KC Transport, Inc. v. Keith Sonderling, Acting Secretary of Labor, et al.

KC Transport, Inc., is a small-town transport company that hauls gravel, sand, coal, and other materials for businesses around Emmett, West Virginia. In 2019, an inspector of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) showed up, for the first time ever, at KC’s parking lot in Emmett where KC sometimes repairs trucks, some of which occasionally haul coal. He observed two trucks undergoing repairs and concluded that such work violated an MSHA rule, issued under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act of 1977, requiring equipment to be “blocked against motion” when being repaired. 30 C.F.R. § 77.404. He therefore issued to KC two penalty citations. KC then administratively contested the citations, arguing among other things that neither the Emmett facility nor trucks repaired thereon constitute a “coal or other mine” within the meaning of the Act, 30 U.S.C. § 802(h)(1). Ultimately, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission agreed with KC. MSHA then sought review in the D.C. Circuit, which sided with the agency. The panel majority held—in conflict with the Sixth Circuit and other courts of appeals—that a facility like KC’s that is not actually located at a coal (or other mineral) extraction, milling, or preparation site can nevertheless qualify as a regulable “mine” so long as the facility is, in some vague and undefined way, “necessarily connected” with mining. The question presented is: Whether a truck-repair facility that is not located at an extraction, milling, or preparation site is a “coal or other mine” under 30 U.S.C. § 802(h)(1).