holding that jurisdiction exists under DCA-PA to hear petition for review of denial of license application on grounds similar to those asserted here
How later courts described this case
- holding that jurisdiction exists under DCA-PA to hear petition for review of denial of license application on grounds similar to those asserted here
- where the court, interpreting a nearly identical definition of "contested case" in the District of Columbia Administrative Procedure Act, found that such definition was intended to be "synonymous with that of `adjudication' in the Federal Administrative Procedure Act"
- on direct appeal from Hackers’ License Appeal Board, court of appeals decided constitutionality of regulation disqualifying felon from obtaining hacker’s license
- assumes for sake of argument that “the administrative agency may be without authority to invalidate the statutory or regulatory scheme under which it operates”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
HARRIS, Associate Judge;
I concur in the result and in the reasoning expressed in the majority opinion, with but one exception. I respectfully disagree with the majority’s belief that the provisions of the District of Columbia Administrative Procedure Act (DCAPA) establish a basic dichotomy between adjudicatory proceedings and rulemaking proceedings, and that such a dichotomy provides the basis for determining whether a particular administrative proceeding is a contested case — and hence subject to judicial review.
I recognize that such a characterization was adopted by a majority of the court in Chevy Chase Citizens Association v. Council, D.C.App., 327 A.2d 310 (1974) (en banc), and that such a position is now binding upon us. Nevertheless, for the reasons set forth in my dissent in Chevy Chase, supra, I *428 continue to find fault with such an analysis of the provisions of the DCAPA. See 327 A.2d at 320-21 . I am still of the opinion that the dichotomy the Act creates is between contested cases and noncontested cases.
While I thus express my disagreement with a small portion of the language utilized by the majority, that portion of the opinion is not central to our disposition of this ease, and I do not wish to belabor the point. Accordingly, I concur, and express this limited area of disagreement in a cursory fashion.