Title
AN ACT CONCERNING ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS for the purpose of clarifying the requirement to exhaust administrative remedies before seeking judicial review and aligning the appellate rights for administrative citations with those that are available for civil citations.
Background
Current law specifies that administrative remedies must be exhausted prior to seeking judicial review in the circuit court, but there has been some ambiguity as to whether reconsideration is considered to be an administrative remedy. This proposal clarifies that a Respondent must file a timely request for reconsideration, as opposed to seeking immediate review in Circuit Court.
Current law also provides a direct right to appeal to the Appellate Court of Maryland if a party is aggrieved by a circuit court decision. This allows a Respondent two direct appeals from an administrative decision - one to the circuit court and one to the appellate. In contrast, a party who is aggrieved by a district court decision in a civil citation case only has a right to one direct appeal (to circuit court). Any further appeals beyond that point are discretionary. This proposal aligns the two processes so that, in each case, a party has one right to a direct appeal.