Rice v. Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services

• Decision Date: 08 August 1980
• Docket Number: No. NN-104,NN-104
• Citation: 386 So.2d 844
• Parties: June RICE and Stephen Dudley Stitt, Appellants, v. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND REHABILITATIVE SERVICES, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 844

386 So.2d 844

June RICE and Stephen Dudley Stitt, Appellants, v. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND REHABILITATIVE SERVICES, Appellee.

No. NN-104.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

Aug. 8, 1980.

June Rice and Stephen D. Stitt, Gainesville, for themselves.

Chester G. Senf, Asst. Gen. Counsel, HRS, Tallahassee, for appellee.

ROBERT P. SMITH, Jr., Judge.

Appellants June Rice and Stephen Stitt are married and are the parents of an infant son whom they wish to register from birth in the State's vital statistics as Austin John Rice or Austin John Rice-Stitt. By this appeal they complain that the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, acting through a subsidiary unit and officials who were unnecessarily named parties appellee, ¹ has refused to register the child's surname as Rice or Rice-Stitt. By letter written January 16, 1979, the HRS "Supervisor, Amendment Unit, Vital Statistics" advised appellants that Section 382.16(5)(a), Florida Statutes (1979), ² requires the child to be surnamed Stitt, after his father. Appellants urge on this appeal that the statute's direction that "the surname of the child shall be entered on the certificate as that of the husband" does not exclude the use as well of the wife and mother's surname, and that the restricted construction placed on the statute by HRS violates appellants' constitutional right to equal protection of the law, due process of law, and freedom of speech.

We take note preliminarily of the doubtful "agency action" on which these questions of statutory construction and constitutional validity are predicated. We have only the letter of a unit supervisor to evidence HRS's official action in this matter. There is no agency order recognizable under Section 120.59, Florida Statutes (1979), and there have been no formal or informal proceedings under Section 120.57. Appellants have not been denied, nor have they requested, such proceedings. In a sense, HRS has taken free-form action only. Capeletti Brothers, Inc. v. Dept. of Transportation, 362 So.2d 346 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978), cert. den., 368 So.2d 1374 (Fla.1979). While it therefore may be debated whether the unit supervisor's letter of January 16, 1979, was "equivalent" to an agency order underlying the appeal, ³ no party has contested the matter. We treat such questions pragmatically, dismissing an appeal from free-form action if appellant neglected a clear point of entry to Section 120.57 proceedings, or if agency proceedings have been undertaken since the appeal, Krestview Nursing Home v. Dept. of Health and Rehab. Services, 381 So.2d 240 (Fla. 1st DCA 1979); and deciding the appeal to secure a party remedies wrongfully denied by an agency, or if the free-form action is authentic beyond doubt and nothing can be gained through further agency proceedings. Harris v. Florida Real Estate Comm'n, 358 So.2d 1123, 1125 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978), cert. den., 365 So.2d 711 (Fla.1978); General Development Corp. v. Division of State Planning, 353 So.2d 1199, 1207 (Fla. 1st DCA 1977).

In this case we proceed with the appeal in order to prescribe proceedings to be had on remand, leading to a final order construing Section 382.16(5) in light of a fully-developed record and preserving the pendant constitutional question for our later review, if necessary.

Our requirement of an agency order construing the governing statute in this case is no empty formality. The principal objective of many APA processes is to expose policy errors which have become habitual in an agency's free-form routine and to subject agency heads "to the sobering realization (that) their policies lack convincing wisdom . . . ." McDonald v. Dept. of Banking & Finance, 346 So.2d 569, 583 (Fla. 1st DCA 1977). Should this court intrude prematurely, before the agency head has had an opportunity to examine the de facto policy which underlies a free-form decision, an important APA goal will be lost and we shall have diminished the quality of agency performance, as Alexander Bickel said so descriptively, "by denuding them of the dignity and burden of their own responsibility." ⁴

We therefore will remand the case to HRS and to the Division of Administrative Hearings, Department of Administration, for proceedings under Section 120.57(1), and for entry of the order required by Section 120.59. Appellants represent that HRS construes Section 382.16(5)(a) to require that the father's surname, and that name alone, be registered as the surname of a child born to the father's marriage. Whether HRS so construes the statute is for HRS to say by order; in proceedings to determine a party's substantial interests, the agency's duty to speak by an order is invariable, even when the statute may seem to the agency to admit of only one possible construction. Appellants urge that the statute is susceptible to a construction allowing registration of both parents' surnames as the child's hyphenated surname. Whether that is so is for HRS to say in the first instance, by an order. Appellants' construction of the statute is not necessarily foreclosed by a contrary HRS order entered earlier in proceedings to which appellants were not parties; there has been no rulemaking to construe the statute, and as to these appellants that earlier order has no res judicata effect. See McDonald, supra ; State Dept. of Health and Rehab. Serv. v. Barr, 359 So.2d 503, 505 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978):

. . . Agency orders rendered in Section 120.57 proceedings may . . . indirectly determine controversies and affect persons yet unborn. But the rule is stare decisis, not res judicata. If such a person's substantial interests are to be determined in the light of a prior agency order or declaratory statement, Section 120.57 proceedings will afford him the opportunity to attack the agency's position by appropriate means, and Section 120.68 will provide judicial review in due course.

Our action in this case necessarily implies, and we here confirm, that we consider it entirely proper for a district court of appeal to pass on the constitutionality of a statute or rule when that is necessary in reviewing agency action, though there has been no agency decision on the constitutional question nor could there have been. At least twice, in Cross Key Waterways and Estuary Properties, ⁵ this court decided important constitutional questions inhering in agency proceedings notwithstanding the agency's inability to decide such a question, and without regard for whether the question was formally and futilely raised before the agency. A district court's resolution of a constitutional or other legal question may occasionally be stymied by the absence of a complete record necessary for the decision, as the case now before us illustrates. But that may be remedied, as this case also illustrates, by remand to the agency or to the agency and DOAH. Sections 120.57, 120.68(6), (11), (13).

We recognize that sister courts have recently expressed a contrary view, which we understand to be that an agency decision on a question of law is a necessary predicate for the district court's power to decide that same question, and consequently that legal questions not cognizable by an agency must be diverted to circuit court. ⁶ We respectfully disagree. Considering as we do that the extent of a district court's decision on review of agency action is ultimately a question of policy rather than power, ⁷ we think there is precious little sound policy to justify dividing an administrative controversy into nonconstitutional issues and two kinds of constitutional issues and parceling them out to separate agency and circuit court litigations which may eventually merge again in the same district court of appeal or, worse, in different district courts. See, e.g., Coulter v. Davin, supra fn. 6, 373 So.2d at 428; Laborers' International Union of North America, Local 517 v. The Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, 385 So.2d 716, No. 79-1237/T4-584 (Fla. 5th DCA op. filed June 27, 1980). Neither does it seem to us desirable to bifurcate the proceedings and stay agency proceedings on nonconstitutional issues until a circuit court renders judgment on constitutional issues. E.g., E. T. Legg and Co. v. Franza, supra fn. 6. Such a process engages judicial labor when the contender may yet be satisfied administratively, so undermining the twin policies of primary jurisdiction and exhaustion of remedies, ⁸ and it rushes constitutional questions to judgment while potentially dispositive nonconstitutional questions are still open, so undermining "the well-settled rule that such a (constitutional) question ordinarily will be decided only when necessary to a disposition of the cause." In re Estate of Sale, 227 So.2d 199, 201 (Fla.1969). The final alternative of leaving the case intact and the constitutional and nonconstitutional issues unified, but bootstrapping the whole controversy into circuit court, is obviously an abandonment of Chapter 120.

By asserting the power of district courts of appeal to decide constitutional questions on administrative appeals, we do not derogate the power of circuit courts to render declaratory judgments on the constitutionality of statutes. Sections 86.011, 120.73, Florida Statutes (1979). See Gulf Pines, supra fn. 7. But the circuit court's power to judge a statute's constitutionality in a case taken out of the administrative process does not displace a district court's power to render the same kind of judgment in a case not removed from the administrative process. The question of whether a circuit court should intervene to decide a constitutional issue, as the Supreme Court stated in Gulf Pines, is "ultimately (a question) of policy rather than power," supra fn. 7. So a circuit judge, importuned to intervene in agency proceedings in order to decide a constitutional issue, would appropriately consider, as did the Supreme Court in Gulf Pines, whether ". . . under the circumstances presented . . . the claim (is)...