hinder, or delay' enforcement actions, even though such injunctions are expressly prohibited in proceedings properly instituted under 7 U.S.C. § 608c(15) [i.e., by handlers]." Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, supra, 467 U.S. at 347-48, 104 S.Ct. 2450. Notice the distinction that the Court draws between consumers and producers, properly so since the stepping-on-the-heels-of-the-handlers concerns that it expresses about allowing consumers to sue do not arise when the suit is by a producer.

The reasoning of Block, transposed from consumer to producer suits, suggests that imposing a requirement of exhausting administrative remedies would be greatly preferable to abrogating the right to sue. Every federal court and agency has inherent authority (unless abrogated by Congress) to reexamine its decisions if asked to do so within a reasonable time, Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers Int'l Union, AFL-CIO, CLC, Local 182B v. Excelsior Foundry Co., 56 F.3d 844, 847 (7th Cir. 1995); In re Met-L-Wood Corp., 861 F.2d 1012, 1018 (7th Cir.1988); Isle Royale Boaters Ass'n v.

Norton, 330 F.3d 777, 786 (6th Cir.2003); Dun & Bradstreet Corp. Foundation v. United States Postal Service, 946 F.2d 189,-193-94 (2d Cir.1991), including we assume the Agriculture Department; and so the producers could have complained to the Department about the loophole-closing amendment. But the courts do not have the power to require an agency to make the persons subject to its regulatory powers jump through procedural hoops not found in its organic statute or implementing regulations, as a precondition to obtaining judicial review. That's what 5 U.S.C. § 704 says, and the Supreme Court explained in Darby v. Cisneros, 509 U.S. 137, 146-47, 113 S.Ct. 2539, 125 L.Ed.2d 113 (1993), that adding those hoops would make it too difficult for aggrieved persons to determine when agency action was final so that they could seek judicial review. The milk marketing law authorizes only handlers to ask the Department for relief from a milk marketing order. We cannot impose a similar rule on producers.

But presumably the Department can by amending the procedures that it has promulgated for milk-marketing hearings. See 7 C.F.R. pt. 900; cf. 5 U.S.C. § 553(e); Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 459, 117 S.Ct. 905, 137 L.Ed.2d 79 (1997). "Except as otherwise expressly required by statute, agency action otherwise final is final for purposes of this section whether or not there has been presented or determined an application for a declaratory order, for any form of reconsideration, or, unless the agency otherwise requires by rule and provides that the action meanwhile is inoperative, for an appeal to superior agency authority." 5 U.S.C. § 704 (emphasis added). This provision, as the Court remarked in Darby, "by its very terms, has limited the availability of the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies to that which the statute or rule clearly mandates." 509 U.S. at 146, 113 S.Ct. 2539 (emphasis added). "Agencies may avoid the finality of an initial decision, first, by adopting a rule that an agency appeal be taken before judicial review is available, and, second, by providing that the initial decision would be 'inoperative' pending appeal. Otherwise, the initial decision becomes final and the aggrieved party is entitled to judicial review." Id. at 152, 113 S.Ct. 2539.

The absence of a requirement that the producers exhaust their administrative remedies weakens the argument for allowing them to seek judicial review. For the argument if accepted creates a risk of their bypassing the agency and raising objections that the agency might have responded to more effectively than in its brief in the reviewing court--but not in this case. And maybe not in any case, since as we have just seen the Agriculture Department can impose a requirement of exhaustion, and it ought not be

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