D & A Family Deli Inc. v. United States Department of Agriculture

Background

D & A Family Deli Inc. and Nasraldin Abdel Aziz Saramah brought an action under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 seeking judicial review of the Food and Nutrition Service’s decision to disqualify D & A from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for six months. The Food and Nutrition Service had charged the store with trafficking, meaning accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program electronic benefit payments for ineligible items, on three occasions. The opinion states that D & A is a retail grocery store and that Saramah is its sole shareholder.

The Food and Nutrition Service issued a determination letter dated December 2, 2022. The letter stated that the decision would become final unless the plaintiffs requested agency review by midnight on the tenth calendar day after receiving it. The complaint alleged that the government did not deliver the letter to the plaintiffs’ counsel until February 17, 2023. The plaintiffs filed this case on March 15, 2023.

Although the complaint named the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Nutrition Service, the court stated that the United States was the proper defendant. It dismissed the action against those agencies and substituted the United States as the defendant.

Government’s motions

The government moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), which concerns the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and Rule 12(b)(6), which concerns whether the complaint states a legally sufficient claim. The government argued that the plaintiffs filed outside the thirty-day period for seeking judicial review and failed to complete the required agency-review process.

Subject-matter jurisdiction

The court denied the Rule 12(b)(1) motion. It held that the thirty-day filing deadline in 7 U.S.C. § 2023(a)(13) was a nonjurisdictional claim-processing rule rather than a limit on the court’s authority to hear the case. The court reasoned that the statute did not clearly state that the deadline restricted jurisdiction.

The court reached the same conclusion about the exhaustion requirement in 7 U.S.C. § 2023(a)(4). “Exhaustion” means completing the required administrative review before seeking relief in court. The court held that the statute did not clearly make exhaustion jurisdictional. The court therefore denied the government’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

Failure to state a claim

The court then considered the same timeliness and exhaustion arguments under Rule 12(b)(6). It held that the complaint itself showed that the plaintiffs did not request agency review within the required ten-day period after receiving the determination letter. The court also held that the letter clearly explained the review deadline and that the plaintiffs had not pleaded circumstances supporting equitable tolling, which can extend a deadline in certain circumstances.

The court therefore granted the government’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. It directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion at ECF No. 12 and close the case. The order did not decide whether the alleged Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program violations actually occurred; it resolved the case based on the plaintiffs’ failure to complete the required agency review.