Opinion ID: 2264097
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Internal Management

Text: In 1970, eighty-two DOC inmates, after being transferred from medium and minimum security facilities to the segregated confinement unit at the Maryland Penitentiary, filed suit in U.S. District Court, complaining about the procedures used to implement the transfer and the additional punishment meted out to them. [5] The court agreed with the thrust of the prisoners' complaint and concluded, as a matter of Federal due process requirements, that, when the loss of diminution credits was at risk, the inmates were entitled to notice of the charges against them and a fair hearing on those charges, and that the procedures used by DOC were Constitutionally deficient. See Bundy v. Cannon, 328 F.Supp. 165 (D.Md.1971). Following announcement of the court's intention to enter an order providing relief, DOC agreed to adopt new procedures that had been drafted by amicus in the case and that were attached as an appendix to the court's opinion. Id. at 174-77. Those procedures, which defined and dealt with both minor and major violations, were obviously intended, and were regarded by the court, as minimally necessary to bring DOC into compliance with the due process requirements enunciated by the court. The initial procedures were amended pursuant to consent orders on two subsequent occasions. See Bundy v. Cannon, 453 F.Supp. 856 (D.Md.1978) and Bundy v. Cannon, 538 F.Supp. 410 (D.Md.1982). See also Michael A. Millemann, Prison Disciplinary Hearings and Procedural Due Process  The Requirement of a Full Administrative Hearing, 31 MD. L.REV. 27 (1971). They are the predecessors of DPSCSD 105-4 and 105-5. The due process underpinning of the Bundy procedures, at least when the revocation of earned diminution credits is at risk, was confirmed by the Supreme Court in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). The Court there held that, where a State provides for diminution credits and their revocation, a due process liberty interest is triggered  that the State having created the right to good time and itself recognizing that its deprivation is a sanction authorized for major misconduct, the prisoner's interest has real substance and is sufficiently embraced within Fourteenth Amendment `liberty' to entitle him to those minimum procedures appropriate under the circumstances and required by the Due Process Clause to insure that the state-created right is not arbitrarily abrogated. Id. at 557, 94 S.Ct. at 2975, 41 L.Ed.2d at 951. Compare Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976) (no liberty interest involved in transfer of inmate to maximum security prison) and Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995) (placement of inmate in segregated confinement did not trigger due process liberty interest). [6] The first Bundy case was decided within a year after the creation of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services as a principal department of the State Government and the reorganization of the structure and governance of the State correctional system. See 1970 Md. Laws, ch. 401. At the time, Maryland Code, Art. 41, § 204C (b) authorized the Secretary to promulgate rules and regulations for his office and to review, approve, disapprove, or revise the rules and regulations of all of the units in the Department, including DOC. Art. 41, § 204D(a) created DOC, to perform the functions and exercise the powers previously vested in the Department of Correctional Services. The office of Commissioner of Correction was created by Art. 27, § 673. Section 676 of that article authorized the Commissioner to adopt rules and regulations, not inconsistent with law, for the operations and maintenance of the several institutions and agencies in the Department, for the discipline and conduct ... of prisoners, and for the duties, discipline and conduct of officers and employees of the several institutions and agencies. There was nothing in any of those statutes that created any distinction between rules and regulations or between rules or regulations that concerned only internal management and those that had a broader reach. [7] Nor, although likely implicit, was there any specific mandate that rules or regulations be adopted in conformance with other statutory procedural requirements. Requirements for the adoption of regulations were much less rigorous then than they are now. Art. 41, § 9 required an agency to submit proposed regulations to the Attorney General for approval as to legality; § 245(c) of that Article required the agency, prior to adoption, to publish or otherwise circulate a proposed regulation and afford interested persons an opportunity to comment on them, orally or in writing; and § 246 required the agency to file a certified copy of the regulation with the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, the Secretary of State, and certain other depositories. Although we may presume from the fact that the Attorney General represented the State in the Bundy case that he approved the agreed-upon procedures attached as an Appendix to the court's opinion, there is no indication that the Secretary or the Commissioner complied with any of the other requirements then in the law. The Clerk of this Court has no record of a certified copy of the procedures being filed. Perhaps the Secretary and the Commissioner assumed that, as the procedures formed part of a Federal court order, it was not necessary to comply with State statutory requirements, minimal though they were. The new requirements for adopting regulations were enacted in 1972 and 1974. The 1972 law (1972 Md. Laws, ch. 699) created the AELR Committee and required that agencies, at least 30 days prior to the adoption of any rule, regulation, or standard, submit a copy to the committee. The 1974 Act  the State Documents Law (1974 Md. Laws. ch. 600)  created COMAR and the Maryland Register and required agencies to send a copy of any proposed rule or regulation to the Administrator of State Documents at least 60 days prior to adoption, for publication in the Maryland Register. The current organization and terminology of the APA provisions were enacted as part of the State Government Article  a Code Revision product  in 1984. See 1984 Md. Laws, ch. 284. The current versions of DPSCSD 105-4 and 105-5 were adopted in January, 2002. Although the Secretary and the Commissioner are obviously still bound to respect the due process requirements enunciated in Bundy, Wolff, and Sandin, it seems clear that those directives were not adopted pursuant to, and did not become part of, any extant Federal court order. There is no indication that they were ever submitted to or approved by the Federal court. They are purely State regulations. Nonetheless, the fact that they proceeded from, and were designed to implement, basic Federal due process requirements is powerful evidence that they are not merely guidelines for routine, or even non-routine, internal management, subject to change at the whim of the Secretary or the Commissioner. At least where discipline may serve to lengthen an inmate's period of incarceration or subject an inmate to other atypical punishment, regulations of that kind are required to protect the Constitutionally-based liberty interest of prisoners. Neither the Secretary nor the Commissioner could simply abrogate them and put nothing in their place, or amend them in a manner as would cause them not to provide the Constitutionally-required protection. The Court of Special Appeals essentially confirmed that view in Hopkins v. Md. Inmate Griev. Comm'n, 40 Md.App. 329, 391 A.2d 1213 (1978), cert. dismissed sub nom., Secretary v. Hopkins, 285 Md. 120 (1979). At issue there was a predecessor of DPSCSD 105-5, requiring that an inmate charged with a rule violation be afforded a hearing within 72 hours after the alleged infraction unless prevented by exceptional circumstances. The hearing afforded Hopkins occurred five days, rather than three days, after the infraction. IGO rejected Hopkins' complaint, holding that the delay was justified by exceptional circumstances and was not prejudicial, and the Circuit Court, on judicial review, affirmed that decision. The Court of Special Appeals concluded that the record did not support a finding of exceptional circumstances and that the time requirement was not merely directory, but was mandatory. Applying then the principle enunciated in U.S. ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260, 74 S.Ct. 499, 98 L.Ed. 681 (1954), the court held it to be well-established, as a general rule, that regulations adopted by an administrative agency cannot be waived, suspended, or disregarded in a particular case so long as those regulations remain in force. The court recognized that there were exceptions to that general principle, one of which was an agency's departure from procedural rules adopted for the orderly transaction of agency business. Hopkins, supra, 40 Md.App. at 336, 391 A.2d at 1217. It concluded, however, that the regulation at issue was not of that type: It is clear that [DOC Rule 105-2(c)(1)], which is couched in unambiguous, mandatory language, was not intended to govern internal agency procedures but was specifically adopted to confer important procedural benefits and safeguards upon inmates.... Id. at 337, 391 A.2d at 1217. We dealt with an allied matter in Pollock v. Patuxent, 374 Md. 463, 823 A.2d 626 (2003). At issue was a directive adopted by Patuxent Institution, a correctional institution that is not part of DOC and that adopts its own directives, dealing with the handling of urine specimens collected from inmates. We expressly adopted the  Accardi doctrine, that an agency must ordinarily comply with the rules and regulations that it has adopted, along with the exception recognized in Hopkins permitting departures from procedural rules adopted for the orderly transaction of agency business, although, in contrast to one of the pronouncements in Hopkins, we held that, to be entitled to relief by reason of an unauthorized departure, the claimant must show prejudice. In discussing Accardi and its progeny, we pointed out that, as a minimum, an agency's failure to comply with its own regulations automatically nullifies its action where the regulation is promulgated to affect fundamental rights derived from the Constitution or a federal statute and that nullification had been required even when `less fundamental' rights were involved. Pollock, supra, at 489, 823 A.2d at 642. Our ultimate conclusion was that, in determining whether the  Accardi doctrine applies, a court must scrutinize the agency rule or regulation at issue to determine if it implicates Accardi because it `affects individual rights and obligations' or whether it confers `important procedural benefits' or, conversely, whether Accardi is not implicated because the rule or regulation falls within the ambit of the exception which does not require strict agency compliance with internal `procedural rules adopted for the orderly transaction of agency business,' i.e., not triggering the Accardi doctrine. Id. at 503, 823 A.2d at 650. We are not dealing here, of course, with Accardi, but the analysis is pertinent in its distinction between regulations that affect fundamental rights, especially those that are Constitutionally derived, and those governing merely the orderly transaction of agency business. The clear implication is that, if the regulation in question affects fundamental rights, it is not one that can be characterized as for the orderly transaction of agency business and thus not one that pertains only to routine internal management. An exemption from many of the requirements for adopting regulations that pertain only to the internal management of an agency has been part of the Model APA for nearly five decades and appears in the law of nearly every State that has adopted a version of the Model APA. Although there have been many cases determining whether a particular rule or regulation falls within the ambit of the exemption, there has been surprisingly little comment on the general meaning and scope of that exemption. The few commentators who have addressed the matter agree that the exemption was a pragmatic and balanced one  that to carry the procedural rule-making requirements too far into the internal workings of the agency would completely stifle agency activities if it were enforced. See Gary M. Haman & Robert P. Tunnicliff, Idaho Administrative Agencies and the New Idaho Administrative Procedure Act, 3 IDAHO L.REV. 61, 79 (1966); see also Arthur Earl Bonfield, The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act: Background, Construction, Applicability, Public Access To Agency Law, The Rulemaking Process, 60 IOWA L.REV. 731 (1975) [hereinafter Bonfield, The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act ]; ARTHUR EARL BONFIELD, STATE ADMINISTRATIVE RULE MAKING § 6.17.2 (1986 & Supp.1993); Carl A. Auerbach, Administrative Rulemaking in Minnesota, 63 MINN. L.REV. 151, 241-42 (1979). Bonfield noted the inefficiency and expense of requiring agencies to comply with the statutory requirements every time they gave an instruction of any sort to their employees, no matter how internal, and pointed out, as well, that the public benefit would be doubtful because the public is not really affected in any cognizable way by a large portion of the agencies' internal housekeeping matters. Bonfield, The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act, supra, at 833. Bonfield also observed, however: On the other hand, agencies could too easily subvert public rulemaking requirements if they could avoid those procedures for anything they called an internal directive to staff. After all, the public's rights can as easily be defined by statements formally addressed to the agency staff  `Punish any person who litters a public park'  as by statements formally addressed to the public  `Any person who litters a public park will be punished.' Id. In his book, Bonfield viewed the internal management exclusion as a very narrowly drawn provision with several important qualifications. ARTHUR EARL BONFIELD, STATE ADMINISTRATIVE RULE MAKING § 6.17.2, at 402. It is meant, he asserts, to assure that matters of internal agency management that are purely of concern to the agency and its staff are effectively excluded from normal rule-making and rule-effectiveness requirements. Id. (Emphasis added). In his law review article, Bonfield agreed that no exclusion will be allowed if the agency statement substantially affects rights of the public of a sort that are cognizable as a matter of law; that is, rights which are normally enforceable against the agency or other parties through legal processes. Bonfield, The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act, supra, at 834. The kinds of statements falling within the ambit of the exemption, he concluded, face inwards and do not substantially affect any legal rights of the public or any segment of the public, giving as examples purely internal personnel practices and directions. Id. The question of whether policies and procedures like DPSCSD 105-4 and 105-5 should be exempt from the normal rules governing the adoption of regulations is not new. At the time the Iowa and Minnesota law review articles were written, both Iowa and Minnesota had expressly addressed the issue by statutorily expanding the internal management exemption to include policies relating to inmates in State correctional institutions, thus indicating that those policies would not otherwise come within the exemption. A stylistically different but substantially similar approach was taken in the 1981 version of the Model APA drafted by the Uniform Law Commissioners. Section 3-116 of that Model Act not only excludes from the procedural requirements rules concerning only internal management that do not substantially affect procedural or substantive rights of any segment of the public but separately excludes rules concerning only inmates of a correctional or detention facility. Bonfield's and Auerbach's articles are cited in the Comment to that section. Some States have adopted that approach. See Jensen v. Little, 459 N.W.2d 237 (N.D. 1990) and Beasley v. Commissioner of Correction, 50 Conn.App. 421, 718 A.2d 487 (1998), noting the North Dakota and Connecticut laws to that effect. One thing of particular interest is that the separate exclusion suggested in the 1981 Model APA, recently rejected by the Maryland Legislature, covers not just inmates in correctional facilities but also students enrolled in public educational institutions and patients admitted to public hospitals, for the same reason: The sheer burden of subjecting to usual rule-making and rule-effectiveness requirements the thousands of rules concerning the details of these agencies' daily relationships with inmates, students, and patients would be intolerable. ARTHUR EARL BONFIELD, STATE ADMINISTRATIVE RULE MAKING § 6.17.7, at 415-16. In that regard, we note that the basic requirements regarding the disciplining of students in the public schools were adopted by the State Board of Education in conformance with the APA and appear in COMAR 13A.08.01. The Board obviously did not regard those procedures as mere internal management. At least four States have considered the issue judicially. New York had a Constitutional requirement that no rule or regulation of any State agency except ... as relates to the organization or internal management of [the agency] was effective until filed with the State Secretary of State. The Commissioner of Correction suspended existing regulations pertaining to inmate disciplinary hearings and adopted, in their place, new regulations intended to be temporary. He did not file them with the Secretary of State, and several inmates who were disciplined in proceedings conducted under the new regulations challenged their validity. The Commissioner sought to justify them as relating to the internal management of the prison. In Jones v. Smith, 64 N.Y.2d 1003, 489 N.Y.S.2d 50, 478 N.E.2d 191, 192 (1985), the court rejected that defense, holding: Rules and regulations of correctional institutions that affect a prisoner's `liberty' interests, as here, may not properly be said to involve matters of `organization or internal management', thus exempting them from the filing requirements.... Such rules and regulations affect the entire prison population, that segment of the `general public' over which the Department of Correctional Services exercises direct authority, and constitute a `kind of legislative or quasi-legislative norm or prescription which establishes a pattern or course of conduct for the future.' (Citations omitted). In Michigan, there was an exclusion for intra-agency directives that did not affect the rights of, or procedures and practices available to, the public. An inmate sued to declare the prison disciplinary rules invalid because they had not been adopted in conformance with the State APA, and the question arose whether the rules constituted procedures affecting the rights of the public  whether inmates were part of the public. In Martin v. Department of Corrections, 424 Mich. 553, 384 N.W.2d 392 (1986), the court held that inmates were part of the public and that the exclusion did not apply. The court rejected the Department's argument that prison discipline rules affect only the inmates and that public comment on those rules would be of little benefit, noting that [t]his belief seems to overlook the obvious public concern of humanitarian and civil rights groups [and] completely overlooks the concern of the Legislature. Rhode Island and Tennessee have ruled to the contrary. See L'Heureux v. State Dept. of Corrections, 708 A.2d 549 (R.I. 1998); Mandela v. Campbell, 978 S.W.2d 531 (Tenn.1998). Neither decision is persuasive. In Rhode Island, the procedural rules governing prison disciplinary proceedings were promulgated to comply with a Federal court decree. The rules were eventually reissued as part of a permanent injunction issued by the Federal court, and both the rules and the injunction remained in effect at the time of L'Heureux. A prisoner sued the Department of Corrections in State court, complaining of violations of those rules. Neither the nature of the alleged violations nor the relief sought is explained. The thrust of the Rhode Island Supreme Court opinion was that the contested case provisions of the State APA did not apply to inmate disciplinary proceedings and that decisions made in those proceedings were therefore not subject to judicial review. Several cases were cited for that proposition. [8] Without the benefit of any analysis, the court then simply concluded that, if the contested case part of the APA did not apply, neither did the rule-making requirements: We are persuaded by the rationale of the foregoing federal and state cases [all of which involved only the contested case provisions of the APA] that the intricate structure of our APA provisions relating both to contested cases and to the exercise of the rule-making power would be ill suited to the management of the often volatile population of the ACI. L'Heureux, supra, 708 A.2d at 553. In sweeping with such a broad brush, the Rhode Island court did not seem to take into account the prospect that the revocation of diminution credits might be at risk in disciplinary proceedings  perhaps Rhode Island did not provide for such credits. The Tennessee decision was influenced in part by L'Heureux, which the court quoted, and in part by the court's observation that the Legislature had delegated considerable deference and broad discretion to the Tennessee DOC, from which it concluded that [t]his broad grant of discretion also envisions that those persons intimately involved with the intricacies of the prison system and not the voting public are best equipped to establish policies and procedures for inmate discipline. Mandela, supra, 978 S.W.2d at 534. With due respect to the Tennessee court, that is not the issue. Clearly, control over prison management is vested in DOC, subject to the Secretary's overall supervision, and not the voting public or, indeed, the Judiciary. See State v. McCray, 267 Md. 111, 134, 297 A.2d 265, 277 (1972); see also Lumumba v. Morton, 280 N.J.Super. 400, 655 A.2d 487 (1995) (holding that prison rule prohibiting inmates from wearing shirts that could show military rank or group membership was not subject to formal APA rule-making requirements). The question is simply whether inmate discipline procedures adopted by the Secretary that can directly or indirectly affect an inmate's actual length of incarceration qualify as merely internal management guidelines, and, to us, they do not. The basic regime of identifying prohibited conduct, setting ranges of discipline for the various offenses, and establishing due process-compliant procedures for charging offenses, informing inmates of the offenses charged, and adjudicating culpability has been in place, with occasional modifications, for over 30 years. It is the framework within which much of the discretion accorded to DOC in dealing with inmates operates. It is not the myriad of rules governing the details of prison life  what inmates may wear, what they may or may not keep in their cells or on their persons, the rules governing security, sanitation, hygiene, phone calls, mail, and visits, for example  or the discretionary calls available to correctional officers when confronting inmate misbehavior that must be adopted as regulations, but only the framework. Upon this analysis, we hold that DPSCSD 105-4 and 105-5 constitute regulations under SG § 10-101(g), that they are not exempt from the APA requirements, and that, to be legally effective, they must be adopted in conformance with those requirements.