Today, we’re going to be talking about revocations in a little bit more detail. The question is: “Can I appeal a revocation decision by the North Carolina Professional License Board or State Agency?” The answer to that question is YES. So, let’s say you go through the whole process, you have your contested hearing in front of the State Agency or Licensing Board, and the decision ends up as a revocation of your professional license. It technically doesn’t stop there. You will have the automatic right to appeal that decision to Superior Court and file a Petition for Judicial Review, which is what that’s called.
Basically, what it is, is a Superior Court judge in either the county where the licensee resides or the county where the licensing entity is located, whether that’s Wake County or Orange County (although most of them are in Wake County). Sometimes you might get an outlier over Orange County or Durham or something like that. So, you’ll have the option of doing it in your home county and Superior Court there or you could do it in the county where the board or agency is. The Superior Court judge in either one of those counties is going to hear all the evidence that was presented. That would kind of be the record, the record of the board hearing or the state agency hearing, or if it was heard by the Office of Administrative Hearings.
Then that record, basically the court record that was done at the administrative stage with the Board or State Agency, if there’s any new evidence that wasn’t available when you were presenting your evidence at the Board hearing or State Agency hearing or Office of Administrative Hearings, the Superior Court judge can take that into consideration and hear new evidence if it wasn’t readily available at the previous hearing. They don’t have to do that, though. They can do it. So, that’ll give you an opportunity at that point to present something that wasn’t available before. Otherwise, you’re basically re-litigating the same thing on the same facts that are in the record from the previous hearing in front of the Board or State Agency. It sounds a little bit confusing, but it’s really not that difficult. Basically, look at it this way: you get a decision from a Board or State Agency, and say that’s a revocation. You’ve got 30 days to file a Petition Judicial Review in Superior Court in the county where either you, the licensee, resides or where the state agency or licensing board has its office. It’s that simple.
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