It remains a controversial practice whether an adverse action tak-en by administrative agencies is of punitive or non-punitive nature and thus belongs to “other types of administrative penalties” provided by Articles 1 and 2 of the Administrative Penalty Act. This paper there-fore describes multiple rationales of distinction between punitive and non-punitive actions, and argues for a presumption of non-punitiveness from the constitutional perspective of state obligations to protect human rights. Namely, punitive actions are exceptionally rec-ognized as other types of administrative penalties under statutory pro-visions or the objective meaning thereof.