United States District Court, E.D. California
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
EDMUND
F. BRENNAN, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
Plaintiff
is a federal inmate proceeding without counsel in this action
brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Following screening, the
filing of an amended complaint, and a substitution, claims
against four defendants remain in the action: Morazzini,
McKinney, Zuniga, and McCauley. ECF No. 34. Morazzini,
McKinney, and McCauley move to dismiss the claims against
them. ECF Nos. 51, 52. For the reasons that follow,
Morazzini's motion should be granted. The motion filed by
McKinney and McCauley should be granted in part and denied in
part.
I.
Plaintiff's Allegations
Plaintiff
had a license to practice as a landscape architect in
California. ECF No. 30 at 14. During the process of renewing
the license, he informed the California Architects
Board's Landscape Architecture Technical Committee
(“the Board” or “the LATC”) that he
had recently pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of
distribution of images of children engaged in sexually
explicit conduct. Id. at 30. This notification was
required by California law. Id. Following the
Board's filing of an accusation against plaintiff and a
subsequent administrative hearing, the Board found that the
conviction called for the revocation of plaintiff's
license pursuant to California Business and Professions Code
§ 490(a) and California Code of Regulations, Title 16,
§ 2655.[1] Id. at 60-67. It also imposed a
bill of over $7, 000 in costs of enforcement on plaintiff,
under California Business and Professions Code § 125.3.
Id. At the time, defendant McCauley was the
Executive Officer of the LATC. Id. at 8. McKinney
was the LATC's “Enforcement Officer” or
“Enforcement Analyst.” Id. at 9.
Morazzini was the Director of California's Office of
Administrative Hearings (“OAH”), which performs
administrative hearings for state agencies. Id. at
10. McCauley has since left the agency and been replaced with
Zuniga. ECF No. 70.
Plaintiff
believes that his license should not have been revoked
because he disagrees with the Board's decision that his
crime had a sufficient nexus with his profession to justify
revocation. Id. at 13. He challenges that decision,
and a number of other aspects of the administrative
proceeding, as violative of due process. He also challenges
the statutes on which the decision rested. Plaintiff's
unnecessarily long and convoluted amended complaint (over 50
pages, exclusive of exhibits), alleges eleven
“counts”; i.e., claims for relief. These claims
fall into two categories: (1) claims that plaintiff's
procedural due process rights were violated in various ways
during the administrative process that ended in revocation of
his license and (2) claims that the statutes through which
his license was revoked are unconstitutionally void,
overbroad, or vague as applied to him.
a.
Procedural Due Process Claims
Plaintiff
claims that the following actions deprived him of his
procedural due process rights:
(1) McCauley (in his official capacity) and the Board
wrongfully used the requirement that plaintiff register as a
sex offender to determine that his crime was substantially
related to the practice of landscape architecture because
such use was not authorized by § 490(a) or § 2655
(Count 1);
(2) McKinney (in his individual capacity), McCauley (in his
official capacity), and the Board deprived plaintiff of
adequate notice of its intent to impose costs of enforcement
on him, failed to provide plaintiff with an adequate
opportunity to present evidence that he could not afford to
pay costs, and did not provide a reasoned determination that
plaintiff could pay (Counts 5, 6);
(3) McKinney (in his individual capacity), McCauley (in his
official capacity), and the Board failed to provide plaintiff
with notice of the time for seeking court review of the
Board's decision via administrative writ petition (Count
6);
(4) McKinney (in his individual capacity) wrongly determined
that plaintiff filed his motion for reconsideration too late,
and McCauley (in his individual and official capacities) did
not correct the error (Count 7);
(5) The Board failed to provide him with a revocation hearing
within statutory deadlines (Counts 8, 9);
(6) McCauley and McKinney (in their individual capacities)
and the Board imposed a renewal fee on plaintiff (prior to
deciding to revoke his license) without giving notice to
plaintiff and providing him with an opportunity to present
evidence of his inability to pay the renewal fee (Counts 8,
9);
(7) McKinney (in his individual capacity), McCauley (in his
official capacity), and/or the Board did not serve the
accusation on plaintiff properly, did not provide a reasoned
decision in denying his motion to dismiss the accusation for
improper service, and did not consider his motion for
reconsideration on the service issue because it was never
delivered to them (Counts 9, 10);
(8) The Board provided plaintiff with its exhibits less than
24 hours prior to the hearing (Count 9);
(9) Morazzini failed to respond to plaintiff's letter
informing him that plaintiff believed that his mail to the
Office of Administrative Hearings was being tampered with or
obstructed (Counts 10, 11).
b.
Void-for-Vagueness Claims
Plaintiff
challenges the following statutes as applied to him:
(1) §§ 490(a), 2655, and 2656(b)(1)[2] for failing to
define sexual conduct that is substantially related to the
practice of landscape architecture, for failing to define
“loitering, ” for failing to provide notice to
the plaintiff the that Board may consider sex offender
registration in making its revocation decision, and for
allowing the Board to consider the egregious nature of his
crime rather than his efforts at rehabilitation in
determining whether the crime was substantially related
(Counts 1, 2, 4);
(2) California Business and Professions Code §
5615[3]
for failing to define or otherwise give adequate notice of
places where a landscape architect typically works (Counts 1,
3);
(3) California Business and Professions Code § 125.3 for
providing no notice requirement and no process by which the
Board should make a reasoned determination that a licensee
has the ability to pay according to the standard set forth by
the California Supreme Court[4] (Count 5);
Plaintiff
seeks a number of declaratory orders and injunctions, as well
as money damages.
II.
Procedural Background
In a
detailed order screening plaintiff's original complaint,
the court made several rulings that remain relevant. First,
the court found that plaintiff's claims were barred by
the Eleventh Amendment, because plaintiff sought
retrospective relief against state officials in their
official capacities (e.g., a declaration that defendants'
past conduct was unconstitutional). ECF No. 17 at 13-14,
adopted by ECF No. 23.
Second,
the court found that plaintiff's allegations did not show
a denial of the process required by the U.S. Constitution,
because his complaint and its attachments showed that he had
ample notice of the hearing and an opportunity to defend
himself, plaintiff had not alleged sufficiently that the
incomplete accusation failed to provide adequate notice of
the charges against him, the Constitution does not require
that state officials provide notice of state-law remedies
(here, the time period for seeking state court review), and
the allegations did not show how any mailing irregularities
deprived plaintiff of a meaningful opportunity to respond to
the accusation. Id. at 19-21.
Lastly,
the court rejected plaintiff's as-applied vagueness
challenges to § 490(a), § 2655, and § 2656(b).
Id. at 28-33. The court analyzed the statutes and
found that plaintiff had not sufficiently alleged that they
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