Opinion ID: 2791898
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The “Official Capacity” Language

Text: {23} In the 1965 New Mexico act, terminology identifying occupations of listed reporters tracked the language of the AMA model statute, including use of the qualifying phrase “acting in his or her official capacity” after the listed occupations; but this original New Mexico act added the language, “any ordained minister of an established church,” at the end of the listing instead of inserting it at an earlier point in the listing before the phrase “acting in his or her official capacity.” 1965 N.M. Laws, ch. 157, § 2. {24} The phrase “acting in his or her official capacity” in the original New Mexico statute 7 was identical in wording and placement to the same phrase contained in the AMA proposed legislation. This phrase followed the entire list of AMA-suggested occupations, and there is nothing in grammar or reason to indicate that it was meant to apply only to the final occupation in the list, social workers. The other states that have adopted the “official capacity” language from the AMA proposal have variously placed the language at the beginning of the listing of occupations, at the end of the listing as in the AMA model, or in a separate paragraph applicable to all categories. See, e.g., N.Y. Consol. Laws ch. 55, art. 6, § 413(1)(a) (McKinney 2015) (providing that “[t]he following persons and officials are required to report . . . when they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child coming before them in their professional or official capacity is an abused or maltreated child,” followed by a lengthy listing of occupations, including mental health counselors and social workers); 325 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 5/4 (West 2014) (imposing a reporting requirement on an extensive list of occupations and relationships, including social workers, and ending the list with “or any other foster parent, homemaker or child care worker having reasonable cause to believe a child known to them in their professional or official capacity may be an abused child or a neglected child”); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2151.421(A)(1)(a) (West 2014) (“No person described [in the extensive listing of occupations] in division (A)(1)(b) of this section who is acting in an official or professional capacity and knows, or has reasonable cause to suspect . . . that a child [has been abused] shall fail to immediately report . . . .”). {25} New Mexico’s placement of the “official capacity” qualification before the last-listed occupation, ordained ministers, appears to be nothing more than a historical anomaly resulting from the Legislature’s tacking on ordained ministers at the end of the language taken from the AMA model act. Compare 1965 N.M. Laws, ch. 157, § 2 (indicating at the end of the listing of permissive reporters “, any registered nurse, any visiting nurse, any school teacher or social worker acting in his or her official capacity, or any ordained minister of an established church . . .”), with Paulsen, supra, at 5 (indicating at the end of the listing of required reporters “‘, any registered nurse, any visiting nurse, any school teacher or any social worker acting in his or her official capacity. . . .’” (quoting the 1965 AMA proposed legislation)). {26} There is also no reason to find significance in the use of semicolons before and after the language referring to social workers in the current statute. The language in both the AMA model act and the original New Mexico enactment had no punctuation separating the final two occupations listed: “any school teacher or [any] social worker acting in his or her official capacity.” 1965 N.M. Laws, ch. 157, § 2. It was not until thirty-eight years later that the semicolons appeared in a 2003 amendment aimed solely at clarifying the clergy’s duty to report child abuse. See 2003 N.M. Laws, ch. 189, § 1 (amending the law in an act entitled “Relating to the Children’s Code: Clarifying a Member of the Clergy’s Duty to Report Child Abuse”). In the 2003 amendment process concerned with the clergy’s required reporting of information not learned through confidential communications, the commas that had separated all but the last three reporter occupations were replaced with semicolons between all named occupations, changing the relevant language at the time from “, a schoolteacher or a school official or social worker acting in an official capacity” in Chapter 34, Section 8 2(A) of New Mexico Laws of 1997 to “; a schoolteacher; a school official; a social worker acting in an official capacity; or a member of the clergy who has information that is not privileged as a matter of law” in Chapter 189, Section 1(A) of New Mexico Laws of 2003. {27} We have found nothing in our research to indicate that, by using the phrase “acting in [‘his or her’ or ‘an’ or ‘their’] official capacity” at the end of the list of covered occupations, either the AMA or the jurisdictions that used its suggested language meant to distinguish between health care, education, and social work professionals employed by government and those employed otherwise. In fact, the few cases to construe the language at all use “official capacity” interchangeably with “professional capacity,” interpreting the language to distinguish between child abuse knowledge gained through activities in the listed occupations and knowledge gained in other capacities. The rationale underlying the use of the modifiers “official” or “professional” has been explained well by the Ohio Supreme Court: Because abused and neglected children lack the ability to ameliorate their own plight, [the Ohio reporting statute] imposes mandatory reporting duties on “those with special relationships with children, such as doctors and teachers.” These persons, when acting in their official or professional capacity, hold unique positions in our society. They are not only the most likely and qualified persons to encounter and identify abused and neglected children, but they are often directly responsible for the care, custody, or control of these children in one form or another. Yates v. Mansfield Bd. of Educ., 2004-Ohio-2491, ¶ 30, 808 N.E.2d 861 (citations omitted). “The duty is to report knowledge or suspicion of abuse or neglect that the designated persons encounter while doing their ordinary work. . . . What the statute requires is actually quite minimal: when teachers, or others who are required to report, encounter suspected abuse or neglect in their official capacity, they must report it.” State v. Clark, 2013-Ohio-4731, ¶¶ 83, 85, 999 N.E.2d 592 (O’Connor, C.J., dissenting on an issue unrelated to the reporting requirement), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 43 (2014). Our research has found no case from any other jurisdiction that discerned a distinction between professionals receiving their compensation from the government and those receiving their compensation from private individuals or organizations. {28} The “official capacity” language had more significance in New Mexico’s original version of the reporting statute applicable only to the named occupations, a limitation that changed in just a few years with statutory amendments that expanded the list of reporters from certain described occupations to all persons learning of abuse and changed the reporting from discretionary to mandatory.