Opinion ID: 1882515
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Absurdity Doctrine

Text: As the majority notes, and I agree, we will deviate from a statute's plain language when necessary to avoid an absurd result. As we explained many years ago, no literal interpretation should be given that lends to an unreasonable or ridiculous conclusion. State v. Sullivan, 95 Fla. 191, 116 So. 255, 261 (1928); see also State v. Burris, 875 So.2d 408, 414 (Fla.2004) (stating, more recently, that [a] statute's plain and ordinary meaning controls only if it does not lead to an unreasonable result). However, to prevent the appearance that we are merely substituting our own judgment for the Legislature's, we must invoke the exception only when absolutely necessarythat is, when otherwise the result truly would be absurd or patently unreasonable. This canon of statutory construction has been one of the fixed points in American law, John F. Manning, The Absurdity Doctrine, 116 Harv. L.Rev. 2387, 2389 (2003), and has guided this Court's jurisprudence from the very beginning. See White v. Camp, 1 Fla. 94, 109 (1846) (Baltzell, J., dissenting) (stating, in the first volume of the Florida Reports, that the reason and intention of the law giver will control the strict letter of the law, when the latter would lead to palpable injustice, contradiction and absurdity) (quoting Plowden's digest of English cases from the sixteenth century). Yet the absurdity exception to the plain meaning rule is intended to be narrow. The Supreme Court, for example, rarely invokes such a test to override unambiguous legislation. Barnhart v. Sigmon Coal Co., 534 U.S. 438, 459, 122 S.Ct. 941, 151 L.Ed.2d 908 (2002). In fact, the Court has come to connect its absurdity analysis to the more forgiving standards of rationality review, Manning, supra, at 2452, meaning that it will enforce a statute's plain meaning as long as it can hypothesize a rational basis to support the textual policy. Id. at 2452 n. 244 (citing examples). The absurdity doctrine should be reserved for cases where applying the plain meaning would border on irrationality. Only then can we be sure that a textual interpretation would yield an absurd result totally incongruous with the will of the people. Plante v. Smathers, 372 So.2d 933, 937 (Fla.1979). If expanded beyond rational basis review, the absurdity exception would threaten to undermine the separation of powers by allowing judges to substitute their own views of wise public policy for the compromises struck by legislators. As one scholar recently explained: The legislative process is untidy, and the particular wording of a statute may have been, for unknowable reasons, essential to its passage. Thus, rather than identifying genuine legislative intent, application of the absurdity doctrine to disturb a clear statutory text risks displacing whatever bargain legislators actually reached through the complex and path-dependent legislative process. Manning, supra, at 2486. In other words, there is a fine line between a judicious policy and a judicially imposed one. Unless we can say with absolute confidence that no reasonable legislature would have intended for the statute to carry its plain meaning, we should presume that [our] legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there. BedRoc Ltd., LLC v. United States, 541 U.S. 176, 183, 124 S.Ct. 1587, 158 L.Ed.2d 338 (2004) (plurality opinion) (quoting Connecticut Nat'l Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992)). The exception to the plain meaning rule should not be used to avoid an unintended result, only an absurd or patently unreasonable one.