Opinion ID: 6494320
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Constitutional Responsibilities of an Agency

Text: Although the power of a State agency is delineated by statute, an agency’s statutory duties must be performed in a manner that is consistent with the Hawai'i Constitution. 14 Thus, the agency must function in accordance with both its governing statutes and the Ha-wai'i Constitution. With respect to the Ha-wai'i Constitution, an agency’s obligation is twofold: the agency must not only avoid infringing upon protected rights to the extent feasible, but it also must execute its statutory duties in a manner that fulfills the State’s affirmative constitutional obligations. 15 In other words, the authority and obligations of an agency are necessarily circumscribed and regulated by the Hawai'i Constitution. See Czerkies v. U.S. Dep’t of Labor, 73 F.3d 1435, 1441-42 (7th Cir.1996) (stating that “an administrative agency [may not] claim to receive from Congress by sheer inadvertence a license to ignore the Constitution”); Hennessey v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 4, 552 P.2d 1141, 1145 (Okla.1976) (“All governmental bodies must remain within bounds of the Constitution.”); City of Modesto v. Modesto Irrigation Dist., 34 Cal.App.3d 504, 110 Cal.Rptr. 1114, 114 (1973) (holding that state agencies “must submit to a constitutional mandate”). Hence, an agency may not fulfill its statutory duties without reference to and application of the rights and values embodied in the constitution. As a related matter, an agency is often in the position of deciding issues that affect multiple stakeholders and implicate constitutional rights and duties. See In re ‘Iao Ground Water Mgmt. Area High-Level Source Water Use Permit Applications (‘Iao), 128 Hawai'i 228, 231, 287 P.3d 129, 132 (2012) (deciding water use applications of several parties with a multitude of interests in several water resources); Ka Pa‘akai O Ka'Aina v. Land Use Comm’n, 94 Hawai'i 31, 34, 7 P.3d 1068, 1071 (2000) (reclassification of approximately 1,000 acres of land from a conservation district to an urban district). As a result, an agency is often the primary protector of constitutional rights and perhaps is in the best position to fulfill the State’s affirmative constitutional obligations. 16 Cf. Save Ourselves, Inc. v. La. Envtl. Control Comm’n, 462 So.2d 1152, 1157 (La.1984) (holding that “the rights of the public must receive active and affirmative protection at the hands of the” agency making the decision (emphasis added)). Consequently, an agency bears a significant responsibility of assuring that its actions and decisions honor the constitutional rights of those directly affected by its decisions. In this case, the Board, which heads the Department of Land and Natural Resources, was asked to perform its statutory duty to consider an application for a permit to build on conservation land. See HRS § 183C-6 (2011) (“The department shall regulate land use in the conservation district by the issuance of permits.”); HRS § 171-3(a) (Supp. 2008) (stating that the department “shall manage, administer, and exercise control over,” inter alia, “public lands, the water resources, ocean waters, navigable streams, coastal areas (excluding commercial harbor areas), and minerals and all other interests therein and exercise such powers of disposition thereof as may be authorized by law”). As recognized by the Administrator of the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, the proposed use of the conservation land implicates the constitutional right of individuals of Native Hawaiian descent to exercise traditional and customary Native Hawaiian practices. Under such facts, the role of an agency is not merely to be a passive actor or a neutral umpire, and its duties are not fulfilled simply by providing a level playing field for the parties. See Save Ourselves, Inc., 452 So.2d at 1157 (“[T]he commission’s role as the representative of the public interest does not permit it to act as an umpire passively calling balls and strikes for adversaries appearing before it.”). Rather, an agency of the State must perform its statutory function in a manner that fulfills the State’s affirmative constitutional obligations. See, e.g., Ka Pa‘akai O Ka'Aina, 94 Hawai'i at 45, 7 P.3d at 1082 (placing “an affirmative duty on the State and its agencies to preserve and protect traditional and customary native Hawaiian rights”); In re Water Use Permit Applications (Waiahole I), 94 Hawai'i 97, 143, 9 P.3d 409, 456 (2000) (describing the state agency’s affirmative duty of “considering, protecting, and advancing public rights in the resource at every stage of the planning and decision-making process”). In particular, an agency must fashion procedures that are commensurate to the constitutional stature of the rights involved, see, e.g., Waiahole I, 94 Hawai'i at 143, 9 P.3d at 455 (decisions involving public rights to a public-trust resource must be “made with a level of openness, diligence, and foresight commensurate with the high priority these rights command under the laws of our state”), and procedures that would provide a framework for the agency to discover the full implications of an action or decision before approving or denying it, see, e.g., Kauai Springs, Inc. v. Planning Comm’n of Kaua'i, 133 Hawai'i 141, 174-75, 324 P.3d 951, 984-85 (2014) (crafting an as-sistive framework that can guide agencies when considering the application of the public trust doctrine to water resources). In light of the unique position that an agency occupies, the agency may be at the frontline of deciding issues that involve various interests that implicate constitutional rights. Especially in instances where an agency acts or decides matters over which it has exclusive original jurisdiction, that agency is the primary entity that can and, therefore, should consider and honor state constitutional lights in the course of fulfilling its duties. Furthermore, to the extent possible, an agency must execute its statutory duties in a manner that fulfills the State’s affirmative obligations under the Hawaii Constitution. An agency is not at liberty to abdicate its duty to uphold and enforce rights guaranteed by the Hawaii Constitution when such rights are implicated by an agency action or decision. 17