Court Opinion

ID: 9858037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:12:42.321502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:01:28.424010
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
In order to gain unemployment benefit eligibility, Iowa Code section 96.3(2) requires a claimant to show that the dual conditions of absence of wage entitlement and absence of work coincide during the same week. That is the way the statute is written. It is inconceivable that it would have been written that way had it not been intended that these two conditions coincide during any week in which benefits are claimed.
The administrative regulations relied on by the majority to establish benefit eligibility do not purport to deal with benefit eligibility. Those regulations only govern the amount of benefits which are payable to those persons eligible under the basic requirements set forth in section 96.3(2).
The majority alludes to a supposed unfairness in the treatment accorded this claimant by the agency as compared to other unemployed teachers who have elected to be paid over a nine-month period. I submit that this court’s sense of fairness is not a proper standard by which to measure eligibility under unambiguous statutory criteria. Moreover, if comparisons are to be made, there is a much more relative comparison available in evaluating the merit of the agency’s position. That is the comparison which may be drawn by matching the situation of a teacher paid on a twelvemonth basis whose contract is terminated in May, with the situation of a teacher paid on a twelve-month basis whose contract is renewed for the following school year.
In the situations being compáred, both persons receive the same relative level of subsistence income during the summer months. Both persons perform no services during the summer months. But, under the majority’s interpretation of the statute, the first person is entitled to receive unemployment benefits although the second person is expressly made ineligible for unemployment benefits by the provisions of Iowa Code section 96.4(5)(a) and (b).
Those in the second person’s situation constitute a much larger number of workers than those in the first person’s situation. Consequently, in acting to cure a discrimination affecting a few persons, the majority is simultaneously creating a different classification which discriminates against a much larger category of persons.
I submit that the agency is more nearly treating like situations in a like manner than is true under the position taken by the majority of this court. Moreover, in so doing, the agency is not unfaithful to the principle that the policy of the unemployment security laws is to maintain a reasonable level of purchasing power in order to avoid serious social consequences of poor relief assistance. See Declaration of Policy *770contained in Iowa Code section 96.2 (1989). The claimant’s financial situation has not been demonstrated to be such that the denial of benefits offends against this policy.