Case Name: Potts v. Hay
Court: Arkansas Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Arkansas
Decision Date: 1958-12-22
Citations: 229 Ark. 830
Docket Number: 5-1551
Parties: Potts v. Hay.
Judges: McFaddin, J., concurs.
Reporter: Arkansas Reports
Volume: 229
Pages: 830–839

Head Matter:
Potts v. Hay.
5-1551
318 S. W. 2d 826
Opinion delivered December 22, 1958.
Joseph C. Kemp <& Gardner A. A. Deane, Jr., for appellant.
McMath, Leatherman & Woods, for appellee.

Opinion:
George Rose Smith, J.
This is a representative suit brought by the three appellees, as officers of the Little Rock policemen's union, to enjoin the city officials from enforcing Act 30 of 1957, it being asserted that the act is contrary to Amendment 34 to the Arkansas Constitution. William W. Leigh, as a citizen and taxpayer, filed an intervention and offered proof in defense of the statute. The chancellor held the act to be unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction against its enforcement.
The evidence need not be recited in .detail. The city and the intervenor adduced proof to show that the declared policies of the. labor union contemplate that its members will support authorized strikes, refuse to cross picket lines, and in other respects adhere to a course of action contrary to the attitude of impartiality that the city expects on the part of its policemen. There was also testimony that 35 of the 162 members of the police force belong to the union and that the department as a whole suffered a loss of public esteem as a result of the union's having made a $500 contribution in support of a busmen's strike against their employer.
Amendment 34 reads in part: "No person shall be denied employment because of membership in or affiliation with or resignation from a labor union, or because of refusal to join or affiliate with a labor union, nor shall any corporation or individual or association of any kind enter into any contract, written or oral, to exclude from employment members of a labor union or persons who refuse to join a labor union." Section 1 of Act 30 declares that union membership by police officers is inconsistent with the discipline which their employment requires. Section 2 of the act provides that no person who is a member of a policemen's union shall be eligible to serve on any municipal police force and that union members currently serving shall be dismissed unless they sever their relationship with the union within thirty days.
If the constitutional amendment applies to public employees it cannot be doubted that the act is unconstitutional. The amendment requires that no person be denied employment because of membership in a labor union. The act requires that persons be denied employment as policemen because of membership in a labor union. The conflict is irreconcilable; the act must fall unless it can be said that public employment is not within the purview of the amendment. •
In insisting that an implied exception should be read into the amendment the appellants rely upon a rule of statutory construction, that in certain kinds of statutes general words do not include the state or its subdivisions unless that intention is stated expressly or by necessary implication. Cole v. White County, 32 Ark. 45; Linwood & Auburn Levee Dist. v. State, 121 Ark. 489, 181 S. W. 892. Although the rule is followed primarily in the interpretation of statutes, we recognized its applicability to a constitutional question in State v. Williford, 36 Ark. 155, 38 Am. Rep. 34. There the two appellees asserted the constitutional exemption of personal property to defeat a writ of execution upon a judgment in favor of the state. We concluded that no harm could come to the state if the debtors were permitted to claim their exemptions and accordingly held that the exemption clause in the constitution included the state by implication.
We perceive no compelling reason to believe that the people intended to exclude public employment from the positive, unequivocal command of Amendment 34: "No person shall be denied employment because of mem bership in . . . a labor union." The suggestion made by the appellants, that the public interest will suffer if policemen are allowed to exert "union pressure" upon the city, fails to take into account the relatively slight extent to which Amendment 34 restricts the power of the legislature.
The pertinent clause of the amendment deals only with the denial of employment on the basis of union membership. Nothing is said one way or the other on the subject of union pressure. Left untouched, for example, is the matter of striking against the government. As the Connecticut court pointed out, after a thorough review of the cases, every judicial decision on the subject holds that there is no right to strike against the government. Norwalk Teachers' Assn. v. Board of Education, 138 Conn. 269, 83 Atl. 2d 482, 31 A. L. R. 2d 1133. Yet in the same case the court was able to say, with complete consistency: "In the absence of prohibitory statute or regulation, no good reason appears why public employees should not organize as a labor union." In like manner a Texas statute has been upheld which provides, on the one hand, that no person shall be denied public employment by reason of membership in a labor union, and, on the other, that collective bargaining contracts with public employees are void and that any public employee who participates in a strike forfeits his employment. Beverly v. City of Dallas, Tex., Civ. App., 292 S. W. 2d 172.
We are not convinced that the bare fact of union membership on the part of police officers presents such a threat to the public welfare that an implied exception must be written into the unqualified language of Amendment 34. Quite the contrary, when the full implications of the appellants' argument are carefully examined, it seems clear that the suggested exception was not intended. One result of the amendment, perhaps the principal one, was to outlaw the closed shop. Self v. Taylor, 217 Ark. 953, 235 S. W. 2d 45. If the state and its subdivisions were meant to be exempted from the mandate of the amendment, there would be nothing in the con stitution to prevent the legislature from permitting policemen to maintain a closed shop, even though that type of organization is forbidden in private employment. Inconsistencies such as this can be avoided only by giving the amendment the effect that its plain words demand.
Affirmed.
McFaddin, J., concurs.