Wellstar hospitals challenged the Georgia Department of Community Health’s decision to grant Emory University Hospital Smyrna a certificate of need to renovate an acquired hospital. During the administrative process, Wellstar argued that the hearing officer’s refusal to consider the validity of Emory’s existing certificate violated due process. The hearing officer and Commissioner did not distinctly rule on that constitutional claim, but the trial court did reject it in judicial review. The Court of Appeals held that the claim was not preserved because it had not been decided during the administrative proceeding. The Georgia Supreme Court reversed that portion of the Court of Appeals’ decision. It explained that an administrative agency generally cannot declare a statute unconstitutional, so a party preserves a constitutional claim by raising it during the administrative process and then obtaining judicial review. A separate requirement applies at the appellate stage: the trial court must distinctly rule on the claim. Because the trial court had done so here, the Supreme Court remanded for the Court of Appeals to reconsider the constitutional issue and any preservation argument.