In re: The Matter of T. M. and the Commissioner Jodi Harpstead

• Court: Court of Appeals of Minnesota
• Decided: March 18, 2024
• Docket: a230963
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA IN COURT OF APPEALS A23-0963

In re: The Matter of T. M. and the Commissioner Jodi Harpstead.

Filed March 18, 2024 Reversed and remanded Ross, Judge

Ramsey County District Court File No. 62-CV-22-5868

Benjamin L. Weiss, Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, Inc., St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant T.M.)

John J. Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Jean Y. Park, Assistant County Attorney, St. Paul, Minnesota (for respondent Ramsey County Health and Wellness)

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, R.J. Detrick, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota (for respondent Jodi Harpstead)

Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul, St. Paul, Minnesota (respondent)

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Larkin, Judge; and Bjorkman,

Judge.

NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION

ROSS, Judge

Project Home, a government-contracted facility that provides temporary residential

shelter to homeless individuals, removed T.M. after T.M.’s teenage daughter threatened to

cut another resident with a knife. T.M. unsuccessfully appealed her removal to the

department of human services, and a human-services judge affirmed. T.M. then appealed the department’s decision to the district court. T.M. obtained permanent housing while her

appeal to the district court was pending, and the district court therefore dismissed the appeal

as moot. T.M. appeals to this court, challenging the district court’s dismissal. Because

T.M.’s case meets an exception to the mootness doctrine by presenting a single issue that

is functionally justiciable and has statewide importance, we reverse the dismissal and

remand the case to the district court for further proceedings.

FACTS

T.M. and her two children, including her then-fifteen-year-old daughter, moved into

the Project Home residential shelter in St. Paul in April 2022. Project Home discharged

T.M.’s family from staying at the shelter, and the propriety of that discharge is the subject

of the dispute that underlies this appeal.

Project Home is a homeless shelter that receives federal funding through its

contractual relationship with Ramsey County. The shelter therefore is obligated to establish

rules pertaining to the justification for and process of removing a resident. Project Home

shelter staff advised T.M. of its rules when she entered the shelter. Relevant here, Project

Home’s rules prohibit residents from engaging in or threatening violence toward other

residents, and they establish that a resident who violates the anti-violence rules will be

discharged from the shelter within 24 hours. T.M.’s daughter violated the violence

prohibition in May 2022 by threatening to cut another girl with a knife. Project Home

notified T.M. that day that it was terminating her stay at the shelter.

The brevity of Project Home’s pre-termination notification period is central to this

dispute. The required period results from the layered, governmental oversight of Project

2 Home’s operations. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

(HUD) disburses funds to states through the Emergency Solutions Grant Program (ESG).

The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) is a recipient of these funds, and it

disperses the ESG funds to subrecipient local agencies in the state, including the City of

Saint Paul. Saint Paul in turn administers the funds under a joint-powers agreement with

Ramsey County. Ramsey County contracts with respondent Interfaith Action of Greater

Saint Paul, an entity that runs the Project Home shelter. Ramsey County’s contract with

Project Home provides that “[f]amilies will not be exited from emergency shelter until they

attain longer-term stable housing placement.” Entities receiving ESG funds are also subject

to various federal laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair

Housing Act (FHA), and federal regulations, including one that requires entities to

establish and submit to HUD written standards of shelter discharge.

The regulations limit a recipient’s or subrecipient’s decision to terminate assistance.

Relevant here, before discharging a program participant, “[t]he recipient or subrecipient

must exercise judgment and examine all extenuating circumstances in determining when

violations warrant termination so that a program participant’s assistance is terminated only

in the most severe cases.” 24 C.F.R. § 576.402(a) (2024). If a recipient or subrecipient

intends to discharge a participant for violating program requirements, it must do so through

a formal, established process. Id. Ramsey County’s formal process requires programs to

afford program participants the opportunity for administrative review of the decision to be

considered by “a person other than the person (or a subordinate of that person) who made

or approved the termination decision.”

3 T.M. sent a letter electronically to Project Home in June 2022 asking to be

readmitted into the shelter. She framed her request as one seeking a reasonable

accommodation under the ADA and the FHA. She said that her daughter had “a record of

mental impairments, diagnosed initially as generalized anxiety disorder and later as major

depression.” She asserted that her daughter’s threatening outburst arose from those

conditions and from the fact that T.M. had been unable to obtain mental-health services for

her daughter. T.M. asked to be readmitted into the shelter conditioned on her daughter

resuming treatment. The shelter and county denied her readmission request.

A human-services judge (HSJ) conducted an evidentiary hearing on the propriety of

T.M.’s removal from the shelter. The HSJ made findings of fact that supported the removal.

The HSJ found that, because T.M. had informed Project Home intake staff that no family

member had mental-health issues, staff did not inform her that she had a right to request an

ADA accommodation. He also found that T.M.’s daughter did not have mental-health

conditions. And he found that T.M.’s daughter threatened the other girl, violating the zero-

tolerance policy.

T.M. raised her challenge to the Minnesota Department of Human Services

Commissioner by moving for reconsideration. T.M. made four arguments premised on the

idea that, as a recipient of federal ESG funding, the shelter was subject to the rules for

shelter discharge found in a federal regulation:

If a program participant violates program requirements, the recipient or subrecipient may terminate the assistance in accordance with a formal process established by the recipient or subrecipient that recognizes the rights of individuals affected. The recipient or subrecipient must exercise judgment

4 and examine all extenuating circumstances in determining when violations warrant termination so that a program participant’s assistance is terminated only in the most severe cases.

24 C.F.R. § 576.402(a). Relying on that regulation, T.M. maintained first that the shelter

had a duty to inquire whether any “extenuating circumstances,” such as her daughter’s

mental-health disorders, played a role in the rule violation. T.M. argued second that the

county failed to follow its own policies for discharge because it failed to notify her of her

right to administrative review. T.M. argued third that she was not provided adequate notice

of the termination under a county policy. T.M. argued fourth that, as an ESG-fund recipient,

Project Home was subject to but violated the ADA and FHA by denying T.M.’s request

for an accommodation on behalf of her daughter. The commissioner denied T.M.’s motion

for reconsideration because the evidence did not show that her daughter had a disability

and because the DHS is “not the appropriate forum for the ADA enforcement remedies.”

T.M. then appealed the commissioner’s decision denying her motion to reconsider

to the district court, raising four questions:

1. Does 24 C.F.R. § 576.402(a), require a shelter that receives funding from the federal Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) to make an affirmative inquiry into any extenuating circumstances that may apply before terminating shelter?

2. Is Project Home required to provide an opportunity for an internal grievance, and notice of such opportunity, to residents it seeks to evict?

3. Is Project Home required to provide notice to residents of the right and process to request a disability accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and related statutes?

5 4. Does Respondent Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) have authority to refuse to decide whether an agency’s action violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and related statutes, when raised by an appellant as a basis for disputing that action?

The district court did not address the merits of T.M.’s arguments and dismissed the case as

moot after it received notice that T.M. and her family became permanently housed

elsewhere.

T.M. appeals.

DECISION

T.M. correctly concedes that her challenge to Project Home’s decision to terminate

her stay at the shelter is moot. Courts may ordinarily exercise jurisdiction only over

justiciable controversies, In re Guardianship of Tschumy, 853 N.W.2d 728, 733–34 (Minn.

2014), and a moot case is not justiciable, Snell v. Walz, 985 N.W.2d 277, 283 (Minn. 2023).

But exceptions exist. A case that is “technically moot” may yet be justiciable if “the harm

to the plaintiff is capable of repetition yet evading review,” or if the case is “functionally

justiciable” and presents an important matter of “statewide significance” requiring an

immediate decision. Snell, 985 N.W.2d at 284 (quotations omitted). Whether a mootness

exception applies is a question of law we review de novo. Id. at 283. For the following

reasons, we conclude that the important-matter-of-statewide-significance mootness

exception applies to the sole question of whether DHS improperly concluded that it lacked

authority to consider whether its actions violated the ADA or the federal regulations.

6 Capable of Repetition Yet Evading Review

T.M. unconvincingly argues that the capable-of-repetition exception applies. To

succeed on this theory, T.M. needed to establish that a reasonable expectation exists that

she would be subjected to the same allegedly improper action again and that “the duration

of the challenged action is too short to be fully litigated.” Id. at 287 (quotation omitted).

But T.M. failed to establish that it is reasonably expected that she will be housed at Project

Home again. Project Home provides shelter to “families with minor children” and T.M.’s

youngest child is about seventeen years old. For the allegedly improper termination to

occur again, T.M. would need to lose her present housing, seek and obtain housing

specifically at Project Home rather than other housing options, engage in an allegedly

terminable violation, and be removed from Project Home without a sufficient notice period,

all within about one year. The likelihood of the contingent events occurring seems highly

speculative, not reasonably expected. The circumstances do not meet the capable-of-

repetition exception to mootness.

Functionally Justiciable Issue of Statewide Importance

But one issue in the case is a functionally justiciable matter of statewide importance.

T.M. argues that three issues fit the exception: (1) whether federal regulations required

Project Home to ask about any extenuating circumstances before removing T.M.;

(2) whether Project Home was required to give residents notice of the right to request a

disability accommodation; and (3) whether DHS had the authority to decline to consider

T.M.’s argument that its actions violated federal guidelines and procedures. The first two

issues are necessarily local in nature, involving one shelter in one city. At oral argument,

7 counsel for T.M. acknowledged that the record does not indicate that other shelters

elsewhere receive ESG funding but fail to abide by regulatory requirements. Those issues

are clearly dissimilar to issues in cases having statewide significance. For example, the

supreme court recognized that the question of whether a breath analyzer for testing alcohol

concentration used by all state police agencies had been properly approved by the

commissioner of public safety was a matter of statewide importance. Jasper v. Comm’r of

Pub. Safety, 642 N.W.2d 435, 439 (Minn. 2002). It likewise recognized that the question

of whether a defendant accused of criminal sexual conduct can compel the testimony of an

alleged child victim at the defendant’s omnibus hearing was a matter of statewide

importance. State v. Rud, 359 N.W.2d 573, 576 (Minn. 1984). Only T.M.’s third stated

issue is similarly a matter of importance throughout the state, in that it affects DHS review

of removal challenges originating from any shelter in the department’s statewide

jurisdiction.

That statewide issue is also functionally justiciable. An issue is functionally

justiciable if the record and the parties’ arguments are so developed that a court could

effectively decide the case. See Dean v. City of Winona, 868 N.W.2d 1, 6 (Minn. 2015).

The question of whether the department had the authority to refuse to consider T.M.’s

challenge based on federal regulations is functionally justiciable because the record

contains the entire administrative file, the question presented is purely legal in nature as it

turns largely on statutory analysis, and the parties briefed the issue adequately. This

question meets an exception to the mootness doctrine.

8 District Court Standard of Review

T.M. contends relatedly that the district court erroneously concluded that its

standard of review is bound by deference to the department and that its scope of review

was limited to deciding only the issue the department decided, which was whether T.M.’s

daughter violated Project Home’s zero-tolerance policy. The district court has the authority

to consider whether the agency’s decision was made under an unlawful procedure or was

affected by an error of law. Minn. Stat. § 14.69(c), (d) (2022). When a party alleges that

the department made a procedural or legal error, courts are not bound by the department’s

decision, and they instead review the issue de novo. See In re Schmalz, 945 N.W.2d 46, 50

(Minn. 2020) (error of law); In re Kind Heart Daycare, Inc. v. Comm’r of Hum. Servs., 905

N.W.2d 1, 9 (Minn. 2017) (unlawful procedure). The appropriate standard of review for

the legal question left on appeal is therefore de novo.

We reverse the district court’s mootness decision for the reasons stated, and we

remand the case for further proceedings.

Reversed and remanded.