Opinion ID: 2518335
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Substantive and Procedural Due Process

Text: [¶27] Taxpayers contend that the Department's decisions in this case, combined with the Board's justifications for those decisions, violated their rights to both procedural and substantive due process. The pertinent provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 6 essentially provide that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Reiter v. State, 2001 WY 116, ¶19, 36 P.3d 586, ¶19 (Wyo. 2001). Due process is both procedural and substantive. Id. (citing Mills v. Reynolds, 807 P.2d 383, 395 (Wyo. 1991)). Procedural due process is satisfied if a person is afforded adequate notice and an opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. Robbins v. South Cheyenne Water and Sewage Dist., 792 P.2d 1380, 1385 (Wyo. 1990). [¶28] Taxpayers contend that the Department did not provide the comparable value until months after the appropriate time, provided no justification that the specified contracts were comparable within the meaning of the statute, and provided no explanation how the statutory terms were met by using these processing contracts. Without appropriate action by the Department, Taxpayers claim they were uncertain what evidence sufficed to disprove the Department's action was statutorily authorized and the hearing they received did not meet procedural due process requirements. The Department contends that Taxpayers did not require this information and suffered no prejudice because they have previously applied the comparable value method with no information at all from the Department, did not request rule-making, and did not request any explanation. The Department maintains that Taxpayers' complaints about ambiguity and lack of rule-making spring from their determination to preserve the favorable tax treatment derived from using the proportionate profits methodology despite its inapplicability. [¶29] Taxpayers presented all of these objections at a contested case proceeding and received a decision based upon a thorough examination of the facts, arguments, rules, and law. The law requires no more to satisfy procedural due process, and we find no constitutional violation. Taxpayers' substantive due process claim stems from the Board's alleged arbitrary actions because of a failure to provide guidance on how the statutory terms are defined. We have already stated that it is impossible to draft statutes to anticipate every scenario. We believe that to also be true of regulations. The record shows that the Department has a long history of reviewing contracts because contracts between taxpayers impact determinations of fair market value. We have rejected the notion that the legislature intended such a restrictive definition of the statutory terms that these processing contracts cannot establish a comparable value for taxation purposes. Taxpayers used the processing contracts to establish the processing fee. Their having used the contracts to establish the processing fee market, we do not accept the premise that agency use of those contracts violates Taxpayers' due process rights.