Opinion ID: 1826878
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: did the circuit court err in the standard of review it applied to petitioners' appeals?

Text: Prior to the 1990 legislative session, this court defined the standard for judicial review of decisions of the State Superintendent on minor boundary changes as follows: We review Superintendent's decision under the clearly erroneous standard of review and cannot reverse the decision unless we are left with a definite and firm conviction that an error has been made. McLaughlin School Dist. 15-2 v. Kosters, 441 N.W.2d 682, 686 (S.D.1989). See also Shumaker v. Canova School Dist. No. 48-1, 322 N.W.2d 869 (S.D.1982) (decision of State Superintendent on boundary change entitled to great weight and reviewing court may not substitute its judgment for that of the State Superintendent). During the 1990 legislative session, the legislature enacted House Bill 1309 which amended SDCL 13-6-85 as follows: [3] A boundary change, affecting not more than two percent of the assessed valuation of the school district from which the area is to be taken, may be made upon an application for a boundary change to the school board of the school district from which the area is to be taken and to the school board of the school district to which the area is to be annexed, in the form of a petition signed by over fifty percent of the voters residing in the area to be transferred by the boundary change. Copies of the petitions shall also be delivered by the petitioners to the board of county commissioners having jurisdiction over the school districts affected. Any petitioner who is aggrieved by a decision of the school board under this section may appeal that decision. An appeal from the decision of the school board may be made to the circuit court in the time and manner specified by § 13-46-1 or to the state superintendent of education within thirty days from the date of the decision of the school board by filing a notice with the superintendent of the school board and mailing a copy thereof to the superintendent of education. The state superintendent of education shall thereafter set a time and place for the hearing and give at least ten days written notice of the hearing to the parties involved in the appeal. An appeal to the state superintendent is not a contested case subject to chapter 1-26; however, the appeal is subject to the provisions of § 1-26-36. An appeal from the decision of the state superintendent may be made pursuant to § 13-6-89. On appeal from a decision of the state superintendent, the appeal shall be heard and determined in the same manner as a direct appeal from the school board decision pursuant to § 13-6-89 and chapter 13-46 without any presumption of the correctness of the decision of the state superintendent nor may the provisions of § 1-26-36 be applied to the decision of the state superintendent. Nothing in this section shall affect the right of an aggrieved party to appeal from the decision of the school board to the circuit court. 1990 S.D.Sess.L. ch. 113. House Bill 1309 contained no emergency clause and took effect on July 1, 1990. See SDCL 2-14-16 (legislative act not prescribing time when it takes effect is effective on first day of July after its passage). The 1990 amendment of SDCL 13-6-85 changed the deference to be paid by a reviewing court in an appeal concerning a minor boundary change. No longer is any presumption of correctness to apply to the decision of the State Superintendent. Moreover, such appeals are to be heard and determined in the same manner as direct appeals from school board decisions. In that regard, SDCL 13-46-6 provides for a trial de novo of such an appeal before the circuit court. This trial de novo, however, is not a trial de novo in the true sense of the phrase. It is a limited type of hearing at which the circuit court takes evidence and hears testimony solely for the purpose of determining the legality, and not the propriety, of the school board's decision. It differs from a true trial de novo in that the court may not substitute its judgment for that of the school board, and the court need not justify the school board's decision by a preponderance of the evidence received. Moran v. Rapid City Area School Dist., 281 N.W.2d 595, 598 (S.D.1979) (citations omitted). Moran also defines the circuit court's proper standard of review in a direct appeal of a school board decision. The scope of the review by the circuit court is limited, then, to determining the legality of the school board's decision. In determining whether the decision was legal, the circuit court reviews the decision in two aspects. First, whether the school board acted legally, and second, whether the school board's decision was arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of their discretion. Moran, 281 N.W.2d at 599. The bulk of the argument in these cases centers on which standard of review should have been applied by the circuit court in considering the board's appeals: i.e., the standard in effect before or after July 1, 1990. In this vein, petitioners expend considerable argument to establish that they had valid appeals pending before the State Superintendent when the new standard for judicial review took effect on July 1, 1990. Petitioner's assert, in essence, that because they had valid appeals pending before the State Superintendent when the standard of judicial review changed, the circuit court was required to utilize the standard of review in effect before the change. We disagree. Despite petitioners' lengthy argument and even assuming they had valid appeals pending before the State Superintendent when the standard of review changed, none of the petitioners had appeals pending before the circuit court at that time. The earliest these matters arguably came before the circuit court was in August of 1990 when the board attempted to appeal the State Superintendent's order that it take action on petitioners' petitions. [4] However, even this early attempt at a circuit court appeal came after the new standard of judicial review took effect on July 1, 1990. As the circuit court reasoned,  [t]he appeals are in effect under the post-1990 law of de novo appeal anyway with this court to review the law that applies to the facts in the case and make its decision not bound by the superintendent's decision... (emphasis added). In short, there is no issue of retroactive application of a new standard of judicial review by the circuit court in these cases because it applied the standard of review in effect when the board appealed the cases to the circuit court (i.e., the post-July 1, 1990 standard). As expressed in 1 Steven A. Childress & Martha S. Davis, Federal Standards of Review § 1.03 (1992): Generally, only final decisions are jurisdictionally appealable, except for review taken under such limited exceptions as authorized interlocutory appeals or writs of mandamus. It is pointless, then, to speak initially of the standard applicable to review such an issue, since if a decision is not appealable, then no question of scrutiny, deference, or even scope is present for purposes of reviewing individual issues or findings. Once appellate jurisdiction is established, however, the court has to decide which of the validly appealed issues it will review (scope of review) and under what framework, scrutiny, or division of labor it will review them (standard of review). (emphasis added). The soundness of the view that the standard of appellate judicial review is irrelevant until appellate jurisdiction is established is well represented in the prior decisions of this Court. We repeatedly define or refine standards of review as new issues come before us and apply those standards to the cases in controversy we are reviewing. See, e.g., Maasjo v. McLaughlin School Dist. 15-2, 489 N.W.2d 618 (S.D. 1992) (standard of review of certain school board decisions); Janke v. Janke, 467 N.W.2d 494 (S.D.1991) (standard of review in child support cases heard by referees); Permann v. Dept. of Labor, Unemp. Ins. D., 411 N.W.2d 113 (S.D.1987) (standard of review of decisions of administrative agencies). Acceptance of petitioners' argument in the present cases would render such action by this Court a retroactive application of substantive law prohibiting application of a newly pronounced standard of review to cases initiated before the pronouncement, including the case in controversy. Here, once petitioners chose to appeal the disapproval of their boundary change petitions to the State Superintendent, only his final decisions were appealable to the circuit court. SDCL 13-6-85 (Supp.1990). The State Superintendent did not issue his final decisions until the end of December 1990. The board did not appeal the State Superintendent's decisions until January 28, 1991. By that time, the new standard for judicial review in boundary change cases had been in effect for over six months. That is the standard the circuit court applied in these cases and we hold that it committed no error of law in doing so.