Opinion ID: 6342100
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: b.a.j. 217, 222 (1925)).

Text: Yet, for reasons that are not clear, uniquely with administrative law appeals, the General Assembly has limited harmless error review to procedural defects. The absence of a harmless error review in administrative cases is striking. In civil and criminal trials, even errors “arising from the denial of a constitutional right are subject to a harmless error analysis.” Angel v. Commonwealth, 281 Va. 248, 264 (2011). It is not clear why, in appeals from administrative agencies, harmless error is available for procedural errors, but not for substantive errors. Virginia is an outlier in this respect. I am aware of no other state that provides such a limitation. 1 Judicial review of the decisions of federal administrative agencies contemplates the applicability of harmless error across the board. See 5 U.S.C. § 706. Litigation, including in the 1 See, e.g., Ferguson v. Hamrick, 388 So. 2d 981, 984 (Ala. 1980); Williams v. Dep’t of Public Safety, 369 P.3d 760, 782 (Colo. Ct. App. 2015); Levy v. Comm’n on Human Rights & Opportunities, 671 A.2d 349, 358-59 (Conn. 1996); Sherman v. Comm’n on Licensure to Practice Healing Art, 407 A.2d 595, 602 (D.C.A. 1979); Sylte v. Idaho Dep’t of Water Resources, 443 P.3d 252, 260 (Idaho 2019); Comm’r of Indiana Dep’t of Insurance v. Schumaker, 118 N.E.3d 11, 20 (Ind. Ct. App. 2018); Southwest Kansas Royalty Owners Ass’n v. State Corp. Comm’n, 769 P.2d 1, 12 (Kan. 1989); Vote Solar v. Montana Dep’t of Public Service Regulation, 473 P.3d 963, 975 (Mont. 2020). 15 administrative context, can be extraordinarily expensive and time consuming. A remand to revisit a decision when the error was plainly harmless drives up the cost of litigation with no apparent gain. Public policy choices, of course, remain entirely the prerogative of the General Assembly. Transparent GMU v. George Mason Univ., 298 Va. 222, 250 (2019). To the extent the placement of the harmless error language in Code § 2.2-4207 was an oversight, it may be worth correcting. 16