Court Opinion

ID: 9536623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:03:38.799864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:52.912430
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Chief Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
Although I am in agreement with the court’s holding that the residency requirement of AS 42.10.130(d) is invalid, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the invalid portion of AS 42.10.130(d) is severable.
Admittedly, the issue does not lend itself to easy resolution, for in the case at bar we are required to ascertain legislative intent in the absence of any solid legislative history and with the purported assistance of several aids to the determination of legislative intent which are themselves capable of varying applications. Nevertheless, I find persuasive plaintiffs’ arguments that the residency requirement of AS 42.10.-130(d) was so narrowly drafted that in all likelihood the legislature would not have enacted subsection (d) without the residency requirement and that elimination of the residency provision would result in the exemption of a much broader class than intended from the duty of establishing that the “public convenience or necessity” would be served by the expansion of their operating authority.
In short, my analysis of the legislation in question leads me to the conclusion that the primary intent of the legislature in en-. acting AS 42.10.130(d), (e), and (f) was not to extend the intrastate authority of carriers who had obtained both interstate and intrastate “grandfather” rights so as to make the routes coextensive. In my view, the dominant purpose of the questioned legislation was to benefit local residents by expansion of their intrastate operating authority.