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DOWDALL LAW OFFICES A PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION ATTO R N EYS AT LAW City Council of the City of Santa Ana City of Santa Ana September 16, 2021 Page 28 held that this legislative partisanship damned the Board. Government, including the city of Santa Ana, may not establish an adjudicatory tribunal like the rent board, so as to slant decision - making in favor of the tenants-- in favor of one class of litigants over another. In American Motors, the Legislature violated its obligation to assure evenhandedness in the adjudicatory process. In all, the Court sharply defined its concern in the institutional requirement that 4 of the 9 NMVB members be dealers. Said the Court: For any who might yet have difficulty comprehending the reason why the guaranteed minimum of four car dealers on the Board is both unfair and unconstitutional, the American Motors' brief offers one final telling argument. If the Legislature in 1973 had deleted the requirement that car dealers sit on the Board and had made it mandatory that four officers of car manufacturer corporations sit thereon, would the car dealers have found this acceptable? Of course not. American Motors Sales Corp. v. NMVB (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 983, 992. .. minority of the full Board is so infected ... That evil is not eliminated by stacking the deck four -ninths of the way rather than all the way. American Motors Sales Corp. v. NMVB (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 983, 991, 993. The seminal case dealing with fair hearing requirements is Tumey v. Ohio (1927) 273 U.S. 510 [71 L.Ed. 749, 47 S.Ct. 437, 50 A.L.R. 1243]. The American Motor Sales Court discusses it and Ward v. Village of Monroeville (1972) 409 U.S. 57 [34 L.Ed.2d 267, 93 S.Ct. 801, finding Gibson v. Berryhill (1973) 411 U.S. 564 [36 L.Ed.2d 488, 93 S.Ct. 1689], was more directly in point. The issue was whether the Alabama Board of Optometry was a fair tribunal to determine that it did or did not constitute "unprofessional conduct" for an optometrist to practice as a salaried employee of a corporation. The board was composed of optometrists and none salaried or employed by corporations. Only privately practicing optometrists were eligible to become members of the association. By Alabama law, only such members could sit on the board. "'Every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant, or which might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear and true between the state and the accused denies the latter due process of law. "...(273 U.S. at pp. 531-532 [71 L.Ed. at p. 758].)" American Motors Sales Corp. v. NMVB. (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 983, 988. The financial stake need not be as direct or positive as it appeared to be in Tumey. It has also come to be the prevailing view that'[m] ost of the law concerning disqualification because of interest applies with equal force to ... administrative adjudicators.' K. Davis, Administrative Law Text § 12.04, p. 250 (1972), and cases cited. (411 U.S. at pp. 578-579 [36 L.Ed.2d at pp. 499-500].) (American Motors Sales Corp. v. NMVB (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 983, 989).