Court Opinion

ID: 9569563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:15:06.915923+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:03:28.685236
License: Public Domain

Dimmick, J.
(dissenting) — I respectfully disagree with the majority's conclusion that marital status can mean something other than the state of being married when applied to unemployment compensation. In my opinion, the policy argument for the reason the legislature might have sought *783to exclude Yamauchi from RCW 50.20.050(4) as one of line drawing, makes common sense even though rejected by the majority, page 781. In fact, the majority then goes ahead and draws the line, not from the date of her voluntary unemployment, as did the trial court, but from the actual date of her marriage and her move to Spokane. The Court of Appeals, Division Three, in a unanimous decision, upheld the department’s determination that the clear statutory language did not allow an unmarried person to voluntarily leave her employment, then qualify under the marital exception. Yamauchi v. Department of Employment Security, 28 Wn. App. 427, 624 P.2d 197 (1981). I concur.
Our courts have construed the "good cause” provision of RCW Title 50 to mean a compelling personal reason to voluntarily terminate employment. Case law has considered a compelling personal reason to be one where a wife terminates employment to join her husband and a husband terminates his employment to join the wife. In re Bale, 63 Wn.2d 83, 385 P.2d 545 (1963); Ayers v. Department of Employment Security, 85 Wn.2d 550, 536 P.2d 610 (1975). The majority would now, after a change in the statute in 1977 following after the Ayers and Bale cases, disregard that legislative intent which codified the good cause under the preceding two cases, and by judicial legislation declare that marital status should be extended to mean "one about to be married". Our legislature has not expressly provided benefits to individuals who leave work in preparation of marriage, although this could have been accomplished as was done by the State of Oregon.
In re Bale decided, at page 91: "it is the duty of the wife to accompany her husband and live at the home he has selected". Therefore, good cause was established for termination of the wife's employment. When the reverse was true, in the Ayers case a divided court (Justices Hamilton, Utter and Horowitz dissenting) held that it was a compelling personal reason for a husband to quit his seasonal job to move to a distant town where his wife- had obtained *784employment. The dissent argued that no compelling personal reason existed in that case and that in our mobile society and economy, it is not uncommon for families to be temporarily separated without adverse effect upon the family relationship and that the husband in that case had made a deliberate, conscious and voluntary decision to quit his job for reasons of personal convenience.
The analysis employed by the court in Ayers and Bale is applicable in the instant case. The legislature did not intend to include about-to-be-married persons within its marital status exception. Accordingly, Yamauchi, like any other claimant, must establish good cause for an exemption. She should have to show that reasonable alternatives to voluntarily leaving work were not available and that mere matters of personal convenience were not the real reasons for her quitting.
I cannot believe the legislature, in view of the stated purpose of the unemployment act — which is to "lighten its burden which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker and his family" — ever meant to cover the situation at bench. It should be noted the distance between Pasco and Spokane is 134 miles. Yamauchi herself indicated she had considered commuting, but she and her husband had only one car. Her husband is a self-employed attorney in the Spokane area. Should not alternatives have been explored? Could they have lived somewhere equi-distant from the two work sites? All these matters are within the determination of the department on a case-by-case basis. Here, the department found no good cause and should be upheld.
Our legislature has clearly determined that a marital status exemption where one party is required to follow a spouse should exist. However, are we to extend the majority's Yamauchi doctrine judicially to cases where live-in couples decide to relocate? Perhaps in some cases good *785cause could be shown. That is for the department to determine as long as the legislature has not done so. I therefore would affirm the Court of Appeals.
Brachtenbach, C.J., and Stafford and Dolliver, JJ., concur with Dimmick, J.