Amicus Briefs
Lent v. California Coastal Commission
CASE SUMMARY
The case was the first to challenge a CCC’s penalty order issued under the recently enacted section 30821.
The Commission sought deference to its interpretation that sections 30820 and 30821 permit consideration of deterrence in its administrative civil penalty determination. The Commission sought judicial deference to its interpretation of the law, which violates Article III and the Due Process Clauses of the California Constitution, as well as violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Judicial deference requires judges to abandon their duty of independent judgment and exhibit bias in favor of government litigants like the CCC, thereby exposing the citizens of California to administrative hearings with potential fines of up to $20.5 million for a single violation.
In 2016, the Commission levied a massive $4.185 million-dollar administrative civil penalty against the Lents, two Malibu homeowners falsely accused of blocking public access to the beach. The original fine recommended by Commission staff was $950,000, but during the public comment period of the hearing haggling over the penalty demand caused it to balloon in real-time, providing no notice to the Lents or meaningful opportunity for them to respond. Any such binding involuntary adjudication that occurs outside the courts also violates due process.
In this case, the CCC argued that seeking civil penalties under an alternate penalty provision, section 30820, through litigation was “arduous” and required “tremendous expenditure of resources.” The use of Section 30821 instead, according to the CCC, had led “to much quicker resolution of violations.” The speed and efficiency of section 30821’s administrative shortcut, achieved in part by evading litigation before an independent court, was likely to become a preferable enforcement method for the CCC—all done at the expense of due process of law and the right to be tried in front of an impartial and independent judge.