Ninety days from knowing

This site has spent a hundred and ninety articles describing things the Thai state does.

Rules that require a step nobody can satisfy. Categories drawn around the people who already had options. Decisions that take a year. Forms that exist because a form has always existed.

There is a court for that, and it has existed since 1999.

What it is

The Act on Establishment of Administrative Courts and Administrative Court Procedure B.E. 2542 (1999) created a separate court system — not a division of the ordinary courts, a parallel one — for disputes between a person and the state.

Two tiers. The Supreme Administrative Court at the top; below it the courts of first instance, comprising the Central Administrative Court and the regional administrative courts.

And it is not the Constitutional Court. articles 10 and 11 dealt with that one, which decides whether laws and parties conform to the constitution. This is the court you go to about a decision.

Read the grounds

Section 9 sets out what the court may hear, and the first head is the one worth reading slowly.

The court may decide disputes about an administrative agency or state official acting unlawfully — whether by making a rule, giving an order, or any other act — where the act was:

without power, or beyond power; not in accordance with law; not in accordance with the form, process or method that is material to the act; done in bad faith; amounting to unfair discrimination; creating unnecessary steps or imposing an excessive burden on the public; or an improper exercise of discretion.

Stop on the sixth one.

“สร้างขั้นตอนโดยไม่จำเป็นหรือสร้างภาระให้เกิดกับประชาชนเกินสมควร” — creating unnecessary steps, or imposing an excessive burden on the public.

That is a statutory ground on which a Thai court may quash an administrative act. Not a principle of good governance, not an aspiration in a preamble. A head of jurisdiction.

And the second limb of section 9 adds the other half: disputes about an agency or official neglecting a duty the law requires, or performing it with unreasonable delay.

Delay is actionable. On its own.

The remaining heads cover wrongful acts and other liability of agencies and officials, administrative contracts, cases where a law requires an agency to go to court to compel someone, and anything else a statute assigns to this court.

Military discipline, the judicial commission’s proceedings, and matters belonging to the juvenile, labour, tax, intellectual property, bankruptcy and other specialised courts are all excluded.

Who may bring a case

Section 42. Any person who suffers or may unavoidably suffer hardship or damage from an act or omission of an agency or official, or who has a dispute about an administrative contract, or who has any other matter within section 9 — and whose relief requires one of the orders the court can make — has the right to sue.

“May unavoidably suffer” is doing work there. You need not wait until the harm has landed.

One condition sits in the same section. Where another law sets out its own procedure for putting the matter right, that procedure has to be used first: a case can be brought once it has produced a decision, or has failed to produce one within a reasonable time or the time that law sets.

The procedure is designed for people without lawyers

This is the part that surprised me most, and it is all in the Act.

Section 45 says a plaint must use polite language and contain five things: the plaintiff’s name and address; the agency or official concerned; the acts complained of, with reasonable facts about them; what the plaintiff is asking for; and a signature.

That is the whole pleading requirement. Five items.

And then the second paragraph. If a plaint is incomplete, unclear, or cannot be understood, the Office of the Administrative Court shall advise the plaintiff how to correct it — and the date of the first filing is what counts for limitation.

Read that again. The court’s own office helps you fix your claim, and fixing it does not cost you your deadline.

Section 45 also lets people with the same cause file jointly in a single document, appointing one of themselves to conduct the case for all.

And it says filing costs nothing. No court fee is payable, except where the claim is for money or property in a liability or contract case, which pays fees on the sum claimed. A party may run the whole case in person, or appoint a lawyer or another person to do it.

Section 50 goes further and puts a duty on the state. An order that can be challenged in this court must state, in the order itself, how to file and within what time. And if the official later realises they failed to say so, they must tell the recipient without delay — and the clock starts again from that notification.

And if nobody ever tells them, a filing period shorter than a year is extended to a year from the day the order was received.

A Thai administrative order is supposed to come with instructions for suing over it.

Where a fee was paid, section 72/1 provides that on giving judgment the court shall order it refunded, in whole or in part, in proportion to the party’s success.

What the court can actually do

Section 72 lists the orders available, and they are matched to the type of complaint.

Where the complaint is unlawfulness, the court may quash the rule or the order, or prohibit the act, in whole or in part. It may decide whether that quashing operates retrospectively, prospectively, or from some chosen moment, and may attach conditions — “according to the justice of the case”.

And where a final judgment quashes a rule, the result is published in the Royal Gazette, and that publication operates as the quashing of the rule.

Where the complaint is neglect or delay, the court may order the head of the agency or the official concerned to perform the duty within a time the court fixes.

Where the complaint is wrongful act, liability or an administrative contract, the court may order payment of money, delivery of property, or the doing or not doing of an act, with whatever time limits and conditions it sets.

It may also declare the existence of a right or duty, and order a person to act or refrain in order to comply with law.

Since 2019 the Act has also given the court power to mediate a dispute, within the bounds of legality, in sections 66/1 to 66/12.

Appeal against a first-instance judgment lies within thirty days, failing which the case is final.

And now the constraint

Section 49. A case must be filed within ninety days of the day the plaintiff knew, or ought to have known, of the cause.

Ninety days.

There is an alternative route for inaction: if you have written to the agency asking it to perform its legal duty, and ninety days pass with no reply — or with a reply you consider unreasoned — the ninety days runs from then.

Section 51 gives longer for some heads: one year for the wrongful-act and liability cases, five years for administrative contracts, each from knowing or when you ought to have known, but in no case more than ten years from the cause.

And section 52 removes the limit entirely for two categories — cases concerning the protection of the public interest, or a person’s status, may be filed at any time. A late case outside those categories may still be accepted if the court considers it beneficial to the public or there is other necessary cause, on the court’s own motion or on application.

What this adds up to

The law here is not the constraint.

The grounds are broad enough to reach the things this archive keeps finding. Unnecessary steps. Excessive burden. Unfair discrimination between categories. Discretion exercised badly. Decisions that never come.

The procedure is unusually accessible by design — a five-item pleading, an office obliged to help you fix it, your original date preserved, joint filing, no fee to file for most cases, no need for a lawyer, and an obligation on the official to tell you how to challenge them.

The remedies are real. A rule can be quashed with effect published in the Gazette. An official can be ordered to do their job by a date.

And the binding constraint is ninety days from when you knew.

Which is a question about information, not about law. To use a ninety-day window you must know the window exists, know this court exists, know your complaint falls within section 9, and act — while dealing with whatever the decision did to you in the first place.

Section 50 is the Act’s own answer to that problem, and it is a good one: the order that hurt you is supposed to tell you how to fight it. Whether that happens in practice is a question this article cannot answer, because no evidence on compliance with section 50 was obtained.

So the honest conclusion is narrower than either of the obvious ones. This is not a country without a remedy for administrative wrong. It is a country whose remedy is well drafted, deliberately accessible, and gated by a short clock that starts running whether or not you have heard of it.

Nothing in this article is advice, and nothing in it suggests that any particular grievance would succeed.

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Common misconceptions

“You can’t sue the government in Thailand.” There is a dedicated two-tier court system for exactly that, operating since 1999.

“That’s the Constitutional Court.” No. The Constitutional Court rules on constitutionality. The Administrative Court decides disputes about administrative acts, omissions and contracts.

“You need a lawyer.” A party may conduct the case in person. The Act requires a five-item plaint in polite language, and obliges the court’s office to advise a plaintiff how to correct a defective one.

“Suing the state is expensive.” For unlawful acts, neglect and delay, filing is free. Only claims for money or property in liability or contract cases pay a court fee.

“You have to wait until you’re actually harmed.” Section 42 extends to a person who may unavoidably suffer hardship or damage.

“Delay isn’t something you can sue about.” Neglect of a legal duty, or performing it with unreasonable delay, is its own head of jurisdiction.

“There’s no deadline.” Ninety days from knowing or from when you ought to have known, with longer periods for liability and contract cases and no limit for public-interest or status cases.