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What Is It?

An administrative petition is a formal request to a government agency asking that it take certain actions to address a problem. Filing an administrative petition is a way to get your issue into an official forum, create a vehicle for people to mobilize around, have a hook for media attention, present a compelling problem, concrete solutions, and agency responsibility—and also public support—for change.

You can use an administrative petition to:

• Get an agency to change its own policies and practices
• Get an agency to prohibit actions that are harming people in your community or require actions that will improve the situation.

Why Use It?

An administrative petition places your issue in an official forum. It begins a formal process for a public agency to examine the problem and consider taking remedial action.

The petitioning process is often quicker than litigation and less political than the legislative process. Since it does not require a lawyer or lobbyist, it can be less expensive.

Petitioning can lay the groundwork for future action. You can often strengthen your position with decision-makers in other forums—judges and elected officials—when you can demonstrate that you first tried to work through the agency itself to address a well-documented problem by presenting feasible solutions and showing that there was broad public support for change.

An administrative petition can enable decision-makers to overcome obstacles to change (for example, when an agency head recognizes that a problem exists but needs public pressure to adopt reforms that will be controversial within the agency).

When to Use It?

The problem you are trying to solve can be addressed by action from a public agency.

Administrative petitions in action

Using public assets for public health Consumers Union and a coalition of health-care and seniors groups petitioned the California Department of Corporations to ensure that the public assets of a nonprofit health maintenance organization would be dedicated to health-care charities when it converted to a for-profit company. The petition led the Department of Corporations to regulate future health-care company conversions and to establish two health foundations with assets of over $4 billion. Recalling unsafe vehicles Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall Peugeot 405 cars with defective automatic restraint systems. The petition was granted, a recall notice went out to owners, and Peugeot was required to fix the defect. Protecting patients in managed care Maine Consumers for Affordable Health Care petitioned the Maine Bureau of Medical Services to establish standards of access to care, complaint and grievance procedures, enrollment and disenrollment rights, and eligibility. The petition resulted in improved health-care rights.

These stories are excerpted from: Getting Action: How to Petition Government and Get Results, by Harry Snyder, Carl Oshiro, and Ruth Holton, Consumers Union (2002).

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