Public Health Law Map - Beta 5 - Medical and Public Health Law Site

as fresh produce or a drug with a short expiration date, the business must comply
with whatever restrictions the agency requests because the delay in fighting the
order will render the product worthless.
C. Administrative Searches Under the Constitution
Update
D. Judicial Review of Agency Actions
If every agency action were reviewable in court, the cost of the proceedings and the
delay involved would paralyze the administrative law system. The Congress and the
courts have developed a strategy of limited review of agency actions that is intended to
protect the rights of the regulated entities, while protecting the efficiency of agency
practice.
1. Exhaustion of Remedies
The first principle of agency law is that you have to exhaust the procedures provided
by the agency before you can go to court. This preserves an orderly review process,
allows the agency to resolve the problem, and, if the court eventually does review the
action, gives the agency a chance to develop a record that will aid the court in its
deliberations. In most cases, if a court action is filed before all the agency remedies
have been tried, the court will dismiss the case. Even if the court hears the case, it
may find that the regulated entity waived critical rights by not presenting evidence at
the agency level. The courts will consider an action against an agency without first
exhausting the agency remedies if the claim is that the agency is exceeding its legal
powers, if action raises only questions of law, rather than agency expertise, or if the
agency proceedings do not provide an adequate remedy.
2. Standard of Review
The courts use the term “standard of review” as a broad defined notion of how they
judge a case. There are many levels of review, and the selection of the level often
determines the result in a case. In cases where the courts are determining if a law is
constitutional, for example, there is a standard called strict scrutiny that is used if the
courts believe that the law poses a substantial threat to fundamental rights. In reality,
this is not really a standard of review because few laws are ever found constitutional
when looked at with strict scrutiny. If, instead, the court chooses the “rational
relationship” test, most laws pass as long as there is some relationship between the
goals of the law and the method it prescribes to achieve those goals. Thus the
determination of the proper standard of review usually predicts the results of that
review.
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