Opinion ID: 2188935
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: interruptions of teaching responsibilities

Text: Lastly, we must consider whether respondent's unpaid leaves of absence from the college during the Legislature's regular sessions and his removal from the college payroll during most of the Unicameral's special sessions have any legal significance. As a tenured member of the college faculty, respondent likely possesses a legally protected expectation of continued employment. See Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972). However, whether he does or does not possess such a legally protected right, the fact is that his position with the college has been renewed each and every year he has been a senator. While his leaves of absence and removal from the college payroll have permitted him to interrupt his teaching responsibilities, they have obviously not severed his continuing relationship with the college. The actuality thus is that at all relevant times respondent has simultaneously been a state senator and an assistant professor at the college. Consequently, his leaves of absence from the college and his intermittent removals from its payroll are not material to the issues presented in this case. Respondent is therefore a member of one branch of government, the executive, exercising the powers of another, the legislative, and, as a consequence, is in violation of article II of the state Constitution. In so holding, we are not unmindful that a division of the Washington Court of Appeals, while recognizing that a violation of the canons of judicial conduct had occurred, recently determined that an attorney who heard a criminal case as a judge pro tempore while serving as a state senator had not violated the separation of powers doctrine. In so ruling, the court reasoned that the attorney had not exercised both offices simultaneously. State v. Osloond, 60 Wash.App. 584, 805 P.2d 263 (1991). However, the Washington Constitution does not have an express separation of powers provision, and the Osloond court was thus able to base its decision on more general principles than those which we are constrained to follow. Nor are we unmindful of State ex rel. Stratton v. Roswell Schools, 111 N.M. 495, 806 P.2d 1085 (1991), a recent New Mexico appellate court decision which held that that state's separation of powers provision did not prohibit public school administrators and teachers from serving in the state Legislature. As we have previously noted, New Mexico's Constitution provides that no person ... charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments, shall exercise any powers properly belonging to either of the others.... N.M. Const. art. III, § 1. In other words, it prohibits the officers (persons charged with the exercise of powers) of one branch from exercising the powers (or acting as an officer) of a coordinate branch. Thus, the personnel aspect of the New Mexico provision is limited to prohibiting one from being an officer in different branches simultaneously. In contrast, article II of our Constitution prohibits members of one branch from exercising the powers of a coordinate branch and therefore prohibits any member of one of the three brancheswhether it be an officer or employeefrom being an officer in another branch. Because the New Mexico provision is narrower than that of article II, the reasoning of Stratton is inappropriate under our Constitution. Numerous other jurisdictions have addressed similar questions under various provisions of their state constitutions. The results, as illustrated earlier, are in no way uniform, but the following decisions evince that Nebraska does not stand alone in maintaining the independence of each of the coordinate branches of government: Alaska has held that its Constitution prohibits a legislator from holding a position as a teacher or superintendent in a state-operated school district. See Begich v. Jefferson, 441 P.2d 27 (Alaska 1968). The Arkansas Constitution prohibits a state legislator from being elected to and serving on the board of directors of a school district during his term in the Legislature. See Williams v. Douglas, 251 Ark. 555, 473 S.W.2d 896 (1971). The Connecticut Constitution has been held to prohibit members of the general assembly from concurrent employment as faculty or professional staff at a state college. See Stolberg v. Caldwell, 175 Conn. 586, 402 A.2d 763 (1978), appeal dismissed, Stolberg v. Davidson, 454 U.S. 958, 102 S.Ct. 496, 70 L.Ed.2d 374 (1981). After Oregon held that a state legislator was ineligible for employment as a public school teacher, see Monaghan v. School District No. 1, 211 Or. 360, 315 P.2d 797 (1957), the Constitution was amended to permit legislators to teach; however, a judge was still prohibited from teaching at a state-funded college, see In the Matter of Sawyer, 286 Or. 369, 594 P.2d 805 (1979). Justice Sutherland, commenting on the importance of the maintenance of separate branches, stated: If it be important thus to separate the several departments of government and restrict them to the exercise of their appointed powers, it follows, as a logical corollary, equally important, that each department should be kept completely independent of the othersindependent not in the sense that they shall not cooperate to the common end of carrying into effect the purposes of the Constitution, but in the sense that the acts of each shall never be controlled by, or subjected, directly or indirectly, to, the coercive influence of either of the other departments. James Wilson, one of the framers of the Constitution and a justice of this court, in one of his law lectures said that the independence of each department required that its proceedings should be free from the remotest influence, direct or indirect, of either of the other two powers. Andrews, The Works of James Wilson (1896), Vol. 1, p. 367. O'Donoghue v. United States, 289 U.S. 516, 530, 53 S.Ct. 740, 743, 77 L.Ed. 1356 (1933). The dynamics of power are perhaps best illustrated in this case by the fact that the Board of Trustees' policy manual on leaves of absence treats employees of the state colleges who hold political offices differently from those who do not. As noted earlier, employees who hold no political office ordinarily may take a leave of absence but once every 4 years; however, employees who hold a political office routinely may take leaves as often as they wish. Nor are political officeholders required to make the prearrangements required of those who hold no political office.