Opinion ID: 1385357
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The constitutional mandate

Text: The next question is whether the 1976 amendment to section 68203 conflicts with the constitutional prohibition of reductions in salaries. The question is difficult. I believe that it is answered correctly in Justice Fleming's opinion as follows: Before discussing this constitutional issue we first note the general considerations that lead to constitutional prohibitions against reductions in the salaries of judicial officers during their term of office. The key objective is to create and maintain an independent judiciary, and the key factors thought to bring this about are security of tenure and security of subsistence. Both factors appear in the federal Constitution, which declares that judges shall hold office during good behavior and receive a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. (U.S. Const., art. III, § 1.) As observed by the Supreme Court in Evans v. Gore (1920) 253 U.S. 245, 252 [64 L.Ed. 887, 892, 40 S.Ct. 550, 11 A.L.R. 519], in turn quoting Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 79, `[a] power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.' That court further noted the constitutional premise that protection of a judge's subsistence is not so much for the benefit of the judge as it is for the public interest in the preservation of an independent judiciary. ( Evans v. Gore, supra, at pp. 248-254 [64 L.Ed. at pp. 890-893].) These basic constitutional premises find expression in the California Constitution, which gives judges the protection of relatively-long fixed terms (appellate judges, 12 years; trial judges, 6 years (art. VI, § 16)) and which prevents reductions in judges' salaries during their term of office (art. III, § 4). Factually, reductions in judicial salary may come about in four different ways: (1) Reduction in dollar amounts of judicial salaries. (2) Increased specific deductions against judicial salaries. (3) Increased general deductions against all salaries. (4) Reduction in purchasing power of all salaries. Clearly, if the Legislature had undertaken to reduce the dollar amounts payable as salaries to judges (item 1), or had undertaken to deduct increased amounts from judicial salaries for pension contributions or the like and thereby brought about an absolute reduction in judges' salaries (item 2), the constitutional prohibition against reduction in salary during a judge's term of office would come into play. (Cf. Abbott v. City of Los Angeles (1958) 50 Cal.2d 438, 451 [326 P.2d 484].) Neither of these events has occurred. Nor has any complaint been made of reduction in judicial salaries as a consequence of a general tax imposed on all salaries (item 3), which was the issue in Evans v. Gore (1920) 253 U.S. 245 [64 L.Ed. 887, 40 S.Ct. 550, 11 A.L.R. 519], the case which exempted the salaries of federal judges from the then newly-imposed general income tax. The reduction complained of here is related to the loss in purchasing power for all salaries (item 4). Plaintiffs do not directly complain of loss of purchasing power in judges' salaries as a result of inflation and the depreciating value of the dollar, the issue unsuccessfully raised in Atkins v. United States (Ct.Cl. 1977) 556 F.2d 1028, cert. denied (1978) 434 U.S. 1009 [54 L.Ed.2d 751, 98 S.Ct. 718], but they present the point in indirect form by arguing that removal during an inflationary period of statutory protection against increases in the cost-of-living constitutes a reduction in salary contrary to article III, section 4 of the California Constitution. Plaintiffs argue that sitting judges during 1969 to 1976 had a legal expectation of annual increases in salary commensurate with increases in the cost-of-living as shown by the California consumer price index, a legal expectation that constituted a valuable part of their compensation, and that any diminution in the amount of such increases during their term of office effected an unconstitutional reduction in salary. Plaintiffs conclude that article III, section 4, which forbids reduction in salary during a judge's term of office, likewise forbids modification of future salary increases called for under an automatic cost-of-living formula. Of equal general importance to this cause is another provision of the California Constitution, article VI, section 19, which authorizes the Legislature to prescribe compensation for judges of courts of record. That provision confers on the Legislature `the fullest measure of control, direction, ordination, and dictation over the matter of the amount and payment of judicial salaries....' ( Sevier v. Riley (1926) 198 Cal. 170, 175 [244 P. 323].) Absent some constitutional or statutory provision to the contrary, the salaries of all public employees, including judges, may be modified by legislative action. No officer or employee of the State of California has an immutable vested right to any specific salary. ( Butterworth v. Boyd (1938) 12 Cal.2d 140, 150 [82 P.2d 434, 126 A.L.R. 838]; Miller v. Kister (1885) 68 Cal. 142, 144 [8 P. 813]; cf. Miller v. State of California (1977) 18 Cal.3d 808, 813 [135 Cal. Rptr. 386, 557 P.2d 970].) Plaintiffs' constitutional challenge to the 1976 amendment to section 68203 asserts that article III, section 4, which prohibits any reduction in the salaries of elected state officers during their term of office, not only qualifies the Legislature's plenary power to adjust current judicial salaries but prohibits legislative adjustment during a judge's term of office in the cost-of-living formula established in 1969 by section 68203. In opposition, defendant argues that the legislative attempts in 1964 and 1969 to solve the perennial controversy over judicial salaries by adopting a cost-of-living formula to determine future judicial salaries, did not bind the Legislature to maintain indefinitely any particular cost-of-living formula for future judicial salaries. The constitutional issue posed is whether the 1976 modification of prospective cost-of-living increases in salary constituted a reduction in salaries as that term is used in the Constitution.
Plaintiffs assert that article III, section 4, was expressly intended by the Legislature to prohibit revision of the prospective cost-of-living adjustments contained in section 68203. In support of their assertion plaintiffs submitted to the superior court materials which related to the background of the enactment of article III, section 4. From these materials it appears that in 1971 the then Governor attempted to prevent the 1970 cost-of-living increase for judges from coming into effect by a line-item veto of a budget appropriation which covered the increase in judicial salaries. The Attorney General gave an opinion to the Controller which concluded that `Section 68203 does not, of itself, appropriate funds necessary to support the increase required by Section 68203...,' that although judicial salaries remained payable at the new and higher rate, they could not be paid except to the extent funds for the payment of judicial salaries had been appropriated. Thus, if the Governor were to adhere to his position, judicial salaries would be paid at the increased rates, but the funds appropriated to pay such salaries would become exhausted before the close of the fiscal year. On an annualized basis the veto would become effective to prevent full compliance with section 68203. Push did not come to shove, however, and the potential future fiscal crisis was averted when the Governor withdrew his line-item veto. Thereafter, the chairman of the Constitution Revision Commission personally drafted an amendment to the constitutional revision then under consideration in the Legislature, an amendment which added the second sentence to what is now section 4 of article III. `Salaries of elected state officers may not be reduced during their term of office. Laws that set these salaries are appropriations.' (Italics ours.) This additional sentence remained in the final legislative version of the Constitution adopted by the electorate in November 1972. From this incident plaintiffs argue that the proponents of article III, section 4, expressly intended to prevent modification of prospective salary adjustments under section 68203  that is, to forbid future legislative modification of the automatic cost-of-living formula then contained in that section, even for future years and for future salary levels. This speculation seems wide of the mark. Plainly the proponents and draftmen of article III, section 4, meant to prevent a repetition of the line-item veto incident, a goal achieved by the second sentence of article III, section 4, which converts a salary law such as section 68203 into an appropriation and renders unnecessary a separate budget appropriation which a governor could veto. But it is one thing to view article III, section 4, as protective of salary increases that have become due and payable, and another to argue, as do plaintiffs, that it also prevents modification of all prospective salary adjustments. We find nothing in the legislative history of article III, section 4, and nothing in the 1971 veto incident to support that argument. Nor can plaintiffs derive support for their interpretation of article III, section 4, from the ballot arguments presented to the voters at the time of the adoption of the constitutional revision in November 1972. The arguments in the ballot pamphlet submitted to the voters were not only devoid of any disclosure of intent and purpose to prevent modification of prospective judicial salary adjustments, but to the contrary they suggested the absence of any such purpose. Insofar as they related to article III, section 4, the ballot arguments stated: `A provision would be added to prohibit any reduction in the salaries of elected state officers during their term of office and to provide that laws setting those salaries are appropriations. This would eliminate the existing requirement that there be a specific appropriation enacted in the Budget Act, or otherwise, to pay salaries. ' [1] `The various revisions and deletions of existing language in the State Constitution proposed by this amendment will not result in any cost or revenue changes.' [2] `Proposition 6 also protects elected State officers in all three branches of government by providing that their salaries can't be reduced during the term for which they were elected and makes salary statutes appropriations. This will not increase the cost of government or cost the taxpayers more, but will strengthen the independence of all three branches of government.' [3] (Italics added.) No reference was made to section 68203 or, indeed, to any aspect of the cost-of-living adjustment issue, other than the general statements that adoption of article III, section 4, `will not increase the cost of government or cost the taxpayers more' and `will not result in any cost or revenue changes.' In short, the history of article III, section 4, indicates it was directed against a perceived evil  attempts by veto of appropriations to prevent payment of increased judicial salaries after cost-of-living adjustments had gone into effect and become due and payable. The materials before the court suggest that those who drafted article III, section 4, those who voted to put it on the ballot, and those who voted in its favor, never considered or intended that adoption of article III, section 4, would freeze into the constitutional landscape the statutory experiment in judicial cost-of-living salary adjustments set out in section 68203.
Plaintiffs' challenge to the 1976 amendment to section 68203 raises the question whether prospective cost-of-living increases  that is, increases which have not yet gone into effect  are salaries within the meaning of article III, section 4 of the Constitution. Two settled principles of constitutional law are relevant. The first is the presumption of constitutionality to which all legislation is entitled. (See, e.g., California Housing Finance Agency v. Elliott (1976) 17 Cal.3d 575, 594 [131 Cal. Rptr. 361, 551 P.2d 1193].) The second is the canon that `where the Legislature has by statute adopted a reasonable construction of a constitutional provision its action has strong persuasive force and will ordinarily be followed.' ( Woodcock v. Dick (1950) 36 Cal.2d 146, 148 [222 P.2d 667]; see also Lundberg v. County of Alameda (1956) 46 Cal.2d 644, 652 [298 P.2d 1]; San Francisco v. Industrial Acc. Com. (1920) 183 Cal. 273, 279 [191 P. 26].) At bench, the Legislature's implicit construction in 1976 that the word salary in article III, section 4, does not include prospective cost-of-living increases, was reasonably contemporaneous with its approval of article III, section 4, in 1972. Section 68203, as it existed when article III, section 4, was drafted and adopted, provided that on September 1 of each year `the salary of each justice or judge shall be increased' by an amount determined by multiplying the `then current salary' by the percentage increase in the California consumer price index. The use of the future tense `shall' and the reference to `then current salary' indicate that the Legislature did not view a prospective cost-of-living increase as part of a judge's salary until that increase became due and was added to `then current salary' to become the salary payable for the next 12 months. Likewise, salary is defined in the Judges' Retirement Law (Gov. Code, § 75003) as `the compensation received by a judge as the emolument of the office of judge' (italics added). This definition obviously does not embrace compensation payable in the future after cost-of-living adjustments have been made; clearly, under section 75003 a judge's salary is the compensation he is currently being paid. In Harrison v. Colgan (1905) 148 Cal. 69 [82 P. 674], the California Supreme Court, in a somewhat related context, refused to treat a prospective salary increase as included within the term salary. That case involved a constitutional provision entitling justices of District Courts of Appeal to the same salaries as justices of the Supreme Court. In 1905 the Legislature raised the annual salaries of Supreme Court justices from $6,000 to $8,000. However, due to the then constitutional prohibition against increases in the salaries of judges during their term of office, no Supreme Court justice was eligible to claim the higher salary until 1907, when two justices would begin to serve new terms. Plaintiff, a justice of a District Court of Appeal, claimed that because he had been appointed after the effective date of the 1905 increase, he was entitled to the higher salary under the constitutional provision making the salaries of District Court of Appeal justices the same as those of Supreme Court justices. The Supreme Court rejected this claim stating: `What, then, are the salaries of the justices of the supreme court to which those of the district court justices must for the present conform? Clearly not the salaries which may hereafter be payable under the amended statute when a new term of some of the justices of the supreme court shall have begun, but the present salaries now allowed and paid by them by law.' ( Harrison v. Colgan (1905) 148 Cal. 69, at p. 72; italics added.) In other words, even though Supreme Court justices might have a future right to an increase in compensation, until the increase became effective it could not be considered salary within the meaning of the provision entitling District Court of Appeal justices to the same salary as Supreme Court justices. The salary of a Supreme Court justice was what he was then being paid. So here. The salary of an elected state officer is the amount he is presently being paid. For example, if in January 1976 the Legislature in its wisdom had passed a law making the salary of a Court of Appeal justice for the calendar year 1977 the same as that of a Supreme Court justice, and had then repealed the law in February 1976, thus returning future Court of Appeal salaries to their original amounts, under the reasoning of Harrison the prospective increase which never materialized could not be considered salary, and no reduction in salary would have occurred by reason of the repeal. Although former section 68203 provided that judges would receive annual cost-of-living increases, those future increases did not become salary within the meaning of article III, section 4, until they had become payable as current salary. To conclude the point, salary is present pay, not future pay.
Although no California court has decided the precise issue, three New Jersey cases have rejected the argument that elimination of a prospective increase in salary constitutes a reduction in salary. ( Greenway v. Board of Education (1943) 129 N.J.L. 461 [29 A.2d 890, 145 A.L.R. 404]; Offhouse v. State Board of Education (1944) 131 N.J.L. 391 [36 A.2d 884]; Kopera v. Bd. of Ed. of Town of West Orange, Essex Co. (1960) 60 N.J. Super. 288 [158 A.2d 842, 846].) In Greenway, supra, a New Jersey statute prohibited local school boards from reducing teachers' salaries. A local board's existing teachers' salary schedule, which provided future incremental salary increases for teachers, was repealed by the local board as an economy measure during the depression. A teacher contended that the repeal of the prospective increase by the local board constituted an impermissible reduction in salary contrary to the state statute. The New Jersey court disagreed, holding that increments do not become part of a teacher's salary until they accrue, and that until accrual their modification does not constitute a reduction in salary. (29 A.2d at p. 891.) In Offhouse, supra, the court made the same point: `Only accrued increments under a valid and subsisting regulation of the local board are beyond repeal. Unaccrued increments do not take the classification of `salary' within the intendment of [the statute].' (36 A.2d at p. 887.) And in Kopera, supra, the court said: `The failure to receive an increase of salary does not constitute a reduction.' (158 A.2d at p. 846.) Plaintiffs seek to distinguish these cases on the ground that they deal with a mere statutory prohibition against salary reductions and not with a constitutional prohibition. Such a suggestion misconceives the issue. The New Jersey statute, like the constitutional provision at issue here, prohibited salary reductions; the issue there, as here, was whether repeal by a subordinate body of prospective increases it had previously authorized constituted a reduction in salary within the meaning of the statutory prohibition. The New Jersey courts held it did not, stating: `Until the accrual, the modification or repeal of the rule providing for increments does not constitute a reduction of salary within the intendment of [the statute]. A regulation providing for increments is a mere declaration of legislative policy that is at all times subject to abrogation by the local board in the public interest.' ( Offhouse v. State Board of Education, supra, 36 A.2d at p. 887.) The New Jersey cases thus furnish valuable precedent for resolution of the issue at bench. Apart from precedent, however, other fundamental considerations must be taken into account. The Constitution gives the Legislature ultimate responsibility for fixing judicial salaries (art. VI, § 19) nd for fixing other governmental salaries as well. In 1964 the Legislature first experimented with a system for automatically adjusting judicial salaries to the cost-of-living. By 1976, however, that experiment, viewed from the legislative perspective of state salaries as a whole, had produced an imbalance as a result of a salary structure which provided full cost-of-living adjustments for only one group of officers of only one branch of government. Obviously, the Legislature might have responded to imbalance by raising all state salaries to meet the pressures of inflation. For reasons of political economy it chose not to do so. Such concerns are the responsibility of the legislative branch, whose task in salary setting is difficult, delicate, and troublesome. The complexity of its task counsels judicial caution in construing article III, section 4 of the Constitution so broadly that any experiment with a new mechanism for determining future salary increases becomes cast in constitutional stone.... Plaintiffs' interpretation of article III, section 4, if accepted, would seriously cripple the power of the Legislature to take effective action in an important and sensitive area of its concern  its fixing of judicial salaries pursuant to article VI, section 19, of the Constitution. Under plaintiffs' interpretation the Legislature would become a kind of sorcerer's apprentice  able to turn on the money spigot but never able to shut it off. It is one thing to insist, as the Constitution does, that a present salary, once established, may not be reduced during a judge's term of office; it is another to argue that a legislative experiment to find a better mechanism for setting judicial salaries has been transmuted into an irreversible economic grant. Our constitutional tradition, exemplified by such decisions as Atkins v. United States (Ct.Cl. 1977) 556 F.2d 1028, cert. denied (1978) 434 U.S. 1009 [54 L.Ed.2d 751, 98 S.Ct. 718], entrusts to the Legislature broad authority and responsibility over increases in judicial salaries. (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 19.) We reject plaintiffs' argument that article III, section 4 of the California Constitution precludes adjustment of future salary increases throughout a judge's term of office.