Dillard, Presiding Judge. In 2022, Lynn Bellinger applied for unemployment benefits through the Georgia Department of Labor. The Department denied Bellinger’s claim for benefits, and she then sought to appeal to an administrative hearing officer. The hearing officer found that Bellinger’s appeal was not timely filed, and the Department’s Board of Review affirmed that decision. In turn, the superior court affirmed the decision of the Board of Review. But this Court granted Bellinger’s subsequent application for discretionary review, and she contends that her appeal from the denial of her claim for benefits was timely filed. For the following reasons, we vacate the superior court’s decision and remand the case with direction.[1] When this Court reviews a superior court’s order in an administrative proceeding, our duty is “not to review whether the record supports the superior court’s decision but whether the record supports the final decision of the administrative agency.”[2] And judicial review requires us to determine whether “the findings of fact are supported by ‘any evidence’ and examine the soundness of the conclusions of law that are based upon the findings of fact.”[3] Finally, as always, we review legal conclusions de novo.[4] So viewed, the record shows that Bellinger began working at the Savannah Bee Company in 2012. In January 2022, the Company did “mass layoffs” and discharged Bellinger. She received severance pay, and her separation agreement indicated the Company would not impede her application for unemployment benefits. In February 2022, Bellinger applied for unemployment benefits, but her claim was denied. In doing so, the Department of Labor indicated that Bellinger was ineligible for benefits because she had been “fired for not following rules, orders, or the instructions of [her] employer.” After the denial of her claim for unemployment benefits, Bellinger contacted the president and chief financial officer of the Savannah Bee Company, who indicated that he would promptly investigate the matter. He told her not to appeal and that he would “fix it.” But on April 11, 2022, after the Company was unable to resolve the issue, Bellinger filed an appeal from the denial of her unemployment claim. More than one year later, the matter proceeded to a telephonic hearing before an administrative hearing officer, in which Bellinger was represented by counsel. The hearing officer took evidence as to both the timeliness of Bellinger’s appeal from the denial of her claim and the circumstances of her separation. On May 31, 2023, the hearing officer issued an order affirming the denial of Bellinger’s claim because she failed to file a timely appeal.[5] Bellinger timely appealed the hearing officer’s decision to the Board of Review. And on July 25, 2023, the Board affirmed the hearing officer’s finding that the appeal was untimely. Thereafter, Bellinger petitioned for judicial review in superior court. Following a hearing, the superior court on January 22, 2024, summarily affirmed the decision of the Board of Review. Bellinger then filed an application for discretionary review in this Court, which we granted.[6] This appeal follows. Bellinger maintains the Department of Labor and the superior court erred as a matter of law in concluding that her appeal from the denial of her unemployment claim was untimely.[7] We agree. Tasked with interpreting statutory language, we necessarily begin our analysis with “familiar and binding canons of construction.”[8] In considering the meaning of a statute, our charge as an appellate court is to “presume that the General Assembly meant what it said and said what it meant.”[9] And toward that end, we must afford the statutory text “its plain and ordinary meaning,”[10] view the text “in the context in which it appears,”[11] read the text “in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would,”[12] and seek to “avoid a construction that makes some language mere surplusage.”[13] In sum, when the language of a statute is “plain and susceptible of only one natural and reasonable construction, courts must construe the statute accordingly.”[14] Furthermore, as pertinent here, the General Assembly has declared that “economic insecurity due to unemployment is a serious menace to the health, morals, and welfare of the people of this state.”[15] And as a result, courts are statutorily directed to broadly “construe the provisions of the unemployment statutes in favor of the employee, and statutory exceptions and exemptions that are contrary to the expressed intention of the [codified] law should be narrowly construed.”[16] Turning to the statute at issue, OCGA § 34-8-192, when the Department of Labor makes an initial determination as to whether a claimant is entitled to unemployment benefits, that determination shall be final unless a party seeks reconsideration or “appeals the determination within 15 days after the notice was mailed to the party’s last known address or otherwise delivered to the party.”[17] And here, the undisputed evidence shows the notice of initial determination sent to Bellinger by the Department of Labor bore a “mail date” of March 18, 2022, and indicated an appeal date of April 4, 2022.[18] But significantly, Bellinger did not actually receive the initial determination until the Thursday before the appeal was due, which was March 31, 2022. She then filed her appeal on April 11, 2022. As noted above, OCGA § 34-8-192 refers to two possible dates on which the 15-day deadline could begin to run: the date that the “notice was mailed” or the date the notice was “otherwise delivered to the party.”[19] And because the statute refers to the mailing date or the delivery date, Bellinger only needed to file her appeal within 15 days of one of those dates to be timely.[20] So, because Bellinger’s appeal was filed within 15 days of the date that she received the initial determination—i.e., the date it was actually “delivered” to her—it is timely.[21] To hold otherwise would render the latter phrase of the statute, referring to delivery, as mere surplusage.[22] Importantly, this construction also comports with our statutory mandate to construe broadly the provisions of the unemployment statutes in favor of the employee and to construe narrowly statutory exceptions.[23] For all these reasons, Bellinger’s appeal was timely and she is entitled to a decision on the merits of her claim for benefits.[24] Accordingly, the judgment of the superior court is vacated with direction that the case be remanded to the Department of Labor for the purpose of determining whether Bellinger is entitled to unemployment benefits.[25] Judgment vacated and case remanded with direction. Brown and Padgett, JJ., concur.
