Opinion ID: 2569468
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Brandal's Due Process Claim

Text: Brandal's next argument is that his right to due process was violated by the CFEC's twenty-two-year delay in handling his case. As Brandal correctly notes, the right to due process extends to participants in administrative proceedings. [32] Alaska has adopted the three-part balancing test outlined in Mathews v. Eldridge to determine whether administrative proceedings satisfy due process. [33] This test takes into account: [f]irst, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probative value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.[ [34] ] In Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. v. Mallen, [35] the United States Supreme Court outlined three similar factors to consider in cases involving extended delay. These factors include the importance of the private interest and the harm to this interest occasioned by delay[,] the justification offered by the Government for delay and its relation to the underlying governmental interest[,] and the likelihood that the interim decision may have been mistaken. [36] Because the Mathews and Mallen factors closely track each other, we will examine both together.
The first factor raises the question whether there can be a deprivation of a property interest due to a deficiency in a proceeding where the applicant's claim is ultimately denied. Although Brandal does not have a private interest [37] in receiving a permit to which he is not legally entitled, he clearly has an interest in being able to earn a livelihood. Just as importantly, all applicants  including those whose permit applications are ultimately denied  have a procedural interest in the prompt and fair adjudication of their claims. For this reason, although the original denial in 1978 and the recommended denial issued in 1982 both provided notice that Brandal could not rely on the eventual issuance of a permit, [38] Brandal did have a procedural interest in having his claim resolved.
This factor strongly favors the CFEC. If Brandal had not received an interim permit, and if the final decision had been to grant his application, he would have a strong argument that the CFEC's delay created a serious risk of an erroneous deprivation [39] of his property interest, as it would have deprived him of twenty-two years of rightful access to the fishery. But the CFEC obviated this problem by issuing him an interim permit. The CFEC's grant of an interim permit may have been erroneous relative to the final decision, but the error resulted in a windfall for Brandal. Furthermore, Brandal has not identified any aspect of the CFEC's procedure that is likely to create the risk of an inaccurate result. The CFEC's glacial pace endangered the timeliness of the decision, not the accuracy of the result. Although Brandal raises substantive objections to the CFEC's decision, these objections arise from a dispute about the meaning of the special circumstances provision, not a claim that the CFEC's factfinding process is fundamentally flawed.
The third factor clearly favors Brandal. Although he does not give a detailed account of the procedure that he would substitute for the present method of adjudicating applications, he does state that he would have experienced much less hardship [h]ad CFEC promptly adjudicated and rejected his application. If the additional or substitute procedural requirement [40] suggested by Brandal is simply that the CFEC process applications promptly, the government has virtually no interest in avoiding this requirement. Although we recognize that the fiscal and administrative burdens [41] of adjudicating cases may affect the promptness of decisions, no conceivable burden could justify sitting on a simple permit application for over two decades. CFEC's justification ... for [the] delay and its relation to the underlying government interest [42] is profoundly unpersuasive. The CFEC's claim that [t]he time when Brandal's complete application record came before the Commission coincided with a time when the Commission was unable to devote sufficient time to its review might excuse a delay of weeks or months, but not of decades. As the D.C. Circuit observed in the context of a far more complex administrative proceeding, nine years should be enough time for any agency to decide almost any issue. [43] A permit application should take a fraction of that time. The traditional remedy for such a delay, however, has generally been a court order compelling the agency to reach a decision. [44] At no point during the twenty-two years after 1982 did Brandal seek an order compelling the CFEC to reach a decision.
We have stated that delay can constitute a violation of due process in the criminal context, if it results in actual prejudice to the defendant, [45] and in certain civil contexts, if the delay causes the deprivation of a private interest. [46] But we have never held that delay alone, with no accompanying prejudice, constitutes a violation of the right to due process. [47] The facts of the present case do not justify such a holding. The CFEC's handling of this case was inexcusable, and Brandal may experience significant harm, but the CFEC's delay is not the reason for Brandal's difficulties. Contrary to Brandal's claim that [t]he delay caused him to become almost entirely economically dependent on the fishery and lulled him into not learning another occupation, Brandal had ample notice that the CFEC was likely to reject his claim. In 1978 and 1982 hearing officers found that he lacked sufficient points to qualify for a permit. Brandal had no reason to assume that the cause of the delay was that his case was deemed exceptionally close: courts and administrative agencies often face exceptionally close cases, but they almost never sit on them for decades on end. Brandal elected not to learn another occupation in spite of having received notice that he was unlikely to be awarded a permit. Because the CFEC's delay did not prejudice Brandal, we hold that the delay did not constitute a violation of Brandal's right to due process.