Opinion ID: 2585478
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Administrative Construction and Practice

Text: Established administrative construction and practice to which we owe substantial deference buttress the aforestated legal arguments for reversal. While taking ultimate responsibility for the construction of a statute, we accord great weight and respect to the administrative construction thereof. ( Yamaha Corp. of America v. State Bd. of Equalization (1998) 19 Cal.4th 1, 12, 78 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 960 P.2d 1031; see also Styne v. Stevens (2001) 26 Cal.4th 42, 53, 109 Cal.Rptr.2d 14, 26 P.3d 343 [administrator's interpretation of a statute he is charged with enforcing deserves substantial weight].) CDSS has adopted the view that [a] petition or an application for a limited consent or limited relinquishment adoption, in which a birth parent, or adoption parent, simultaneously retains parental rights and consents [to the adoption], agrees [to the adoption], or designates the adoptive parent of his or her child [to be] an unrelated adult, is to be reviewed on its merits pursuant to the California Family Code. (CDSS, All County Letter No. 99-100 (Nov. 15,1999); see ante, fn. 3.) [13] Deference to administrative interpretations always is situational and depends on a complex of factors ( Yamaha Corp. of America v. State Bd. of Equalization, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 12, 78 Cal. Rptr.2d 1, 960 P.2d 1031), but where the agency has special expertise and its decision is carefully considered by senior agency officials, that decision is entitled to correspondingly greater weight ( id. at pp. 12-15, 78 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 960 P.2d 1031). CDSS indisputably is familiar with the independent adoption provisions as well as with the entire scheme of the adoption law it enforces, and its interpretation of section 8617 comes from authoritative legal and policymaking levels of the agency. Accordingly, this is a case in which the administrative construction would appear to be entitled to great weight. In any event, as it is not clearly erroneous, we owe substantial deference to CDSS's views of section 8617 as waivable and of second parent adoptions as valid under the independent adoption laws. ( Kelly v. Methodist Hospital of So. California (2000) 22 Cal.4th 1108, 1118, 95 Cal. Rptr.2d 514, 997 P.2d 1169.)