Does the refusal to consider causation, substantial causes, and mitigating evidence—central to this licensure revocation—violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED As a Licensee facing revocation, the most severe punishment possible, the Licensee has a fundamental due process right to meaningful notice and opportunity to be heard. By legislation, the Agency has to consider causation, substantial causes, and mitigating evidence, and cannot cabin evidence within a strict-liability analysis. Against that legislation with its governing rules and regulations granting pre-hearing discovery, the Licensee was precluded from discovery and presenting evidence in key defenses showing the nursing home deaths were legally, proximately caused by the failures of others to properly plan, prepare, and manage a natural-hazards emergency, and to take responsive action despite those third-parties’ promises to do so. The Licensee was also precluded from presenting evidence of another key defense: that it followed the same standard of care that virtually every other nursing home in the state followed. Despite legislative mandate that a license not be revoked under a strictliability rationale and despite no notice of strict liability in the charging documents, the Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) and the Agency revoked Petitioner’s license without considering causation (deemed not relevant), and imposed strict liability on the basis that the decedents were the Licensee’s residents when the Hurricane barreled up Florida. The questions presented, therefore, are: 1. Does the refusal to consider causation, substantial causes, and mitigating evidence— central to this licensure revocation—violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution? li QUESTIONS PRESENTED—Continued 2. Does the imposition of strict liability without notice of this standard to the Licensee violate the Due Process Clause? 8. Does the denial of discovery into causation and mitigating circumstances preclude the Licensee’s “opportunity to be heard” and violate the Due Process Clause? ili STATEMENT OF RELATED CASES Agency for Health Care Administration v. Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, LLC, State of Florida, Division of Administrative Hearings (“DOAH”), DOAH Case No. 17-5769, Recommended Order entered November 30, 2018. State of Florida, Agency for Health Care Administration v. Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, LLC, State of Florida, Agency for Health Care Administration (“AHCA”), AHCA Case No. 2017011570, AHCA Rendition No. AHCA-19-0038, Final Order adopting Recommended Order and revoking Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, LLC’s (“RCHH”) license entered January 4, 2019. Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, LLC v. State of Florida, Agency for Health Care Administration, Fourth District Court of Appeal, for the State of Florida, Case No. 4D19-293, Opinion affirming per curiam the Agency’s Final Order, was entered on February 13, 2020, and rendered final by Order denying Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, LLC’s motion for rehearing, rehearing en banc, clarification, certification as a question of great importance on which to seek review in the Supreme Court of Florida under certification jurisdiction, and request for written opinion on which to seek review in the Supreme Court of Florida under conflict jurisdiction, on April 2, 2020.