Court Opinion

ID: 9701409
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:18:56.797789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:03:41.807895
License: Public Domain

Krivosha, C.J., dissenting
I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s opinion in its holding that the Nebraska Administrative Procedure Act, being Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 84-901 to *80084-919 (Reissue 1976), does not apply to a prisoner’s appeal of disciplinary action taken by the Nebraska Penal Complex Appeal Board.
The majority suggests that while there is general language in the Administrative Procedure Act upon which an argument may be based that the act is applicable, the majority does not find the argument persuasive. I find that the argument is not only persuasive but the result required by the clear language of the act. The State conceded during oral argument before this court that the Department of Correctional Services was a state agency and that the rules promulgated by the Department of Correctional Services involved in this action had been filed with the Revisor of Regulations and Secretary of State, pursuant to Neb. Rev. Stat. § 84-902 (Reissue 1976).
Section 84-917(1) clearly and unequivocally provides: “Any person aggrieved by a final decision in a contested case, whether such decision is affirmative or negative in form, is entitled to judicial review under sections 84-917 to 84-919. Nothing in this section shall be deemed to prevent resort to other means of review, redress, or relief provided by law.” (Emphasis supplied.) And § 84-901(2) defines rule to mean: “[a]ny rule, regulation, or standard issued by an agency, including the amendment or repeal thereof whether with or without prior hearing and designed to implement, interpret, or make specific the law enforced or administered by it or governing its organization or procedure but not including regulations concerning the internal management of the agency not affecting private rights, private interests, or procedures available to the public, and not including permits, certificates of public convenience and necessity, franchises, rate orders, and rate tariffs, and any rules of interpretation thereof, and for the purpose of this act every rule which shall prescribe a penalty shall be presumed to have general applicability or to affect private rights and interests . . . .” (Emphasis supplied.)
*801It seems clear beyond question that the order of the appeal board which found Reed guilty of escape and ordered that he lose all previously acquired good time and spend 6 months in the Nebraska Penal Complex Adjustment Center is a penalty and does, indeed, affect private rights.
The provisions of Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 83-4,109 to 83-4,123 (Reissue 1976) do not in any manner affect the right of appeal. Those specific sections simply prescribe the procedures under which the hearings before the prison boards shall be conducted in the first instance. That is, in effect, no different than a host of other sections of our statutes prescribing procedures to be followed by various agencies in the first instance. The internal review of disciplinary action may very well, in the first instance, be pursuant to the provisions of §§ 83-4,109 to 83-4,123. One can very easily harmonize the provisions of §§ 83-4,109 to 83-4,123 and the provisions of §§ 84-901 to 84-919, the former applying to hearings before the agency and the latter applying to appeals before the court from the action of the agency. They are not in any manner inconsistent or contrary one to the other.
While it may very well be that no court has heretofore required that provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act be made available to prisoners, it seems clear to me that our Legislature has so provided and this court cannot take it away. If the right of a prisoner to appeal from the action of the disciplinary review board to the court pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act is to be denied, it must be done so by the Legislature in providing a specific exception to the Nebraska Administrative Procedure Act.
I would have held that the act applied; that the court had jurisdiction of the matter; and the inmate was entitled to a verbatim transcript of the proceedings before the prison disciplinary committee.
BRODKEY, J., joins in this dissent.