Opinion ID: 4166897
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Text and History

Text: We begin with the text, but find it manifestly ambiguous. An assurance that an employee will not be required to work more than six days in seven could be interpreted as prohibiting a required seventh day of work any time an employee has worked the previous six, as Mendoza and Gordon would have it, but it could equally be interpreted as ensuring that, sometime during each week, every employee will be entitled to at least one rest day, as Nordstrom would have it. On the one hand, neither section contains the word ―week,‖ as Mendoza and Gordon stress. On the other, had the Legislature intended to protect against any seven consecutive days of work, it could have chosen more specific language that, unlike the phrase ―more than six days in seven‖ (§ 552), does not evoke the concept of a day of rest each week (e.g., ―An employer shall not cause an employee to work more than six days straight‖ or ―in a row‖ or ―consecutively‖). The statutory language is not so plain as to conclusively embrace only one meaning. In addition, the available history concerning the circumstances of enactment sheds limited light. Early attempts by the Legislature to regulate the days when businesses could operate mandated a weekly closure on a specific day. (Stats. 1858, ch. 171, § 1, pp. 124–125 [requiring specified establishments to close ―on the Christian Sabbath, or Sunday‖]; Stats. 1861, ch. 535, § 1, p. 655 [restricting operation ―on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday‖]; Pen. Code, former § 300 as codified in 1872 [prohibiting the operation ―on Sunday‖ of most businesses].) These laws were met with religious objections and sometimes struck down (Ex parte Newman (1858) 9 Cal. 502 [declaring the 1858 law unconstitutional]) or repealed in the face of such criticisms (see Ex parte 5 Koser (1882) 60 Cal. 177 [upholding Pen. Code, former § 300 by a four-to-three vote]; Stats. 1883, ch. 2, § 1, p. 1 [repealing former § 300 in the wake of Koser]). The 1893 law departed from prior statutes by providing for a day of rest without specifying which day should be taken. (Stats. 1893, ch. 41, § 1, p. 54 [directing ―one day‘s rest therefrom in seven‖].) It thus met the objection that legislating a uniform weekly day of rest favored some religions over others and infringed on the state Constitution‘s free exercise guarantee. (See Cal. Const. of 1849, art. I, § 4; Newman, at pp. 505–507 (opn. of Terry, J.); id. at pp. 513–515 (conc. opn. of Burnett, J.); Koser, at pp. 201–206 (dis. opn. of McKinstry, J.); id. at p. 207 (dis. opn of Ross, J.); id. at pp. 207–209 (dis. opn. of Sharpstein, J.).) But inferring that the 1893 statute was drafted to remain agnostic as between the practices of different denominations and as between believers and nonbelievers does not help us resolve the present-day dispute. Given that religious days of rest, though they vary between denominations, typically recur on the same day each week, the statute could be understood as extending a guarantee of a day of rest every week, on a day of the individual‘s choosing, or, equally, a day of rest at least every seventh day. To illuminate the intended meaning, we thus turn to other interpretive sources, including the regulatory and statutory contexts of which the day of rest laws are a part.