Court Opinion

ID: 9572515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:42:22.530531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:33:19.657626
License: Public Domain

DONIELSON, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
A court’s role on judicial review of administrative proceedings is closely and strictly circumscribed. Public interest demands that judicial hands must be kept off administrative judgment calls. The district court’s role, and our own, is limited by Iowa Code section 17A.19 (1987).
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In order to succeed in challenging agency action the petitioner must demonstrate prejudice to substantial rights and the prejudice must arise from agency action which falls within one or more grounds enumerated in section 17A. 19(8). [] We must affirm the agency on its finding of facts unless the findings are unsupported by substantial evidence. []
Morrison v. Century Engineering, 434 N.W.2d 874, 876 (Iowa 1989) (citations omitted). “Substantial evidence,” as the majority points out, is evidence a reasonable mind would accept as adequate to reach a conclusion. DHS, and the district court, determined the evidence presented at appellant’s agency hearing was adequate to reach the hearing officer’s conclusion that the appellant received excessive ADC payments. The majority now concludes the finding was unsupported by substantial evidence.
I believe the majority, under the guise of weighing the substantiality of the evidence, has circumvented our very narrow role. In re-evaluating the reliability of evidence submitted and the credibility of the persons making those statements, the majority has substituted its judgment for that of the agency. This is in direct contradiction to its own statement, “we will uphold the findings of fact even though we might draw a different inference from those facts.”
The majority purports not to be restricting the admissibility of hearsay in administrative proceedings. I seriously question this proposition. Furthermore, the majority is restricting the agency’s ability to evaluate the weight to be given admitted evidence and is, consequently, exceeding this court’s appropriate role in the review process.
HABHAB, J., joins this dissent.