IN RE: Willy PORTOCARRERO (2024)

Order and judgment (one paper), Supreme Court, New York County (John J. Kelley, J.), entered April 24, 2023, which denied the petition to annul a determination of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), dated July 21, 2022, denying petitioner's request to amend his record in the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, and dismissed the proceeding brought pursuant to CPLR article 78, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

Amendments to the Social Services Law, effective January 1, 2022, create an “irrebuttable presumption in a fair hearing” that allegations in a report of child abuse or maltreatment have not been proven by a fair preponderance of the evidence where an article 10 Family Court proceeding based on the same allegations terminates in the subject's favor (Social Services Law § 422[8][b][ii]).  OCFS declined to apply the irrebuttable presumption at petitioner's fair hearing, held after the amendments’ effective date, because petitioner had commenced his administrative appeal before the effective date.

In Matter of Woodley v. Poole, 226 A.D.3d 461, 462, 209 N.Y.S.3d 352 [1st Dept. 2024] [internal quotation marks omitted]), a case presenting almost identical facts and issues, this Court held that “OCFS's determination not to apply the irrebuttable presumption at petitioner's fair hearing was not irrational or unreasonable.”  Clearly Matter of Woodley is controlling, and we find no basis to overrule it.  Petitioner relies on “arguments that this Court has already considered and rejected” and “raise[s] no compelling justification beyond his disagreement with [Matter of Woodley]’s holding, which is insufficient to overcome stare decisis considerations” (Perella Weinberg Partners LLC v. Kramer, 226 A.D.3d 523, 524, 208 N.Y.S.3d 597 [1st Dept. 2024]), particularly on matters of statutory interpretation (see Matter of State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Fitzgerald, 25 N.Y.3d 799, 819–820, 16 N.Y.S.3d 796, 38 N.E.3d 325 [2015]).