OAH Frequently Asked Questions
Main_Content
This page contains decisions issued by the Office of Administrative Hearings.
The decisions are to be used for information and education. Administrative Law Judges are not required to reach the same conclusion in similar cases or future cases.
Decisions are organized by the related agency, unit, and case type that applies to the case.
The Office of Administrative Hearings conducts hearings on behalf of many state agencies. Agencies are broken down into different units. OAH hears different types of cases for each of those units. Each decision in this portal is identified by agency, unit, and case type.
To see how to use a case number to locate similar decisions, please see "How do I find decisions in cases like mine?"
You can search for
decisions in several ways:
Free Text Search
You can enter search terms into the search bar just like any online search engine. Your search will return a maximum of 50 decisions.
Filtering
Use the drop down menus
and select the decisions by agency, then by unit, and then, if you choose, by case type. Once you have made your selections from the drop down menus, you must press the search button to complete your search.
If you select an agency, the corresponding units
and case types for that agency will appear in the other drop down menus. You can filter by agency only; by agency and unit; or by agency, unit, and case type.
Please note that if the unit for a case is a county, it has been replaced in
the drop down menus with XXXX.
By date
You can also select a date or range of dates to get all
of the decisions from a specific time. To search by a specific date, enter it in the Start Date box on the search page. To search by a range of dates, enter dates into both the Start Date and End Date boxes on the search page. You should enter dates in MM/DD/YYYY format.
You can use your case number to locate other decisions of the same type from the same agency.
Your case number is on your hearing notice. It is a series of letters and numbers separated by dashes. The first three sections of the case number will tell you the agency, unit, and case type that correspond to your case.
Use the agency, unit, and case type information to filter cases on the search page with drop down menus.
Here is an example: If your case dealt with an intercept of your tax refund because of money owed to the State, your case number would look like this: DBM-CCU-01-17-12345. In this sample case number, the first section represents the agency (the Department of Budget and Management); the second section represents the unit (the Central Collection Unit); and the third section represents the case type (01 for the tax intercept program). To find similar cases, go to the drop down menus on the search page and first select DBM. Next, go to the drop down menu for units and select CCU. Finally, use the third drop down menu to narrow the case type to 01. Then press search. That will provide you with all other cases in the portal that also dealt with tax refund intercepts for the Central Collection Unit.
Please note that where the unit for a case is a particular county, it has been replaced in the drop down menus by XXXX. So, if the second set of letters in your case number is an abbreviation of a county, you should select XXXX from the list of units in order to find similar cases.
DHCD Department
of Housing and Community Development
DLLR Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation
DNR Department
of Natural Resources
DPSC Department
of Public Safety & Correctional Services
MDE Maryland
Department of the Environment
MDH Maryland
Department of Health
MHBE Maryland
Health Benefit Exchange
MIA Maryland
Insurance Administration
MSDE Maryland
State Department of Education
Decisions that were issued on or after September 1, 2017 are included.
This website
includes:
- Final Decisions;
- Proposed Decisions,
once the agency has issued its final decision; and
- Rulings on motions,
only if the ruling concludes the case.
Some agencies delegate the authority to OAH to issue a
final decision in the cases it hears.
Other agencies ask OAH to issue a proposed decision, which can then be
reviewed by the agency before it becomes final.
Parts
of some decisions are covered up to protect private information, the identity
of the appellant, and potential individual privacy concerns. In some
cases, confidentiality laws require removing identifying information before
publication. Examples of confidential information include names,
addresses, and account numbers in certain cases.
Your case is online
because most of the decisions issued by the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH)
are public documents.
The work of
government agencies is generally open to the public. In Maryland, the Public Information Act
requires that government agencies provide access to government documents to
members of the public. OAH and the agencies that delegate decision making
authority to OAH are government agencies, and their work is public record.
There is an
exception to the open access requirement for certain personal information
considered confidential in some cases.
If the law requires personal information to be kept confidential, it is
removed from the decision before publishing.
Because the law also requires open access to
decisions, OAH generally will not take down individual decisions that are published in
the portal. If you are concerned that
there is confidential information in your decision that is published on the
portal, please contact DLDecisions_OAH@maryland.gov.
There could be
several reasons why your case is not online.
Not all OAH
decisions are published. Older decisions
are not available online, and decisions issued for certain agencies will not be
published. To see a list of agencies
that are included for publication, see "What agencies' decisions are included?" in these FAQs.
Some decisions are
not published because the law or other privacy concerns require them to be kept confidential.
If you are interested in getting a copy of decision
that is not on our website, you may contact DLDecisions_OAH@maryland.gov.
