Amicus Briefs
Premier Healthcare Investments, L.L.C. v. UHS of Anchor, L.P.
CASE SUMMARY
NCLA filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Georgia in the case of Premier Healthcare Investments, L.L.C. v. UHS of Anchor, L.P. NCLA submitted a neutral brief in support of neither party that solely focuses on the constitutional arguments for rejecting judicial deference and reaffirming the judiciary’s fundamental role outlined in the Constitution to say what the law is. NCLA hoped that Georgia would join the Chevron revolt by state supreme courts elsewhere.
Under the Georgia Constitution and Code of Judicial Conduct, judges are required to exercise independent judgment and to refrain from bias when interpreting the law, but the doctrine of judicial deference commands Georgia judges to abandon their independence and give controlling weight to the agency’s opinion of what a statute means. Judicial deference also runs afoul of due process principles that forbid judges from showing bias for or against a litigant who appears before them when resolving disputes.
The Georgia Supreme Court did not reach the deference issue in this case. In footnote 5 of the opinion, the court said the following:
In some circumstances, an agency’s statutory interpretation may warrant deference by courts considering ambiguous statutes. See, e.g., Tibbles v. Teachers Ret. Sys. of Ga., 297 Ga. 557, 558-559 (775 SE2d 527) (2015). But the kind of ambiguity that may warrant deference is only that ambiguity that remains “after we have exhausted all tools of construction.” City of Guyton v. Barrow, 305 Ga. 799, 799, 802-804 (828 SE2d 366) (2019) (holding that Georgia courts may “defer to an agency’s interpretation” of its own regulation “only when we are unable to determine the meaning of the legal text at issue” and that the regulation at issue was not ambiguous, and therefore declining to reach the question of whether such deference should be reconsidered). As explained below, we conclude that the statute at issue here, which is determinative of the issue on appeal, is not ambiguous after we apply canons of statutory construction. Our case law thus does not support any deference to the Department’s interpretation of the relevant CON statutes, or to its interpretation of its own unambiguous regulations. And, like in City of Guyton, this case does not present the question of whether that case law should be reconsidered.
OUR TEAM
RELEVANT MATERIALS
NCLA FILINGS
PRESS RELEASES
NCLA Amicus Brief Urges Supreme Court of Georgia to Declare Judicial Deference Unconstitutional
April 28, 2020 | Read More