KANSAS CITY — The Missouri Court of Appeals Western District has upheld a decision awarding attorney’s fees and expenses to Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region (RHS) in its long-running dispute with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
The court’s ruling affirms earlier findings by both the Administrative Hearing Commission (AHC) and Cole Circuit Court that RHS was entitled to recover its legal costs under Missouri’s statute governing fees in administrative cases involving the state.
The case arose from a 2019 decision by the Department to deny RHS’s application to renew its abortion facility license.
At the time, RHS operated Missouri’s only abortion facility, located in St. Louis.
Licenses for abortion facilities are renewed annually, and the Department is authorized to deny renewal for “substantial failure” to comply with state health and safety regulations. RHS’s license expired each year on May 31.
In early 2019, the Department conducted inspections and internal complaint investigations at RHS. Two internal investigations found no wrongdoing.
Later that spring, a team of five surveyors carried out the facility’s annual inspection. The Department later issued a statement of deficiencies that included a concern involving a patient identified as “Patient 1.”
Although the Department did not formally cite RHS for this issue, it initiated another internal complaint investigation that focused on the facility’s physicians.
The Department requested personal phone numbers for several doctors and insisted that interviews occur in a specific order.
When some doctors offered to be interviewed, the Department refused because the order was not what it demanded.
Other physicians declined interviews on the advice of counsel. RHS submitted multiple plans of correction to address the Department’s stated deficiencies, but the Department rejected several and maintained its demand for physician interviews.
On May 28, 2019, just days before its license was set to expire, RHS filed a lawsuit in circuit court seeking to maintain its license. A temporary restraining order was granted to prevent the license from lapsing.
Two weeks later, the Department issued a letter identifying “at least 30 deficient practices,” describing several as “the most serious deficiencies.”
On June 21, 2019, the Department formally denied the renewal application, even though RHS had submitted additional corrections.
RHS appealed the decision to the AHC, which held a four-day hearing in October 2019 featuring extensive testimony and expert evidence.
RHS then sought attorney’s fees and expenses under section 536.087 of Missouri law, which allows a prevailing party in an agency proceeding to recover reasonable costs unless the state’s position was substantially justified or special circumstances would make such an award unjust.
The Department objected, arguing that RHS did not qualify as a “party” under the statute, had not personally incurred the expenses, that its own actions were substantially justified, and that awarding fees would be unfair.
The AHC rejected those arguments and awarded attorney’s fees, agent fees, and expert witness fees to RHS, though it initially declined to award certain ancillary costs such as travel and food expenses.
Both sides appealed to the Cole County Circuit Court. The trial court affirmed the AHC’s finding that RHS was entitled to recover fees but ruled that the commission had erred in excluding some expenses. The case was sent back to the AHC to determine whether the claimed expenses were reasonable. On remand, the AHC found that they were.
The Department again appealed, contending that RHS was not eligible for the award and that its position during the licensing dispute was substantially justified. The trial court upheld the AHC’s decision, and the Department brought the case before the Missouri Court of Appeals.
In its ruling, the appellate court rejected the Department’s arguments, agreeing that RHS met the statutory definition of a “party” and that the fees and expenses were properly incurred.
The court also concluded that the Department’s position had not been substantially justified and that no special circumstances made the award unjust.
The Department argued that granting fees would provide a “windfall” to a high-worth entity, reward supposed violations, and was inequitable because it could not appeal the underlying licensing decision once the issue became moot.
The court found no merit in those claims, noting that the Department had failed to establish any misconduct by RHS and that its procedural arguments were either undeveloped or not properly raised.
Writing for the court, Judge Edward R. Ardini Jr. affirmed the trial court’s judgment, which upheld the AHC’s decision to award attorney’s fees and expenses to RHS.
The appellate court also remanded the matter to the trial court with instructions to send it back to the AHC to determine the proper amount of fees and expenses RHS should receive for defending the appeal. All judges on the panel concurred.
Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District case number: WD87223
