Court Opinion

ID: 9538288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:34:18.93006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:43.148790
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
concurring.
Our cases establish that a party having standing may generally obtain judicial review of any administrative determination, at least for the limited purpose of ascertaining whether or not it is arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion. Moore v. State, 553 P.2d 8 (Alaska 1976); K & L Distributors, Inc. v. Murkowski, 486 P.2d 351 (Alaska 1971). This is true even in the face of a statute which declares that the administrative decision in question is not subject to judicial review. K & L Distributors, id. at 357-59. The presumption of reviewability which we have developed is mirrored in the decisions of many other courts, and is strongly supported by Professor Davis.1 Therefore I have no hesitation in concluding that appellant has a right to judicial review under the arbitrary, capricious, or abuse of discretion standard.
Of course, this standard is not a very strict one, and any school district which has decided not to renew a non-tenured teacher’s contract for valid reasons ought to be able to meet it easily. However, to use language which we quoted in K & L Distributors as an example, if a school district has used its non-retention power,
(a) to retaliate against the person because of his political views or
(b) to bear down on him for his religious views or his racial attitudes or
(c) to get him out of town so that the amorous interests of a Board member might be better served
then the action would violate the standard. 486 P.2d at 355.
Drown v. Portsmouth School District, 451 F.2d 1106 (1st Cir. 1971) contains an apt explanation of the meaning of the arbitrary *14or capricious standard in the context of a challenge to the non-retention of a nontenured teacher. As the court explains, a decision to non-retain may be arbitrary or capricious in three ways. (1) It may be based on reasons which are “unrelated to the educational process or to working relationships within the educational institution”; (2) it may be based on reasons which are too trivial to justify the decision; or (3) it may be based on reasons which are factually unsupported. 451 F.2d at 1108.
In this case it appears that the Board’s decision to non-retain was not arbitrary, since the decision was based on reasons which are related to appellant’s on-the-job performance, the reasons are not trivial, and they are factually supported. I therefore concur in the decision reached by the majority.

. See Davis, Administrative Law Treatise, Ch. 28 (1970 Supp.), and cases there cited. Davis states:
Judges often are not qualified to substitute judgment on [complex or specialized] subject matter but judges are generally qualified to determine the reasonableness of the administrative action. Judges should inquire whether the action was “without a rational explanation, inexplicably departed from established policies, or rested on an impermissible basis ... or ... on other ‘considerations that Congress could not have intended to make relevant.’ ”
Davis, id. at 994, quoting Wong Wing Hang v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 360 F.2d 715, 719 (2nd Cir. 1966).