Court Opinion

ID: 9498693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:25:25.39985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:00.813810
License: Public Domain

SUTTON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In Women’s Medical Professional Corp. v. Voinovich, 130 F.3d 187, 196-97 (6th Cir.1997), the Sixth Circuit invalidated an Ohio law prohibiting a late-term abortion procedure on the ground that it imposed an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion because it failed to contain a “maternal health exception.” Three years later, the Supreme Court effectively upheld that ruling when it invalidated a similar Nebraska law on the ground that it did not contain a maternal-health exception. See Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 930-31, 120 S.Ct. 2597, 147 L.Ed.2d 743 (2000) (“[R]equir[ing] an exception where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.”) (internal quotation marks omitted); id. (“[A] State may promote but not endanger a woman’s health when it regulates the methods of abortion.”); id. (“[A] State cannot subject women’s health to significant risks.”).
At issue in today’s case is a generally applicable licensing provision that contains a maternal-health requirement and that is being applied to a facility that performs the late-term abortion procedure addressed in Women’s Medical Professional Corporation and Carhart. Even if the *617implementation of a generally applicable law designed to protect maternal health could establish an “undue burden,” I agree with Judge Gibbons’ well-reasoned opinion that this requirement does not. I agree with the majority that the Women’s Medical Professional Corporation (WMPC) does not have a cognizable due process claim that the State impermissibly delegated its licensing authority to private third parties. And I agree that WMPC does not have a cognizable due process claim with respect to Director Baird’s discretionary decision to deny the facility a waiver. Because I additionally believe that the three years of process provided by the State to WMPC before denying this license application did not violate the predeprivation requirements of the Due Process Clause, I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s decision to the contrary.
To understand why the State did not violate WMPC’s rights to a predeprivation hearing, it helps to put the State’s handling of this case in context — to consider all of the process that the WMPC received before the licensing decision and all of the procedural options available to it after the licensing decision. On November 10, 1999, Dr. Baird informed WMPC and other abortion facilities that they needed to obtain an ambulatory-surgical-facility license if they wished to continue in operation. After receiving this notice, WMPC filed an action in state court contending that abortion clinics did not fall within the definition of an ambulatory surgery facility under state law and therefore did not have to satisfy the licensing requirement. In bringing this state-court action, WMPC sought — and received — a stay of the licensing requirement, permitting its facilities to continue performing abortions throughout the state-court litigation. In August 2002, an Ohio court of appeals concluded that abortion clinics must satisfy this licensing requirement. See Founder’s Women’s Health Ctr. v. Ohio State Dep’t of Health, Nos. 01AP-872, 01AP-873, 2002 WL 1933886, 2002 Ohio App. LEXIS 4345 (Ohio Ct.App. Aug 15, 2002).
In October 2002, WMPC applied for a license for its Dayton facility. In response, the State conducted two inspections, one to inform the clinic of any licensing shortfalls, the other to check that all necessary corrections had been made. In December 2002, shortly after Miami Valley Hospital rescinded the written transfer agreement it had previously signed with WMPC, the clinic applied to the State for a waiver of the transfer-agreement requirement, setting out the facility’s legal and factual arguments, including its submission that an anonymous group of OB/ GYN doctors with admitting privileges at area hospitals had orally agreed to serve as back-up physicians for the clinic.
On January 9, 2003, after reviewing WMPC’s license application, after conducting two inspections of the facility, after communicating at considerable length back and forth about the license requirement and after waiting until the end of the state-court litigation commenced in 1999 regarding the applicability of the license requirement to abortion providers, Dr. Baird issued a letter to Dr. Haskell “proposing] to issue an order denying” the license application. JA 328. The letter explained that the facility had failed to meet Ohio’s generally applicable written-transfer-agreement requirement for ambulatory surgical facilities and “notified” Dr. Haskell that he “may request a hearing ... regarding [the] proposal to deny the license to operate.” Id. “At any hearing,” it added, “you may appear in person or be represented by your attorney, you may present evidence, and you may examine witnesses appearing for and against you.” Id. It then added, in underscored language, that “[a] request for hearing must be made *618within thirty (30) days of the date of mailing of this notice.” Id. at 329. Under Ohio law, Dr. Baird’s proposed denial of the license would have become final after 30 days (if WMPC had opted not to appeal) or after the end of the hearing (if WMPC had appealed). See Ohio Rev. Code § 119.06-07; § 3702.30(e)(1). Once the administrative decision became final, Ohio law gave WMPC the right to appeal any adverse decision to the Ohio court of common pleas. See id. § 119.12.
On January 9, 2003, Dr. Baird also issued two related letters to Dr. Haskell and WMPC. In one, he denied WMPC’s request for a waiver from the written-transfer-agreement requirement “because I am not able to find that granting your waiver request would not jeopardize the health and safety of any patient as provided in OAC 3701-83-14(B).” JA 327. “It is my belief,” he reasoned, “that the tacit agreement made between the Women’s Medical Center Director and unnamed members of an area Obstetrics-Gynecology practice is not a sufficient protection for the health and safety of an ambulatory surgical facility patient who may face a serious medical complication or other emergency situation arising from a surgical procedure performed in an ambulatory surgical environment.” Id. In the other letter, Dr. Baird issued a cease-and-desist order preventing the facility from continuing to operate without a license.
Up to this point, the State had provided WMPC with a little more than three years of predeprivation process regarding the license requirement. Even then, WMPC still had a right to seek an administrative hearing on the “proposed” denial of its license application as well as state-court review of the agency’s decision. It still had a right to seek a stay of enforcement of the licensing requirement (and the cease-and-desist order). And it still had a right to file another waiver request at the end of the administrative and appeals process based on any information learned during that process or based on any developments in the interim (including the possibility that back-up doctors for WMPC would be willing to disclose their names to Dr. Baird).
Having received these opportunities to protect its property interest in its business, having chosen to pretermit the remaining procedural options available to it and having chosen instead to file this action in federal court, WMPC cannot tenably claim that the process provided by the State between the original notice to WMPC in November 1999 and the final proposed notice in January 2003 failed to comply with due process. In reaching a contrary conclusion, the majority focuses on the fact that Dr. Baird issued a cease- and-desist order on the same day that he issued his “proposed” denial of the licensing application.
In one sense, I share the majority’s bewilderment that the director simultaneously “proposed” the denial of a license and issued a cease-and-desist order that (from the perspective of the recipient) seemed to be anything but a “proposal.” Why he did not propose the denial of a license and communicate that a cease-and-desist order would issue once his proposed decision became final — either at the end of 30 days (if no hearing was requested) or at the end of any hearing (if a hearing was requested) — is a mystery that neither the record nor state law appears to resolve. But this bureaucratic curiosity does not transform this sequence of events into a cognizable due process claim for three reasons.
One, as WMPC well knew, it had an opportunity to seek a stay of the cease- and-desist order from the director during further administrative proceedings and, *619failing that, it had an opportunity to seek a stay of the order in state court. See Franklin County Sheriff's Dept. v. State Employment Relations Bd., 63 Ohio St.3d 498, 589 N.E.2d 24, 33 (1992); Franklin County Sheriffs Dep’t v. State, No. 89AP792, 1990 WL 124637, 1990 Ohio App. LEXIS 3814 (Ohio Ct.App. Aug. 28, 1990); Commercial Motor Freight, Inc. v. Pub. Utils. Com’n, 46 Ohio St.2d 195, 348 N.E.2d 132 (1976); see also State v. Nihiser, No. 03CA21, 2004 WL 1737862, at*4, 2004 Ohio App. LEXIS 3709, at *10-11 (Ohio Ct.App. Aug. 2, 2004); Boland v. Hammond, 144 Ohio App.3d 89, 759 N.E.2d 789 (Ohio App. 4 Dist.2001); OMo Univ. v. Ohio Civ. Rights Comm’n, No. 96CA1721, 1996 WL 577140, 1996 Ohio App. LEXIS 4532 (Ohio Ct.App. Oct. 4, 1996); City of Ironton v. Bd. of Tr. of the Lawrence County Gen. Hosp., No. 1772, 1986 WL 14462, 1986 Ohio App. LEXIS 9944 (Ohio Ct.App. Dec. 18, 1986). I say that WMPC “well knew” that it had this opportunity because it had previously sought — and obtained — a stay of the licensing requirement after it was first informed by Dr. Baird in November 1999 that it needed a license. The record does not contain any indication that the State would have opposed a stay of the cease- and-desist order had WMPC sought one in connection with a request for an administrative hearing and appeal.
Two, before the State issued the cease- and-desist order, it had provided over three years of process, which included notice of the licensing requirements, state-court litigation over the applicability of the licensing requirement to WMPC, notice of failings in WMPC’s license application, the opportunity to correct those failings, two visits by the State to WMPC’s Dayton facility, numerous opportunities for WMPC to express its position on the licensing requirement and for the State to respond, and a waiver application designed to meet the one requirement of the license that WMPC had been unable to satisfy. These procedures — and above all these numerous opportunities for WMPC to present its position on the license application— assuredly satisfy the predeprivation requirements of due process. As this requirement demands only “some pretermin-ation opportunity to respond, coupled with post-termination administrative procedures,” Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 547-48, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985), the process that the State provided before issuing the cease- and-desist order assuredly was all the process that was due. See also Leary v. Daeschner, 228 F.3d 729, 741 (6th Cir.2000) (interpreting the pretermination requirement as “an opportunity to be heard”). Indeed, the opportunity to present one’s case in writing — which happened here as a matter of opportunity and fact— by itself would have sufficed to meet the predeprivation-hearing requirement. See Loudermill, 470 U.S. at 546, 105 S.Ct. 1487; Leary, 228 F.3d at 743; see also Am. Towers, Inc. v. Williams, 50 Fed.Appx. 448, 450, No. 01-7141, 2002 U.S.App. LEXIS 22845, at *4 (D.C.Cir.2002); Raditch v. United States, 929 F.2d 478, 480 (9th Cir.1991). And the cases cited by the majority that involve government action not requiring a predeprivation hearing, see Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 110 S.Ct. 975, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990), and Hahn v. Star Bank, 190 F.3d 708 (6th Cir.1999), plainly do not mandate a prede-privation hearing here. To my knowledge, no case has ever held that such a lengthy set of opportunities to be heard, as WMPC had in this instance, violates the predepri-vation requirements of due process.
Nor has WMPC identified a single issue of material fact that remains to be resolved or could be resolved through further administrative hearings. All of which *620prompts the question of what this judicially ordered predeprivation hearing will accomplish. From where I sit, I cannot understand what WMPC still wishes to ascertain or advocate in an administrative hearing. Indeed, the stay of the cease- and-desist order in federal court has given WMPC an additional two years to seek an administrative hearing or file a state-court appeal regarding the license application, but it still has not chosen to seek one.
That leads to the third defect in this constitutional claim. Due process does not mandate a hearing (whether predeprivation or postdeprivation) when the claimant does not raise an issue of material fact that a hearing could resolve. See Dixon v. Love, 431 U.S. 105, 97 S.Ct. 1723, 52 L.Ed.2d 172 (1977); Elsenety v. Health Care Fin. Admin., 85 Fed.Appx. 405, 409 (6th Cir.2003); Pennsylvania v. Riley, 84 F.3d 125, 130 (3d Cir.1996); Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Auth. v. EPA 35 F.3d 600, 606 (1st Cir.1994); Moreau v. FERC, 982 F.2d 556 (D.C.Cir.1993); Altenheim German Home v. Turnock, 902 F.2d 582, 585 (7th Cir.1990). Where the law constrains a government decision and where the parties agree that a legal requirement has not been met, an individual does not have the right to an appearance before the decisionmaker solely for the sake of making an appearance before the decisionmaker. See Dixon, 431 U.S. at 113-14, 97 S.Ct. 1723 (“Since appellee does not dispute the factual basis for the Secretary’s decision, he is really asserting the right to appear in person only to argue that the Secretary should show leniency and depart from his own regulations. Such an appearance might make the licensee feel that he has received more personal attention, but it would not serve to protect any substantive rights. We conclude that requiring additional procedures would be unlikely to have significant value.”).
Dixon, to use one example, held that due process did not entitle drivers to a hearing before the revocation of their licenses if they objectively did not meet one of the legal requirements for obtaining a license. Id. What is true for the license required in Dixon, it seems to me, is equally true of the license required here. Ohio has established licensing requirements for operating an ambulatory surgical facility, and both sides agree that the Dayton facility will not receive a license unless it satisfies one of two legal requirements — either obtains a written transfer agreement or identifies back-up doctors with privileges at area hospitals. WMPC may not invoke the Due Process Clause to obtain further hearings solely to “argue that the decisionmaker should be lenient and depart from legal requirements.” Loudermill, 470 U.S. at 543 n. 8, 105 S.Ct. 1487. Yet such leniency is all that WMPC seeks here. No one disputes that Dr. Baird has consistently required back-up doctors to be identified in order for WMPC (and other regulated facilities) to obtain a waiver. And it escapes me how a hearing could be held about whether anonymous back-up doctors will adequately protect the clinic’s patients in the event of a medical emergency — particularly when the waiver decision, all agree, remains discretionary. On this record, in short, WMPC has no more right to a hearing than a litigant against whom summary judgment was properly granted has a right to a jury trial. The majority having concluded otherwise, I respectfully dissent from that portion of its decision.