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District of Columbia Housing Authority v. District of Columbia Office of Human Rights8/25/2005
uman Rights, 597 A.2d 392, 399 (D.C. 1991), which had applied a three year statute of limitations to a complaining employee's analogous appeal of a "no probable cause" determination by the Office of Human Rights.
The trial court (Judge Braman) affirmed the DHR decision on the merits on March 11, 2002. The court found that DCHA's "ex post facto recourse to the purported (but unproven ) HUD mandate [requiring a technical degree] as a justification for rejecting Brummell was more than ample evidence impeaching the veracity of the reason originally proffered by it," which was sufficient for the Director of DHR to infer discriminatory intent. The court added that the record included significant additional evidence supporting the Director's determination: notably, DPAH's unexplained failure to certify as required that Brummell's selection would have resulted in "undue interruption to the agency's operation," and evidence that DPAH had not even interviewed Brummell for the Modernization Coordinator position before it rejected him.
II.
Brummell contends that the Superior Court should have dismissed DCHA's review petition at the outset for want of jurisdiction. When this case was before us last, however, we held that DCHA had to file its petition for review in the Superior Court, not this Court. D.C. Housing Auth., 733 A.2d at 342. We certainly assumed that the Superior Court would have jurisdiction to entertain DCHA's petition, and we see no merit in Brummell's contentions to the contrary. There is no question that the Superior Court would have had jurisdiction if Brummell had been the petitioner seeking review of an adverse decision of DHR instead of DCHA. It is a non sequitur for Brummell to argue that the Human Rights Act was not intended to protect government agencies. As the losing party before DHR, DCHA was entitled to judicial review simply because it was aggrieved by the administrative decision against it. "A strong presumption exists in favor of judicial reviewability which may be rebutted only by clear and convincing evidence of a contrary legislative intent." Martin v. District of Columbia Courts, 753 A.2d 987, 991 (D.C. 2000) (internal quotations and citation omitted); accord, Simpson, 597 A.2d at 398. No such evidence is present here; this is not a situation in which "the legislature committed the challenged action entirely to official discretion, or where the legislature precluded judicial review, explicitly or implicitly, by statute." Martin, 753 A.2d at 991.
Brummell likewise is mistaken in contending that DCHA's petition for review had to be filed within thirty days of the Director's final decision in order to be timely. In support of his position, Brummell cites both Agency Review Rule 1 of the Superior Court Civil Rules and Rule 15 (b) of this Court's Rules. Neither Rule applies to a petition to review a decision of the DHR under the Human Rights Act. Agency Review Rule 1 is inapplicable because this is not an appeal permitted by the Comprehensive Merit Personnel Act, and Rule 15 (b) does not apply in Superior Court. See Simpson, 597 A.2d at 399 & 399 n.10. In Simpson we held that, where no court rule or statute specifies the time for filing a petition for review of an agency determination, the time for filing is governed by D.C. Code § 12-301 (8), which provides a three-year limitations period for any action for which "a limitation is not otherwise specially prescribed." Simpson, 597 A.2d at 400.
Citing a proviso that the statute of limitations "does not apply . . . to actions brought by the District of Columbia government," D.C. Code § 12-301 (2001), DCHA argues that it was not subject to any filing deadline at all. The proviso in question
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