242
Opinion of the Court
employee who has authority to resolve the matter before terminating utility service for nonpayment. 436 U. S., at 16-17. The Court also held that due process required the utility to inform the customer not only of the planned termination, but also of the availability and general contours of the internal administrative procedure for resolving the accounting dispute. Id., at 13-15. In requiring notice of the administrative procedures, however, we relied not on any general principle that the government must provide notice of the procedures for protecting one's property interests but on the fact that the administrative procedures at issue were not described in any publicly available document. A customer who was informed that the utility planned to terminate his service could not reasonably be expected to educate himself about the procedures available to protect his interests:
"[T]here is no indication in the record that a written account of [the utility's dispute resolution] procedure was accessible to customers who had complaints about their bills. [The plaintiff's] case reveals that the opportunity to invoke that procedure, if it existed at all, depended on the vagaries of 'word of mouth referral.' " Id., at 14, n. 14.
While Memphis Light demonstrates that notice of the procedures for protecting one's property interests may be required when those procedures are arcane and are not set forth in documents accessible to the public, it does not support a general rule that notice of remedies and procedures is required.
The Court of Appeals' far-reaching notice requirement not only lacks support in our precedent but also conflicts with the well-established practice of the States and the Federal Government. The notice required by the Court of Appeals far exceeds that which the States and the Federal Government have traditionally required their law enforcement agencies to provide. Indeed, neither the Federal Govern-
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