Opinion ID: 2622018
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: To Avoid Constitutional Infirmity the Act Exempts the Post Home

Text: ś 75 [W]here a statute is susceptible of several interpretations, some of which may render it unconstitutional, the court, without doing violence to the legislative purpose, will adopt a construction which will sustain its constitutionality if at all possible to do so. State ex rel. Morgan v. Kinnear, 80 Wash.2d 400, 402, 494 P.2d 1362 (1972). ś 76 The Act prohibits smoking in a public place or in any place of employment. RCW 70.160.030. However, the Act is not intended to restrict smoking in private facilities. . . . RCW 70.160.020(2). Moreover, the Act permits smoking in a private enclosed workplace, within a public place, even though such workplace may be visited by nonsmokers. . . . RCW 70.160.060. To read this language as a layperson would read it, the Act exempts the Post Home. ś 77 The majority perceives exempting the Post Home is inconsistent with the statutory scheme and the intent of the voters. I disagree. To interpret the statute any other way is not only to ignore the text and intent of the voters but also to invite constitutional error. ś 78 `In construing the meaning of an initiative, the language of the enactment is to be read as the average informed lay voter would read it.' Majority at 313-14 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting State v. Brown, 139 Wash.2d 20, 28, 983 P.2d 608 (1999)). The Act does not define private facility or private enclosed workplace. However, private means intended for or restricted to the use of a particular person or group or class of persons: not freely available to the public. [2] A facility is something. . . that is built, constructed, installed, or established to perform some particular function or to serve some particular end.  [3] A workplace is a place . . . where work is done. [4] ś 79 The Post Home is clearly private. Its membership is restricted to those persons who have served this country at a time of armed conflict, and its employees are directly related to either current members . . . or deceased veterans who, if they were alive, would be entitled to membership. Majority at 313 n. 2. Moreover, the Post Home is a facility established for the particular function of facilitating the gathering of those persons who have served this country in a time of war. The exception of RCW 70.160.020(2) applies to the Post Home. ś 80 The majority reasons that applying the exception to the Post Home would swallow the smoking restriction at places of employment, analogizing to an office building with hundreds of employees. Majority at 316-17; see also concurrence at 329. But its analogy is inapt; an office building is not restricted to a particular group or class of persons. [5] Post Home, however, as a private association may be and in fact is restrictive in its membership and employment. See Boy Scouts of Am. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640, 120 S.Ct. 2446, 147 L.Ed.2d 554 (2000); see also RCW 49.60.040(3) (excluding any religious or sectarian organization not organized for private profit from discrimination laws). ś 81 Nor can it be said the private facility exemption frustrates the voters' intention. Initiative 901 amended RCW 70.160.020(2) to include certain places of employment with the public place definition while leaving intact the private facility exception. See RCW 70.160.020(2) (banning smoking from bars, taverns, bowling alleys, skating rinks, casinos[;] . . . [t]his chapter is not intended to restrict smoking in private facilities). When enlarging the smoking ban to include these places of employment, the voters left intact this very specific private facility exemption. Moreover, the voters left intact the exemption for smoking in private enclosed workplaces, within a public place. . . . RCW 70.160.060. ś 82 These exceptions to the smoking ban express the voters' recognition that certain private places, even if places of employment, are exempt from the smoking ban. We must recognize these specific exemptions, not replace them with our own. [6] See In re Estate of Little, 106 Wash.2d 269, 283, 721 P.2d 950 (1986) (giving effect to specific statute over general one). ś 83 Nor do these specific exemptions conflict with the voters' intent to protect employees from secondhand smoke for two reasons. First, the stated intention of Initiative 901 was to prohibit smoking in public places and workplaces. RCW 70.160.011 (emphasis added). In this context the word and is conjunctive, joining the two elements so that the second logically qualifies the first. . . . WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 80 (2002). In other words, the voters' intention was to restrict smoking from places of employment that were also public places. ś 84 Second, a private facility and private enclosed workplace are, by definition, limited to particular places available to a particular class of people, the class of people who make it private. Employment at a private facility, available only to members of the organization, is not employment in the usual sense of the term; employment is restricted to members of the particular class to make the private facility private in the first place. [7] At the Post Home a person is a member first, an employee second. If a private member-run association may restrict employment to only its voluntary members, it is a private facility and exempt from the smoking ban. This is a much narrower exception than the one conceived by the majority and concurrence. ś 85 All seven employees of the Post Home are members of its auxiliary. Membership in the Auxiliary is limited to women who are directly related to either current members of the American Legion or deceased veterans who, if they were alive, would be entitled to membership. Majority at 313 n. 2. All seven Post Home employees are directly related to other members of the Post Home. It is ironic a member may smoke with his wife at home but not at the Post Home because at the Post Home his wife is being remunerated for her time. It is equally ironic that six out of seven of the auxiliary members employed at the Post Home are themselves smokers. [8] ś 86 The private facility exception reflects the greater importance of private autonomy over business relationships. Otherwise, what public purpose does the Act serve beyond pernicious interference with personal liberty? ś 87 According to the majority, to permit smoking at the Post Home would involuntarily subject[ ] employees to the supposed dangers of workplace smoke. Majority at 316-17. Our majority forgets we purport to live in a free society; this is neither the Soviet of Washington [9] nor Nazi Germany. ś 88 [10] Slavery was abolished in 1865. [11] Moreover, since Washington is an at will employment state, either the employer or the employee can end the employment relationship at any time, with or without notice and with or without cause. See, e.g., Lasser v. Grunbaum Bros. Furniture Co., 46 Wash.2d 408, 410, 281 P.2d 832 (1955). Since none of the Post Home's employees are involuntary, none of them are involuntarily subjected to anything. Majority at 316-17.