## Facts

- Dianne Eno was laid off from New England Telephone & Telegraph and applied for unemployment compensation under New Hampshire law.
- A Department of Employment Security (DES) intake employee took Eno’s initial application and told her to return weekly to reapply while eligibility was determined; Eno complied.
- DES provided Eno a pamphlet stating claimants must be “available for and seeking permanent employment” to remain eligible.
- During weekly refilings, DES employees asked if Eno was seeking work; she answered yes, and DES did not request details or warn that her efforts might be insufficient.
- DES later found Eno ineligible under RSA 282-A:31, I(c) for insufficient work-search efforts (failure to “expose herself to the labor market”).
- The DES appeal tribunal sustained the denial based on the work-search requirement.
- Eno, proceeding without counsel, appealed, asserting that DES’s conduct and communications led her reasonably to believe her actions satisfied eligibility requirements and that denial on that basis violated due process under the New Hampshire Constitution.

## Issues

1. Whether due process under N.H. Const. pt. I, art. 15 prohibits DES from denying unemployment benefits for inadequate work-search efforts when DES’s actions reasonably led a pro se claimant to believe no additional steps were required.
2. Whether the court, under RSA 282-A:67, IV, could reverse a fact-supported agency denial based on constitutional error in the procedures used.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of New Hampshire reversed the appeal tribunal’s decision upholding the denial of benefits.
- The court held that a claim of entitlement to unemployment benefits is a protected property interest under N.H. Const. pt. I, art. 15.
- The court concluded DES denied due process by effectively leading Eno to believe she had satisfied the work-search requirement and then denying benefits for failing to do more.
- The court applied the statutory review standard, explaining it would not reweigh facts but could reverse where substantial rights were prejudiced by legal or constitutional error.

## Legal Principles

- Under RSA 282-A:67, IV, judicial review does not permit reweighing the appeal tribunal’s fact findings; reversal is warranted only when substantial rights are prejudiced by legal or constitutional error.
- Entitlement to unemployment compensation benefits constitutes a property interest protected by the due process clause of the New Hampshire Constitution.
- Due process forbids the government from denying or thwarting statutory entitlements through procedures that are fundamentally unfair.
- Pro se unemployment claimants are not held to a high level of analytical sophistication in assessing whether they had fair notice of eligibility conditions; agency communications and conduct must provide fair notice before noncompliance is used to deny benefits.

## Conclusion

The court reversed the denial of unemployment benefits because DES’s handling of Eno’s claim misled a pro se claimant about what was required to satisfy the work-search condition, making the denial the product of a fundamentally unfair procedure that violated state constitutional due process.


Appeal of Eno, 126 N.H. 650, 495 A.2d 1277 (N.H. 1985)