Opinion ID: 526031
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Supervise the 31 employees who work for the Board.

Text: 12 2. [E]stablish the necessary procedures to hold the hearings on appeals ... to assure impartiality in the process, as well as the prompt attention of the complaint. 13 3. Analyze and make final decisions on all appeals. 14 4. Prepare the annual budgetary request. 15 5. Recommend to the Directors of the various programs changes in their rules. 16 Moreover, the Commonwealth has explicitly classified this job as a trust position. 17 In our view, the job, as described by this record material, satisfies the Mendez-Palou qualified immunity test. It potentially concern[s] matters of partisan political interest. The Department of Social Services, as we have previously written, develops benefits policies dealing with serious social problems. Its proposed solutions and implementation programs may provoke strong partisan disagreement. See Raffucci-Alvarado v. Zayas, 816 F.2d 818 (1st Cir.1987); Alicea-Rosado v. Zayas, 813 F.2d 1263 (1st Cir.1987). Certainly, recommendations for changes in matters that affect substantive policy are potentially politically controversial. And, changes in procedural policies, such as who has the burden of proof on what type of issue, or the extent to which claimants are entitled to trial-type procedures, while sounding technical to the ear, can also prove politically controversial. Any administrative system designed to distribute funds to eligible recipients risks two different sorts of errors, those of underinclusiveness and those of overinclusiveness (related to what statisticians call Type One and Type Two errors). A particular procedural rule, say, a burden of proof rule, if it lowers the risk of underinclusiveness (a needy plaintiff will more likely win), may also raise the opposite risk of overinclusiveness (some who are not so needy will also win). Since there is no perfect procedural system, procedural rules typically determine the balance between these two kinds of error. All we now need do is translate this technical-sounding matter into the language of politics: Our system fails to help many of the poor and needy, or our system provides welfare to many who do not need it. At once it becomes apparent that the job of designing procedures may carry, at least potentially, a heavy political charge. It becomes apparent that political sensitivity, at least potentially, could prove a desirable characteristic in the administrators who design, create, or recommend the creation of procedural rules in a politically controversial benefit-distribution system. The Director's job here includes both the creation of procedural rules and the recommendation of substantive program modifications. Thus, as we said, it potentially concern[s] matters of partisan political interest. Moreover, since the Director's job involves considerable supervision, as well as the recommendation and establishment of policies, it involves more than a modicum of policymaking responsibility. Mendez-Palou, supra. 18 The district court apparently thought we should create an exception to our Mendez-Palou holding. It thought that the Director's job was clearly nonpolitical because the Board of Appeals, which he directs, has adjudicative functions. The court analogized the Director's job to that of a chief judge, and it wrote that the judicial process requires that a judicial officer remain independent of any political party. 19 We, however, would not create an exception to the Mendez-Palou requirements for the case before us. For one thing, the Director is not a judicial officer; he is an administrative officer with some adjudicative responsibilities. The Executive Branch of, for example, the federal government, contains relatively high-level officials with some adjudicative responsibilities, some of whom a President can remove only for cause (e.g., the National Transportation Safety Board, 49 U.S.C. Sec. 1902 (1982)); others of whom he can remove at will (e.g., the Secretary of Agriculture, 7 U.S.C. Secs. 2202, 193 (1982)). There are still other such officials as to whom the statute does not specify whether removal is permitted at will or only for cause (e.g., the Federal Communications Commission, 47 U.S.C. Sec. 154 (1988), Federal Reserve Board, 12 U.S.C. Sec. 241 (1988)). The examples suggest that the simple fact that an administrator is, in part (even in large part), an adjudicator, does not automatically (and clearly ) render political qualifications inappropriate. (We also note that state judges often must stand for election, and that Presidents may appoint federal judges with political considerations in mind.) 20 We do not mean that administrative adjudicators are completely free to sway with the changing political winds. The Constitution's Due Process Clause may require insulating them from certain inappropriate pressures. But the extent to which it does so is far from clear. Cf., e.g., Withrow v. Larkin, 421 U.S. 35, 95 S.Ct. 1456, 43 L.Ed.2d 712 (1975); Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U.S. 564, 93 S.Ct. 1689, 36 L.Ed.2d 488 (1973); American Cyanamid v. Federal Trade Commission, 363 F.2d 757 (6th Cir.1966). And, in any event, the reach of the Due Process Clause is not before us. 21 These legal and political facts counsel against finding that the Constitution clearly  and automatically gives all adjudicators, including administrative adjudicators, tenure-type insulation from political pressures. Nothing in Elrod or Branti suggests that the Constitution's First Amendment, the legal provision now before us, in and of itself, clearly forbids dismissal on political grounds of a high level administrator with both adjudicative and policymaking responsibilities. For these reasons Mendez-Palou applies. And, as we have said, Mendez-Palou provides qualified immunity.