Opinion ID: 1385357
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Contractual and vested rights

Text: Does the 1976 amendment to Government Code section 68203 impair contractual or vested rights? If so, prior to the amendment exactly what contractual rights did the section vest in the judges who took office before January 1, 1977? The section then read, [O]n the effective date of the 1969 amendments to this section and on September 1 of each year thereafter the salary of each justice and judge.... shall be increased by that amount which is produced by multiplying [etc.]. (Italics added.) The justices and judges referred to were those named in Sections 68200 to 68202. The names appearing in those sections were the Chief Justice ... and each Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, the [p]residing justice or associate justice of a court of appeal division, each [j]udge of the superior court, and each [j]udge of a municipal court. Did the Legislature mean the incumbents only? Obviously not. Those who took office after the original enactment and after amendment were included too. However, with regard to each individual justice and judge did the Legislature express or imply any intent as to term of office? I think not. The statute nowhere mentions anybody's term. Instead it specifies each year thereafter. Until when? I submit that each year thereafter meant each year until the statute was amended or repealed, with no extra years to be set by terms of office. Public officers and employees may, of course, enter into salary and wage agreements with the state; and by statute the Legislature may articulate the terms of the agreements. But section 68203 is not that kind of statute. The majority of the legislators never would have approved the law, I believe, had they been advised that its words created a contractual right to cost-of-living increases that would survive amendment or repeal. There was no contract because there was no offer or acceptance. [E]ach year thereafter was designed as a legislative, not a contractual, phrase. Salary and wage contracts that bind employers, including public employers, typically contain definite dates. Is it not startling for the majority here to rule that a statute referring only to each year thereafter [indefinitely] nonetheless creates a binding contract to pay certain salaries during particular terms of office? I believe there was no binding contract, and thus I identify no rights that could have been impaired. Indeed, it was the absence from salary statutes of vested rights to compensation for services not yet rendered that necessitated the constitutional prohibition of reductions in elected officers' salaries during their terms of office (art. III, § 4). It is neither necessary nor fitting for this court to add to that constitutional protection a judicially contrived right, purportedly contractual, that is not enjoyed by the thousands of other public officers and employees who serve indefinite tenures. As to (1) pensioners, and (2) the judges who took office on or after January 1, 1977, I am persuaded by these excerpts from Justice Fleming's opinion: [T]he rights of judicial pensioners are directly tied to those of sitting judges and take the form of a floating pension proportionate to the comparable current judicial salary. We have heretofore concluded that, absent any reduction in the dollar amount of the pension, judicial pensioners' rights are dependent upon sitting judges' rights to salary, and, if a prospective increase in salary for sitting judges does not materialize, the pensioners have no independent grounds for complaint. Any contractual rights for future increases in judicial salary and any vested or accrued rights to future increases in judicial salary are not the rights of the pensioners. Consequently, any impairment or infringement of such rights only indirectly and secondarily affects judicial pensioners and gives them no separate cause to complain. (Cf. Harrison v. Colgan (1905) 148 Cal. 64, 73 [82 P. 674].) The pensioner floats in water whose origin is the current judicial office, and like water his rights cannot rise above their source.  Newly-elected Judges. Nor do newly-elected or newly-appointed judges have cause to complain of prior legislative change in the future salary of the office to which the judge has been elected or appointed. Such judges did not serve under the old dispensation and could have no legitimate expectation of the continuance of cost-of-living increases in salary under the old law, in that the law had already been changed prior to their assumption of office.