Court Of Appeals Rules For Brent Adams Client
Posted by
Michael ByrneJanuary 08, 2008 5:39 PMWhen longtime State employee Peggy Anderson applied for a promotion at Whitaker School, she thought she'd get promotional priority - a hiring preference over non-state employees - as the law requires. Instead, a non-state employee got the job. Peggy Anderson decided to fight back.
Ms. Anderson hired Brent Adams attorney Michael Byrne, who argued in court that the State failed to give Ms. Anderson the promotional priority she was entitled to. When a state employee applies for a promotion, in most cases, the state can only give the job to a non-state applicant when the non-state person's "job-related qualifications" are "substantially better suited" for the position than the state applicant. In Ms. Anderson's case, she'd been working at Whitaker School (a facility for adolescents with mental health issues as well as secondarily disabling conditions) for years and had consistently outstanding evaluations. Instead, the job went to someone who'd never worked at Whitaker School.
An administrative law judge agreed that the state had failed to follow the law, and awarded Ms. Anderson back pay, front pay until she received the position, attorney's fees, and promotion into the next vacant position. However, the State Personnel Commission applied an (erroneous) "extra" requirement that Ms. Anderson demonstate she was better qualified than other state employees who did NOT contest the hiring decision. A Superior Court judge in Wake County agreed, finding that the State Personnel Commission's decision was "supported by substantial evidence and was not arbitrary and capricious."
Though anyone might be discouraged at that point, Peggy Anderson didn't give up. She took her case to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which recently agreed that the Superior Court committed legal error by using the wrong "standard of review" when it ruled in Ms. Anderson's case. The case is Anderson v. DHHS, Whitaker School, No. COA07-463 (December 18, 2007).
The Superior Court used the "whole record" test in reviewing Ms. Anderson's case when it should have looked at the case with fresh eyes, finding its own facts and making its own legal conclusions. This is known as the "de novo" standard of review, and it is used when the State Personnel Commission (the agency body that makes the final decision in state personnel cases) fails to adopt the administrative law judge's decision. Since the Superior Court failed to use the right standard of review when it looked at the case, the Court of Appeals directed that the case be sent back to Superior Court and examined in the legally correct way.
The importance of the case lies in its affirmation of an important change in the law that happened several years ago involving state personnel cases. In earlier days, state agencies - including the State Personnel Commission - were relatively free to disregard the administrative law judge's decision. In the early 2000s, the law was amended and, among other changes, required Superior Court judges to avoid giving any deference to prior agency decisions when the agency (in this case, again, the State Personnel Commission) failed to follow the administrative law judge decision. This made sense, because it is the administrative law judge who actually presides at the trial of the case, observes the witnesses, and hears all the evidence.
So, because of this change in the law - which the Court of Appeals made clear, in this decision among others, that it is taking seriously - state employees who prevail before administrative law judges have a much less significant prospect of having their "victories" taken away by subsequent agency decisions. For employees like Peggy Anderson, who have the courage to take on State government in court, that's very good news.