Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, LLC v. State of Florida, Agency for Health Care Administration

As a Licensee facing revocation, the most severe punishment possible, the Licensee has a fundamental due process right to meaningful notice and opportunity to be heard. By legislation, the Agency has to consider causation, substantial causes, and mitigating evidence, and cannot cabin evidence within a strict-liability analysis. Against that legislation with its governing rules and regulations granting pre-hearing discovery, the Licensee was precluded from discovery and presenting evidence in key defenses showing the nursing home deaths were legally, proximately caused by the failures of others to properly plan, prepare, and manage a natural-hazards emergency, and to take responsive action despite those third-parties’ promises to do so. The Licensee was also precluded from presenting evidence of another key defense: that it followed the same standard of care that virtually every other nursing home in the state followed. Despite legislative mandate that a license not be revoked under a strictliability rationale and despite no notice of strict liability in the charging documents, the Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) and the Agency revoked Petitioner’s license without considering causation (deemed not relevant), and imposed strict liability on the basis that the decedents were the Licensee’s residents when the Hurricane barreled up Florida. The questions presented, therefore, are: 1. Does the refusal to consider causation, substantial causes, and mitigating evidence— central to this licensure revocation—violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution?