If you’ve spent any time around MSHA cases, you already know that jurisdiction is one of those issues that never quite stays settled. Every few years, a case comes along that forces everyone – operators, contractors, inspectors, and lawyers – to rethink what “mine” actually means under the Mine Act.
Secretary of Labor (MSHA) v. KC Transport, Inc. is one such case, and it has real implications for anyone who thought that staying a mile or two off the mine site kept them safely in OSHA-Land.
The dispute started the way so many MSHA cases do: with a routine inspection that, as it turned out, wasn’t quite so routine. An inspector was at Ramaco Resources’ coal prep plant in West Virginia when he decided to take a short trip down the road to KC Transport’s truck maintenance facility. KC Transport is an independent trucking company that hauls coal for Ramaco and other coal operators. Significantly, the maintenance facility wasn’t on mine property, and it wasn’t at an extraction or processing site. It was about a mile from the prep plant.
Once there, the inspector saw two haul trucks undergoing maintenance without (according to the inspector) being properly blocked against motion. (Oh, come on. That never happens, does it? Kidding! I was kidding!) MSHA wrote citations, of course. KC Transport pushed back, contesting the citations on jurisdictional grounds and arguing that MSHA had no business being there in the first place. This wasn’t a mine, KC Transport said; it was an equipment maintenance shop. And since it wasn’t a mine, if anyone had jurisdiction, it was OSHA.
Administrative Law Judge Lewis sided with MSHA, finding that the maintenance facility and the trucks were part of mining operations and therefore fell under the Mine Act. The Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission disagreed in a split decision. Marco Rajkovich and Bill Althen took a narrower view of MSHA’s reach, concluding that MSHA jurisdiction stops at extraction sites, processing facilities, and roads directly appurtenant to them. Because KC Transport’s shop wasn’t located on or immediately adjacent to any of those places, the Commission vacated the citations.
That should have been the end of it … but it wasn’t. The Secretary of Labor appealed to the D.C. Circuit. While the case was pending, the Supreme Court decided Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overruling the old Chevron doctrine, which granted nearly complete deference to a federal agency’s interpretation of the laws it enforced. Now, after Loper Bright, courts no longer simply defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation. Under the Loper Bright doctrine, courts have to decide for themselves what the statute says. That mattered here, because MSHA has long taken an expansive view of what exactly qualifies as a “mine.”
In reviewing the Commission’s decision, the D.C. Circuit didn’t just resurrect MSHA’s interpretation. Instead, it walked through the Mine Act’s definition of “mine,” which includes not only extraction and processing sites, but also “lands, facilities, equipment, machines, tools, or other property … used in, or to be used in” mining or mineral preparation. The Commission had read that language as implicitly limited by geography. The D.C. Circuit didn’t buy it.
According to the majority, the statute isn’t about where a facility sits on a map; it’s about whether the facility is necessarily connected to mining operations. That phrase – “necessarily connected” – does a lot of work in the court’s analysis. The maintenance shop in this case existed largely to service trucks hauling coal from extraction sites to a prep plant. The facility had been built with the mine operator’s permission. Around 60% of its business served nearby coal mines, and the trucks being serviced at the time of the inspection were actively engaged in coal hauling.
Put all that together, the appeals court said, and this looks a lot like mining infrastructure, whether it’s technically a part of the mine’s geographical footprint or not. The court emphasized that Congress intended the Mine Act to be broad and protective, and that close cases should be resolved in favor of mine safety – in other words, in favor of MSHA, not OSHA, jurisdiction. On that basis, it vacated the Commission’s decision and reinstated the citations.
So, what’s the takeaway? If you’re a contractor, particularly one involved in hauling, maintenance, or support services closely tied to mining, physical distance alone is no longer a safe harbor. The same is true if you’re an operator looking for ways to keep aspects of your operation (say, a man camp) off MSHA’s radar screen. If your facility is functionally intertwined with mining operations, MSHA could well try to assert jurisdiction – and the agency now has solid appellate authority backing that claim.
One more thing that’s kind of related. This is not good news: as this column was going to press, we learned of a shake-up at the Commission. Until recently, there were four Commissioners over there, although Congress created the Commission with the intent that there would always be five. In the first week of May, however, we learned that the Trump administration had fired one of the four, Commissioner Marvit, whom President Biden appointed in March 2024. Commissioner Marvit’s term was supposed to expire on August 30, 2028.
That leaves just three Commissioners. Two of those, TJ Baker and Mary Lu Jordan (also Biden appointees), are still on the Commission, but their terms expire on August 30 of this year. Once they’re off the Commission, and assuming that nobody replaces them by then (a very fair assumption, given the political climate), the only remaining Commissioner will be Chair Marco Rajkovich. In other words, there will be only one Commissioner, with no fewer than four seats remaining vacant. The problem is that the Mine Act also says, explicitly, that the Commission needs two Commissioners for there to be a quorum. Without a quorum, they won’t have the authority to take any action on any of the cases that are pending or that might be brought before they’re back up to full strength. (Commissioner Marvit has already sued to get his job back. Not sure yet how that’s going to play out.)
And if that wasn’t enough, at the same time, the administration fired Commissioner Marvit, Administrative Law Judge Lewis (you know … the one who decided the KC Transport case above?) was laid off, along with at least a dozen staffers. Simultaneously, the Commission closed the Pittsburgh office entirely.
So, here’s the state of play: one Commissioner out of five, leaving the Commission without a quorum and, thus, unable to act on anything. Only two ALJs, plus an acting chief ALJ, remain, down from a high of about 24 total. The Pittsburgh office shuttered altogether, leaving only the headquarters in D.C. and the Denver office. As you know, I’ve tried to stay apolitical in my columns over the past few years, but … well, I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot more to say about what’s happening over at the Commission in future columns. These are (in the words of the ancient Chinese curse) interesting times.
Willa Perlmutter
Willa Perlmutter is chair of Stoel Rives’ OSHA group and co-chair of the firm’s mining group. She can be reached at
[email protected].