Adrelynn Shattell Thomas v. Department of Revenue and Douglas Bernard Wyche

SIXTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                         STATE OF FLORIDA
                         _____________________________

                              Case No. 6D2026-0473
                          Lower Tribunal No. 2002063233
                         _____________________________

                           ADRELYNN SHATTELL THOMAS,

                                     Appellant,

                                         v.

            DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE and DOUGLAS BERNARD WYCHE,

                                   Appellees.
                         _____________________________

                      Appeal from the Department of Revenue.

                                    May 1, 2026

PRATT, J.

      Before the Court is Appellee Department of Revenue’s motion to dismiss

appeal, docketed March 17, 2026. In support of the motion, Appellee cites to the

First District’s decision in White v. Department of Revenue, 390 So. 3d 744 (Fla. 1st

DCA 2024). We fully agree with the reasoning of White. We write to explain why.

For the reasons explained below, we grant the Department’s motion and dismiss this

appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

      Appellant Adrelynn Shattell Thomas’s notice of appeal, received by this Court

on February 23, 2026, seeks to appeal the final administrative paternity and support
order entered by an administrative law judge of the Division of Administrative

Hearings on February 10, 2026, and subsequently rendered by the Department.

However, Appellant is an obligee parent—not an obligor parent. This presents an

insurmountable jurisdictional hurdle for Appellant.

      In White, the First District held that section 409.2563, Florida Statutes, “gives

only the obligor [parent, or the Department following a hearing before an

administrative law judge of the Division of Administrative Hearings,] . . . the right

to seek direct judicial review of [an administrative] support order [or a final order

denying an administrative support order] in [a district court of appeal].” Id. at 745

(citing § 409.2563(10)(a), Fla. Stat.; § 120.68(1)(a), Fla. Stat.) (emphasis omitted).1

White got it right. Indeed, section 409.2563 is part of a specialized statutory scheme


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        The Department’s right to seek judicial review is slightly narrower than the
obligor parent’s right to seek judicial review. Section 409.2563(10)(a) grants the
obligor parent “the right to seek judicial review of an administrative support order
or a final order denying an administrative support order in accordance with
s[ection] 120.68” irrespective of whether the order was entered by the Department
or by an administrative law judge of the Division of Administrative Hearings. In
contrast, section 409.2563(10)(a) only gives the Department “the right to seek
judicial review, in accordance with s[ection] 120.68, of an administrative support
order or a final order denying an administrative support order entered by an
administrative law judge of the Division of Administrative Hearings.” See also §
120.80(14)(c), Fla. Stat. (“The Department of Revenue has the right to seek judicial
review under s[ection] 120.68 of a final order entered by an administrative law
judge.”). However, the same time period for seeking judicial review applies to both
the Department and the obligor parent. See generally § 120.68(2)(a), Fla. Stat. (“All
proceedings [for judicial review] shall be instituted by filing a notice of appeal or
petition for review in accordance with the Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure
within 30 days after the rendition of the order being appealed.”).
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that governs the administrative establishment of child support obligations. See

generally, e.g., § 409.2563, Fla. Stat.; § 120.80(14)(c), Fla. Stat. Relevant here, the

plain text of section 409.2563(10)(a) only provides the obligor parent and the

Department—but not the obligee parent—with the right to seek judicial review of

an administrative support order or final order denying an administrative support

order. See § 409.2563(10)(a), Fla. Stat. (“The obligor has the right to seek judicial

review of an administrative support order or a final order denying an administrative

support order in accordance with s[ection] 120.68. The department has the right to

seek judicial review, in accordance with s[ection] 120.68, of an administrative

support order or a final order denying an administrative support order entered by an

administrative law judge of the Division of Administrative Hearings.” (emphasis

added)). Conspicuously absent from section 409.2563 is any language granting the

same right to seek judicial review to the obligee parent. See generally § 409.2563,

Fla. Stat. Reading section 409.2563 in pari materia with section 120.80(14)(c),

Florida Statutes, lends further support to the conclusion that an obligee parent does

not have the right to seek judicial review in this context. See § 120.80(14)(c), Fla.

Stat. (“In . . . proceedings for the establishment of administrative support orders

pursuant to s[ection] 409.2563, final orders in cases referred by the Department of

Revenue to the Division of Administrative Hearings shall be entered by the

division’s administrative law judge and transmitted to the Department of Revenue

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for filing and rendering. The Department of Revenue has the right to seek judicial

review under s[ection] 120.68 of a final order entered by an administrative law

judge.” (emphasis added)).

      We note that section 120.68 could perhaps be read in isolation in the limited

context of chapter 120 on some set of facts to authorize an obligee parent the right

to seek judicial review of an administrative support order or final order denying an

administrative support order. See generally, e.g., § 120.68(1)(a), Fla. Stat. (generally

providing that “[a] party who is adversely affected by final agency action is entitled

to judicial review”); § 120.52(13), Fla. Stat. (containing a number of statutory

definitions applicable to chapter 120, including the definition of the term “party”).

However, that’s not how section 120.68 operates in light of the language of section

409.2563, as we do not read statutes in isolation, nor do we read them to render

related statutes ineffectual or superfluous unless the statutory text requires us to do

so. See generally, e.g., Conage v. United States, 346 So. 3d 594, 598 (Fla. 2022)

(“Viewed properly as rules of thumb or guides to interpretation, rather than as

inflexible rules, the traditional canons of statutory interpretation can aid the

interpretive process from beginning to end (recognizing that some canons, like the

rule of lenity, by their own terms come into play only after other interpretive tools

have been exhausted).”); Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The

Interpretation of Legal Texts 63, 174, 252 (2012) (discussing a number of

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interpretive principles, including the presumption against ineffectiveness, the

surplusage canon, and the related-statutes canon). We instead hew to the

“supremacy-of-text principle” when interpreting statutes—namely, the principle that

“[t]he words of a governing text are of paramount concern, and what they convey,

in their context, is what the text means.” Coates v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 365

So. 3d 353, 354 (Fla. 2023) (alteration in original) (citation omitted); see, e.g., Ham

v. Portfolio Recovery Assocs., LLC, 308 So. 3d 942, 947 (Fla. 2020) (explaining that

“the goal of interpretation is to arrive at a ‘fair reading’ of the text by ‘determining

the application of [the] text to given facts on the basis of how a reasonable reader,

fully competent in the language, would have understood the text at the time it was

issued” (quoting Scalia & Garner at 33) (alteration in original)). Applying the

aforementioned interpretive principles to section 409.2563 and section 120.68, we

hold that the specific granting in section 409.2563 of the right to seek judicial review

of an administrative support order or final order denying an administrative support

order to the obligor parent and the Department in accordance with section 120.68

necessarily forecloses the obligee parent from utilizing section 120.68 to seek

judicial review of the same. And here, that means that only Appellee and the

Department—not Appellant—could have sought judicial review of the support order

at issue in this appeal. But because Appellant—not Appellee or the Department—

filed this appeal, our jurisdiction has not been properly invoked pursuant to section

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409.2563’s limited application of section 120.68 to statutorily authorized appeals

filed by obligor parents and the Department. See § 409.2563(10)(a), Fla. Stat.; §

120.68(1)(a), Fla. Stat.; see also § 120.80(14)(c), Fla. Stat.

      Should Appellant seek “to challenge the amount of the support order” at issue

in this appeal, she “must go to circuit court.” White, 390 So. 3d at 745-46 (citing §

409.2563(10)(c), (2)(g), Fla. Stat.).

      Accordingly, consistent with White and our foregoing analysis, we dismiss

this appeal for lack of jurisdiction. See generally art. V, § 4(b)(2), Fla. Const.

(“District courts of appeal shall have the power of direct review of administrative

action, as prescribed by general law.” (emphasis added)).

      DISMISSED.

TRAVER, C.J., and STARGEL, J., concur.


Adrelynn Shattell Thomas, Winter Haven, pro se.

James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Sarah C. Prieto, Assistant
Attorney General, of the Office of the Attorney General Child Support Enforcement,
Fort Lauderdale, for Appellee, Department of Revenue.

No Appearance for Appellee, Douglas Bernard Wyche.


 NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING
          AND DISPOSITION THEREOF IF TIMELY FILED




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