Sims v. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
California Court of Appeal
157 Cal. Rptr. 3d 409 (2013)
After an earlier ruling found CDCR (defendant) had failed to properly promulgate its lethal-injection procedures, the agency restarted rulemaking, receiving nearly 30,000 public comments and holding a six-hour public hearing, but Sims (plaintiff) challenged the resulting regulations, showing CDCR failed to explain its rejection of proposed alternatives, delayed making the full rulemaking file public for six weeks after the notice, never summarized or responded to two dozen written comments, and included irrelevant material in the file; the trial court found substantial noncompliance with the APA and invalidated the regulations.
Whether an agency's noncompliance with the Administrative Procedure Act's basic minimum procedural requirements compromises the Act's objective of meaningful public participation in rulemaking.