Opinion ID: 1185018
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Although the government, as employer, retains considerable discretion in determining whether to dismiss public employees, the due process clause limits governmental authority to dismiss permanent employees arbitrarily.

Text: County ordinance No. 440 provides in relevant part that Every officer ... may ... remove any employee of the department without notice and for cause satisfactory to himself, subject only to the provisions of this ordinance and requirements of law. The initial question which we address is whether requirements of law, specifically the due process clause of our state and federal Constitutions (Cal. Const., art. I, § 13; U.S. Const., Amend. XIV), places any limits on the government's power to discharge a permanent public employee arbitrarily. As the majority fully recognize (majority opn., ante, p. 781), on the present record Mr. Bogacki's dismissal appears to have been based on totally unfounded grounds; although his supervisor justified the discharge on grounds of insubordination, the review board found that charge factually unsupported and both the review board and the trial court concluded that Bogacki was fully competent for the position from which he was dismissed. Thus, we have before us a discharge that can claim no evidentiary support in the present record; under traditional legal terminology, such a discharge is unquestionably arbitrary. Action is arbitrary not only when it is capricious, but also if it lacks adequate support in the record, when the facts do not justify the conclusion. ( Hollon v. Pierce (1967) 257 Cal. App.2d 468, 478 [64 Cal. Rptr. 808]; see, e.g., Thompson v. City of Louisville (1960) 362 U.S. 199 [4 L.Ed.2d 654, 80 S.Ct. 624]; Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners (1957) 353 U.S. 232 [1 L.Ed.2d 796, 77 S.Ct. 752].) Although the majority purportedly recognize that the Constitution limits the government's power to discharge a public employee for an unconstitutional reason, they perceive no constitutional impediment to the totally arbitrary exercise of this governmental authority. Under the majority's analysis, placement of a public employee's continued employment under the absolute and unfettered discretion of a government supervisor, where dismissal even at the mere whim of the supervisor is unchallengeable is entirely compatible with constitutional strictures. The due process clause of the Constitution stands, however, as a fundamental challenge to the majority's conclusion. Historically, a primary purpose of the due process clause was to circumscribe the government's power to utilize its authority arbitrarily. As early as 1819 the United States Supreme Court acknowledged that the due process clause was intended to secure the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the power of government ( Bank of Columbia v. Okely (1819) 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 235, 244 [4 L.Ed. 559, 561]) and despite numerous changes in the court's composition and judicial philosophy throughout our nation's history, the Supreme Court has consistently maintained that there is no place in our constitutional system for the exercise of arbitrary power.... ( Garfield v. United States ex rel. Goldsby (1908) 211 U.S. 249, 262 [53 L.Ed. 168, 175, 29 S.Ct. 627].) [1] Justice Cardozo, writing for a unanimous court in Ohio Bell Telephone Co. v. Public Utilities Com. (1937) 301 U.S. 292, 302 [81 L.Ed. 1093, 1100, 59 S.Ct. 724], characterized the essence of due process as the protection of the individual against arbitrary action. The majority do not challenge the fundamental proposition that the due process clause, where applicable, precludes arbitrary governmental action; in finding that an absolute power of dismissal (majority opn., ante, p. 781 (original italics)) in a government official is compatible with constitutional requirements, however, the majority necessarily have determined, albeit sub silentio, that the due process clause is not applicable to the discharge of public employees. Although the majority suggest no reason why this particular constitutional protection, as distinguished from all other constitutional rights, may be totally withheld from public employees, the majority apparently view their conclusion as simply a restatement of settled constitutional principles. In my view, however, a careful review of the applicable constitutional decisions reveals that the settled principle relied on by the majority has been substantially eroded over the past two decades. Historically, the doctrine that the protections of the due process clause are not applicable to the discharge of public employees emerged from a series of cases which viewed the status of public employment as a mere privilege rather than a matter of constitutional right. This line of cases, [2] epitomized by Justice Holmes' renowned epigram in McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford (1892) 155 Mass. 216, 220 [29 N.E. 517], [3] reasoned that since an individual had no right to demand that the government employ him, the status of public employee was one that had been granted by the government as a matter of grace, and one which could, in the absence of statutory limitations, accordingly be withdrawn at the pleasure of the state. It is this series of cases on which the majority's conclusion inescapably rests. The past 20 years of constitutional adjudication, however, have been devoted in no small part to discrediting and disavowing the right-privilege mode of decision-making adopted by these earlier cases. (See generally Van Alstyne, The Demise of the Right-Privilege Distinction in Constitutional Law (1968) 81 Harv.L.Rev. 1439.) The modern decisions, recognizing that the right-privilege distinction in reality affords no persuasive reasoning but simply embodies a legal conclusion, have uniformly discarded this talismanic formula, and have recognized that constitutional provisions constitute a general limit on governmental action, whether that action involves the withdrawal of government largess or a more traditional exercise of governmental regulations. [4] As this court explicitly recognized in Bagley v. Washington Township Hospital Dist. (1966) 65 Cal.2d 499, 500-504 [55 Cal. Rptr. 401, 421 P.2d 409], the reasoning of the privilege cases today stands utterly discredited. Although an individual can claim no constitutional right to obtain public employment or to receive any other publicly conferred benefit, the government cannot condition admission to such employment or receipt of such benefits upon any terms that it may choose to impose.... Today courts and commentators alike recognize without question that the power of government, federal or state, to withhold benefits from its citizens does not encompass a supposed `lesser' power to grant such benefits upon an arbitrary deprivation of constitutional right. The majority, of course, are obviously not oblivious to this line of cases; the initial portion of their opinion specifically recognizes the force of these decisions in limiting the government's authority to discharge an employee for exercising a specific constitutional right, such as the right of free speech. The majority fail to recognize, however, that by discrediting the entire privilege approach to constitutional adjudication and by establishing the applicability of constitutional restrictions to all forms of governmental activity, this developing series of decisions also brings into play the due process clause's substantive protection against arbitrary governmental action. (See generally O'Neill, Justice Delayed and Justice Denied, 1970 Sup.Ct. Rev. 161, 203-207.) Thus, although the majority apparently purport to be merely reaffirming settled law by ratifying a wholly subjective governmental authority to discharge employees, they overlook a number of decisions in both the United States Supreme Court and in this court, reaching back nearly 20 years, which, after rejecting the right-privilege analysis of early cases, have explicitly recognized that the due process clause proscribes arbitrary exclusions and dismissals [5] from public service. Wieman v. Updegraff (1952) 344 U.S. 183 [97 L.Ed. 216, 73 S.Ct. 215] represents the initial decision of this sequence. In a series of cases prior to Wieman, the court had affirmed the right of states to dismiss employees who had been found to advocate the overthrow of the government by unlawful means, or who refused to answer inquiries relating to matters that may prove relevant to their fitness and suitability for the public service. ( Adler v. Board of Education (1952) 342 U.S. 485 [96 L.Ed. 517, 72 S.Ct. 380, 27 A.L.R.2d 472]; Garner v. Los Angeles Board (1951) 341 U.S. 716 [95 L.Ed. 1317, 71 S.Ct. 909].) In Wieman, however, a public employee had been dismissed by the state merely for refusing to sign a loyalty oath which required him to swear to present and past nonmembership in the Communist Party or in any Communist front organization; the state automatically excluded all such members from public service, regardless of whether they knew of the anti-government activity of their organization or had actually partaken in such activity. Although the state argued that its right to condition public employment on such conditions followed from its broad authority over employees which the court had seemingly recognized in its earlier decisions, [6] the Wieman court first carefully distinguished the prior cases as involving conditions on employment which had some rational relation to the employee's fitness for public service, and then concluded that an employee's mere membership in an organization had no such relevance to his fitness for public employment, because the membership could as reasonably be innocent as guilty. (344 U.S. at p. 191 [97 L.Ed. at p. 222].) The court declared: Indiscriminate classification of innocent with knowing activity must fall as an assertion of arbitrary power. The oath offends due process. (Italics added.) (344 U.S. at p. 191 [97 L.Ed. at p. 222].) In concluding, the Wieman court made its holding that the due process clause prohibits the arbitrary restriction of public employment entirely clear by explicitly responding to the logic of the right-privilege dogma. The court stated, We need not pause to consider whether an abstract right to public employment exists. It is sufficient to say that constitutional protection does extend to the public servant whose exclusion pursuant to a statute is patently arbitrary or discriminatory. (Italics added.) (344 U.S. at pp. 191-192 [97 L.Ed. at p. 222].) The due process limitation on the arbitrary exclusion or dismissal of public employees, which first fully emerged in Wieman, was enunciated in equally explicit terms in Slochower v. Board of Education (1956) 350 U.S. 551 [100 L.Ed. 692, 76 S.Ct. 637]. In Slochower, a teacher who had refused on Fifth Amendment grounds to answer several questions posed by a federal Congressional committee, was dismissed from his position at a state college on the basis of a New York statute which provided for the automatic dismissal of any employee who utilized the privilege against self-incrimination to avoid answering governmental inquiries. The teacher challenged the constitutionality of his dismissal on two distinct grounds: (1) that the law abridged his privileges and immunities as a United States citizen, since it imposed a penalty on the exercise of his Fifth Amendment rights, and (2) that the law violates due process ... because the mere claim of privilege under the Fifth Amendment does not provide a reasonable basis for the State to terminate his employment. (350 U.S. at p. 555 [100 L.Ed. at pp. 698-699].) The Supreme Court explicitly did not reach the first question  concerning the statute's alleged impairment of the privilege against self-incrimination  but instead rested its holding directly on its conclusion that summary dismissal of appellant in the circumstances of the case violates due process of law. ( Id. ) Thus Slochower is beyond peradventure strictly a due process decision. The Slochower court began its analysis by recognizing the very limited aid afforded by the right-privilege formulation; the court declared, To state that a person does not have a constitutional right to government employment is only to say that he must comply with reasonable, lawful and non-discriminatory terms laid down by the proper authorities. ( Id. ) (Italics added.) The court then reviewed the series of public employee cases discussed in Wieman and found that all of these decisions had emphasized that [in excluding or dismissing an employee] the State must conform to the requirements of due process. (350 U.S. at p. 556 [100 L.Ed. at p. 699].) Conformity to due process, under long-established constitutional precedent, required that the government's exclusion or dismissal of a particular employee not be arbitrary, i.e., that the reason or basis for the government decision must have some rational connection to the employee's fitness and suitability for the public service. ( Garner v. Los Angeles Board (1952) 341 U.S. 716, 720 [95 L.Ed. 1317, 1322, 71 S.Ct. 909].) Using this traditional non-arbitrary, or rationality standard of due process as its guide, the Slochower court concluded that the dismissal of the teacher in the case at bar, solely on the basis of events occurring before a federal committee whose inquiry was announced as not directed at `the property, affairs, or government of the city, or ... official conduct of city employees,' bore no reasonable relationship to the teacher's fitness for employment and thus was violative of due process. The court reasoned, Since no inference of guilt was possible from the claim [of privilege] before the federal committee, the discharge falls of its own weight as wholly without support. There has not been the `protection of the individual against arbitrary action' which Mr. Justice Cardozo characterized as the very essence of due process. Ohio Bell Telephone Co. v. Commission (1937) 301 U.S. 292, 302. (Italics added.) (350 U.S. at p. 559 [100 L.Ed. at pp. 700-701].) Indeed, even the dissenters in Slochower did not take issue with the general constitutional principle that due process prohibits the government from discharging an employee on arbitrary grounds, the principle which the majority in the instant case decline to accept. Justice Harlan, writing in dissent, posed the relevant question most succinctly: Does such a statute bear a reasonable relation to New York's interest in insuring the qualifications of its teachers? He, and the other dissenters, found the statute nonviolative of due process only after concluding that a teacher's refusal to answer official inquiries could reasonably be said to bear upon his fitness for public employment. This general constitutional precept  that the due process clause precludes the arbitrary dismissal or exclusion of public employees  recognized by Wieman and Slochower over a decade ago, has been explicitly articulated and applied by our own state courts as well. Wilson v. City of Los Angeles (1960) 54 Cal.2d 61 [4 Cal. Rptr. 489, 351 P.2d 761] provides perhaps the clearest example of the principle at work. In Wilson, a county clerk had been dismissed from Los Angeles County's employ in 1948 when she refused to sign the then prevailing loyalty oath. Eleven years later, in 1959, Wilson sought public employment with the City of Los Angeles, passed all examinations necessary to qualify her for the position of senior clerk, and informed the city that she was willing to sign the current state loyalty oath, which had been revised since 1948. The city board of civil service examiners refused to certify her application for employment, however, relying on a local rule that anyone who had previously been discharged from public service was ineligible for further employment, regardless of the reason for the initial discharge. Wilson sought a writ of mandate to compel the board to certify her for public employment, contending that the board's refusal was arbitrary and unconstitutional. The Wilson court, relying on Wieman, recognized at the outset of its opinion the constitutional principle which the majority in the present case apparently would deny. Declaring unambiguously that The right which the petitioner seeks to preserve here  that is, the right to public employment providing that such employment is available and that she meets all reasonable requirements  is entitled to protection at least against deprivation thereof by arbitrary means (italics added) (54 Cal.2d at p. 63), the court viewed the determinative question before it as whether the commission acted in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner in disqualifying the petitioner. (54 Cal.2d at p. 64.) This is precisely the same question which the majority assert cannot be raised in the instant case. Thus, in simply framing the issue before it, the Wilson decision demonstrates the error of the majority approach. The Wilson case provides additional guidance, of course, by its final resolution of the arbitrariness issue. In determining that the city board's exclusion of Wilson from public service was arbitrary (54 Cal.2d at p. 66), this court emphasized that the applicant's past refusal to sign a loyalty oath bore no relation to her present fitness for reemployment: [D]isqualification at an earlier date for failure to swear to an oath then required, has no more bearing on her present qualification than would her failure to meet prior educational requirements since abandoned. (54 Cal.2d at p. 65.) The concluding paragraph leaves no doubt that, in overturning the board's decision, the court relied squarely on the constitutional proscription of arbitrary exclusion from public employment. We stated: It is manifest that the relevancy of the petitioner's refusal to subscribe, for reasons of conscience, to a different oath eleven years earlier, and her discharge from public office at that time, is too remote to deprive her of consideration at this time.... [T]o disqualify the petitioner upon the ground relied on by the commission must be regarded as arbitrary and therefore unwarranted. (Italics added.) (54 Cal.2d at p. 66.) [7] The general teaching of Wieman, Slochower and Wilson, as well as the numerous cases following these decisions, [8] is that the due process prohibition of arbitrary governmental action is applicable to the government's dismissal or exclusion of a public employee. Although the majority would apparently dismiss these cases as simply involving discharges based on an employee's exercise of a specific constitutional right, such as the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, a close reading of the decisions refutes such a limited interpretation. In neither Wieman nor Wilson did the court intimate that the dismissal was improper because it impaired a specific constitutional right; instead the courts invalidated the state action as arbitrary, as having no rational relation to the employee's fitness for work. [9] And in Slochower, it is perhaps even clearer that the decision rested solely on due process grounds and not on the impairment of another constitutional right, since, as noted above, both issues were raised before the Supreme Court and the court expressly found it unnecessary to determine if the state action improperly impaired the teacher's Fifth Amendment rights. [10] Thus, although the majority recognize the general constitutional development heralding the demise of the right-privilege doctrine, the majority fail to recognize that this demise has been accompanied by the emergence of two separate strains of constitutional decisions, rather than the single line of cases the majority identify. The first group of cases  exemplified by the decisions just reviewed  involve dismissals or exclusions which have been overturned because the reason for the government action bore no rational relation to job-fitness at all. In these instances, the government's action was found to be a denial of due process because it was arbitrary; Slochower clearly reveals that in such a case the existence of an independent constitutional right is not essential to the constitutional determination. As Justice Harlan's dissent in Slochower recognizes, the determinative constitutional question in these cases is simply whether the grounds for the state's action bear a reasonable relation to [the state's] interest in insuring the qualification of its [employees.] ( Slochower v. Board of Education (1956) 350 U.S. 551, 566 [100 L.Ed. 692, 704, 76 S.Ct. 637] (Harlan, J. dissenting).) Under these decisions, the due process clause prohibits the arbitrary dismissal or exclusion of public employees by the government. The second category of cases, the line of decisions recognized by the majority, encompasses situations in which the grounds for exclusion or dismissal, while rationally related to a legitimate government concern for public employment and hence not arbitrary, entail the impairment of a specific constitutional right. In Fort v. Civil Service Commission (1964) 61 Cal.2d 331 [38 Cal. Rptr. 625, 392 P.2d 385], for example, we addressed the constitutionality of a statute which authorized the dismissal of public employees for engaging in a broad range of political activities. As we recognized in Fort, the regulation of political activity of public employees frequently does bear at least a rational relation to the government's interest in a harmonious and non-corrupt public service (61 Cal.2d at p. 338; cf. United Public Workers v. Mitchell (1947) 330 U.S. 75, 101 [91 L.Ed. 754, 773, 67 S.Ct. 556]). Nevertheless, in light of the constitutional protection generally afforded by the First Amendment in safeguarding the citizen's participation in political activities, we required the government to show more than that the grounds for dismissal bore a rational relation to a legitimate state purpose in order to justify such a limitation on specific constitutional rights. (61 Cal.2d at p. 337; see, e.g., City of Carmel-By-the-Sea v. Young (1970) 2 Cal.3d 259, 263-265 [85 Cal. Rptr. 1, 466 P.2d 225]; Vogel v. County of Los Angeles (1967) 68 Cal.2d 18, 21 [64 Cal. Rptr. 409, 434 P.2d 961].) [11] Bagley v. Washington Township Hospital Dist. (1966) 65 Cal.2d 499 [55 Cal. Rptr. 401, 421 P.2d 409], in encapsulating Fort's analysis in a tripartite test, illuminates the disparate constitutional standards that have been applied to these two distinct categories of cases. In Bagley we held that a governmental agency which would require a waiver of constitutional rights as a condition of public employment must demonstrate: (1) that the political restraints rationally relate to the enhancement of the public service, (2) that the benefits which the public gains by the restraints outweigh the resulting impairment of constitutional rights, and (3) that no alternatives less subversive of constitutional rights are available. (65 Cal.2d at pp. 501-502.) Bagley's constitutional standard is quite obviously more stringent than the due process standard which both the majority and dissenters applied in Slochower or which governed in Wieman and Wilson; indeed, the rational relationship standard which constitutes the sole due process criterion, is only the first criterion which a dismissal or exclusion based on an employee's exercise of a specific constitutional right must satisfy. [12] In sum, the majority's focus on the latter class of decisions has obscured its vision of the earlier, more fundamental constitutional precedents proscribing arbitrary dismissals. Although this confusion may in part stem from some contrary dicta in a Supreme Court decision subsequent to Wieman and Slochower, [13] the court as recently as June 1971 cited Slochower as controlling precedent in a public employment case [14] and thus, I believe, the Supreme Court's decisions clearly hold that the due process clause's proscription on arbitrary action fully applies to dismissals from public employment. Indeed, over the past decade California courts have explicitly recognized the dual nature of constitutional limitations in this area. In Fort v. Civil Service Commission (1964) 61 Cal.2d 331, 334 [38 Cal. Rptr. 625, 392 P.2d 385], we declared that [I]t is settled that a person cannot properly be barred or removed from public employment arbitrarily or in disregard of his constitutional rights and that statement of the governing constitutional rule has been continually reiterated in a host of subsequent decisions. ( Bagley v. Washington Township Hospital Dist. (1966) 65 Cal.2d 499, 507 [55 Cal. Rptr. 401, 421 P.2d 409]; Hofberg v. County of Los Angeles Civil Service Commission (1968) 258 Cal. App.2d 433, 437 [65 Cal. Rptr. 759]; Hollon v. Pierce (1967) 257 Cal. App.2d 468, 478 [64 Cal. Rptr. 808]; Belshaw v. City of Berkeley (1966) 246 Cal. App.2d 493, 496 [54 Cal. Rptr. 727]; cf. Purdy & Fitzpatrick v. State of California (1969) 71 Cal.2d 566, 579 [79 Cal. Rptr. 77, 456 P.2d 645].) In condoning the existence of a wholly subjective power of removal in the government in the instant case, the majority would apparently dismiss our repeated proscription of arbitrary discharges in the above cases as inconsequential surplusage; the Wieman, Slochower and Wilson decisions, however, stand in direct opposition to the majority's narrow rendition of the governing constitutional principle. In allowing public employees a domain of purely arbitrary authority, the majority also undermine much of the practical protection that they purport to afford to employees' exercise of specific constitutional rights. The expanse of an absolute and unfettered discretion to dismiss can easily be utilized to cloak a discharge based on clearly unconstitutional grounds (see Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy (1961) 367 U.S. 886, 901 [6 L.Ed.2d 1230, 1239, 81 S.Ct. 1743] (Brennan, J. dissenting); Note, Arbitrary Teacher Dismissals (1969) 44 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 836, 841-842) and, as the instant case reveals, an employee faces a most difficult task if he must establish the forces that actually motivated a supervisor who is permitted to dismiss him for any or no reason at all. In such a case it appears particularly essential that the supervisor be required to come forth with at least some rational basis to support the dismissal, and not be allowed to simply hide behind a wholly subjective decision-making authority. (See Roth v. Board of Regents (W.D.Wis. 1970) 310 F. Supp. 972, 981-982.) Moreover, in view of the judiciary's historical recognition of the importance of protecting individuals' employment opportunities, it seems particularly perplexing that the majority should seek to preserve an enclave for totally subjective, indeed arbitrary, government action, in a case involving the loss of permanent employment. Governmental regulation of private employment opportunities has traditionally been circumscribed by the full panoply of constitutional protections, including the due process prohibition of arbitrary state action. Thus, it has long been established that in issuing or revoking professional credentials or occupational licenses the government has no wholly subjective authority and therefore cannot act arbitrarily. (See, e.g., Ohio Bell Telephone Co. v. Public Utilities Com. (1937) 301 U.S. 292 [81 L.Ed. 1093, 57 S.Ct. 724]; Willner v. Committee on Character (1963) 373 U.S. 96 [10 L.Ed.2d 224, 83 S.Ct. 1175]; Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners (1957) 353 U.S. 232 [1 L.Ed.2d 796, 77 S.Ct. 752]; Drummey v. State Bd. of Funeral Directors (1939) 13 Cal.2d 75 [87 P.2d 848]; Yakov v. Board of Medical Examiners (1968) 68 Cal.2d 67 [64 Cal. Rptr. 785, 435 P.2d 553]; Endler v. Schutzbank (1968) 68 Cal.2d 162 [65 Cal. Rptr. 297, 436 P.2d 297].) Although a state's action in dismissing its own employees has frequently been distinguished from its licensing activity on the grounds that the former is only an exercise of a proprietary act, while the latter involves the use of state authority in a governmental or regulatory capacity (see, e.g., Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy (1961) 367 U.S. 886, 896 [6 L.Ed.2d 1230, 1236, 81 S.Ct. 1743]), Professor Van Alstyne has recently emphasized: ... the [Fourteenth] Amendment does not say that `no State, except when acting in a proprietary capacity,' shall deny due process; rather, it makes no distinction at all respecting the capacity in which the state acts. (Van Alstyne, The Demise of the Right-Privilege Distinction in Constitutional Law (1968) 81 Harv.L.Rev. 1439, 1461.) Recent decisions, imposing constitutional restraints upon the government's conduct of such proprietary activities as the removal of a tenant from public housing (see Escalera v. New York City Housing Authority (2d Cir.1970) 425 F.2d 853, 861, cert. den. 400 U.S. 853 [27 L.Ed.2d 91, 91 S.Ct. 54]; Ruffin v. Housing Authority of New Orleans (E.D.La. 1969) 301 F. Supp. 251; Fuller v. Urstadt (1971) 28 N.Y.2d 315 [321 N.Y.S.2d 601, 270 N.E.2d 321]; cf. Thorpe v. Housing Authority (1967) 386 U.S. 670 [18 L.Ed.2d 394, 87 S.Ct. 1244]), the expulsion of a student from a public university ( Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (5th Cir.1961) 294 F.2d 150, cert. den. (1961) 368 U.S. 930 [7 L.Ed.2d 193, 82 S.Ct. 368]; Goldberg v. Regents of the University of California (1967) 248 Cal. App.2d 867, 877 [57 Cal. Rptr. 463]), or the termination of a grant of welfare ( Goldberg v. Kelly (1970) 397 U.S. 254 [25 L.Ed.2d 287, 90 S.Ct. 1011]) have exposed the proprietary-governmental dichotomy as no more valid than the right-privilege distinction it replaced. As Justice Douglas declared in his concurrence in Thorpe v. Housing Authority (1967) 386 U.S. 670, 678 [18 L.Ed.2d 394, 400, 87 S.Ct. 1244]: It is not depositive to maintain that a private landlord might terminate a lease at his pleasure. For this is the government we are dealing with, and the actions of the government are circumscribed by the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. The government as landlord is still government. It must not act arbitrarily, for, unlike private landlords, it is subject to the requirements of due process. Arbitrary action is not due process. [15] Furthermore, the majority's decision, preserving a governmental prerogative of arbitrary discharge, is even more anomalous when viewed in light of this court's numerous decisions carefully restricting the arbitrary exercise of authority by private bodies, such as labor unions and professional associations, in situations in which the private action has a significant impact on an individual's livelihood. In James v. Marinship Corp. (1944) 25 Cal.2d 721, 731 [155 P.2d 329, 160 A.L.R. 900] and Dotson v. Intl. Alliance etc. Employes (1949) 34 Cal.2d 362 [210 P.2d 5], for example, we held that a labor organization which maintained a closed shop, and thus had effective control of the availability of specific employment for an individual, could not arbitrarily exclude applicants for membership. Where a union has ... attained a monopoly of the supply of labor by means of closed shop agreements ... such a union occupies a quasi-public position similar to that of a public service business and it has certain corresponding obligations. It may no longer claim the same freedom from legal restraint enjoyed by golf clubs or fraternal associations. Its asserted right to choose its own members does not merely relate to social relations; it affects the fundamental right to work for a living. ( James v. Marinship Corp. (1944) 25 Cal.2d 721, 731 [155 P.2d 329, 160 A.L.R. 900], italics added.) The James court concluded an arbitrarily closed or partially closed union is incompatible with a closed shop (italics added) ( id. ; see also Thorman v. Intl. Alliance etc. Employees (1958) 49 Cal.2d 629, 634 [320 P.2d 494]; Cason v. Glass Bottle Blowers Assn. (1951) 37 Cal.2d 134 [231 P.2d 6]). And in Directors Guild of America, Inc. v. Superior Court (1966) 64 Cal.2d 42, 53-54 [48 Cal. Rptr. 710, 409 P.2d 934], we expanded this ruling and held that the ... grounds for condemnation of arbitrary rejection from membership apply as forcefully to the situation in which the union does not have a union shop contract as to that in which it does. (Italics added.) Similarly, we have recently applied the principles of these union cases to rejections or expulsions by trade and professional associations, and have determined that whenever membership in such associations would have a significant economic and professional bearing on an applicant's livelihood, an applicant for membership has a judicially enforceable right to have his application considered in a manner comporting with the fundamentals of due process, including the showing of cause for rejection. (Italics added.) ( Pinsker v. Pacific Coast Soc. of Orthodontists (1969) 1 Cal.3d 160, 166 [81 Cal. Rptr. 623, 460 P.2d 495]; see Kronen v. Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists (1965) 237 Cal. App.2d 289 [46 Cal. Rptr. 808].) As our reasoning in James clearly illustrates, unions and other business and professional associations are held to a strict standard of non-arbitrariness on the basis of the quasi-public positions they have been found to occupy. It is indeed ironic that the majority in the instant case, now apply a less demanding standard, indeed no standard at all, to the public's own treatment of its employees. Finally, the majority fail to recognize that a constitutional limitation on arbitrary or capricious dismissals need not, and properly should not, withdraw from public officials the considerable discretion required to determine an individual employee's fitness for his job. The majority quite reasonably balk at the establishment of a constitutional principle which they believe would require courts to judge in the first instance the reasonableness or arbitrariness of every governmental discharge; our courts have neither the resources nor the expertise for such an undertaking. The task of generating appropriate qualifications and standards for continued employment quite properly belongs to the individual governmental entities in charge of the particular employment and it is entirely consonant with constitutional principles that such bodies be delegated a broad discretion within which to exercise their expertise. [16] A similarly broad discretion has, of course, been granted to many administrative agencies charged with regulating business and professional licensing. Although I agree that we must recognize a broad discretion residing in employing agencies or supervisory personnel, it does not follow that we must similarly acknowledge this discretion to be absolute or unfettered or that it may be abused at will without any opportunity for review. (Cf. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action (1965) pp. 182, 586-587.) To be sure, the judicial role in this field must appropriately be a limited one, confined to insuring that the agencies themselves establish rational standards for continued employment and that they apply such guidelines in a non-arbitrary fashion. (See Roth v. Board of Regents (W.D.Wis. 1970) 310 F. Supp. 972, 979.) Nevertheless, when the government does discharge an employee arbitrarily, thereby abusing this broad discretion, I believe the courts must be open to afford relief. Where discretion is conferred upon an administrative officer to render a decision, this decision must be honestly rendered, and if it is arbitrary or capricious or rendered in bad faith, then courts have the power to review the decision and set it aside. ( Crocker v. United States (1955) 127 F. Supp. 568, 573 [130 Ct.Cl. 567].) On the present record, the dismissal of Bogacki can only be viewed as arbitrary. Two tribunals have found him fully competent for his job, and the county board of review, the local agency charged with the responsibility of reviewing discharges, concluded that there was no reasonable ground for his discharge. While I believe that a public employer may exercise a broad discretion in establishing standards for continued employment, I cannot understand why the preservation of that discretion necessitates or justifies the discharge of an employee without any factual basis whatever. As discussed above, I conclude that the government's discharge of an employee on what presently appears to be no grounds is incompatible with due process strictures; for this reason alone, petitioner is entitled to reinstatement.