Court Opinion

ID: 9810069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:38:54.667118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:21.037805
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COATS,
concurring in the judgment only.
40 While I too would reverse the judgment of the court of appeals, I do not join the majority opinion. Although for different reasons, I too would find that the statutes relied on by the plaintiffs do not offer to them a right to contract with the state; however, precisely for that reason, I do not believe either the federal or state constitutional limitation on the impairment of contractual obligations is at issue in this case. Finally, although I object to a number of things about the majority opinion, my fundamental concern is that by merely distinguishing the language and cireumstances of these statutory enactments from the pension-related schemes we have previously considered, the majority substantially depreciates the presumption against contracting by legislation and fails to satisfactorily address the real dilemma faced by the lower courts of the jurisdiction-whether they continue to be bound by this court's prior pronouncement that rights accruing under a pension plan are constitutionally protected contractual obligations, and if not, why not.
41 On their face, the contract clauses of both the federal and state Constitutions, limiting as they do the ability of the state to impair the obligation of contract, definitionally protect only contractual relationships. Although these constitutional provisions protect both private and public contracts, unlike the case with private parties, the power of governments to bind themselves in contract and, even where that power exists, to do so through legislation has long been rigidly cir-ecumseribed by judicial interpretation. Contracts purporting to bind governments with regard to the exercise of their core powers, notably their police powers and the power of eminent domain, have long been held void, no matter how deliberately they were entered into. See United States v. Winstar Corp., 518 U.S. 839, 116 S.Ct. 2432, 135 L.Ed.2d 964 (1996) (tracing history and purpose of reserved powers doctrine); Wheat Ridge Urban Renewal Auth. v. Cornerstone Grp. XXII, L.L.C,, 176 P.3d 737 (Colo.2007). Similarly, even with regard to matters appropriately the subject of governmental contract, the intent of a legislative body to contractually bind not only itself but also future legislatures through the enactment of legislation is so at odds with the policy-making nature and obligations of such a body that it can be found to exist only where the language and cireumstances of that enactment unmistakably indicate as much. See, e.g., State of Ind. ex rel. Anderson v. Brand, 303 U.S. 95, 114, 58 S.Ct. 443, 82 L.Ed. 685 (1938); see also Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 470 U.S. 451, 470, 105 S.Ct. 1441, 84 L.Ed.2d 432 (1985).
*2141 42 In finding that the various COLA-type enactments applicable to the individual plaintiffs in this case tendered unilateral contracts to the plaintiffs, which they accepted by becoming eligible for retirement, the court of appeals acknowledged this presumption against contracting by legislation, but rather than feeling obliged to evaluate the specific language and cireumstances of these particular enactments, it found that their contractual nature was self-evident from no more than the fact that the rights in question accrued under a pension plan. More particularly, it found that our prior holdings in Police Pension and Relief Board of the City and County of Denver v. McPhail, 139 Colo. 330, 338 P.2d 694 (1959), and Police Pension and Relief Board of City and County of Denver v. Bills, 148 Colo. 383, 366 P.2d 581 (1961), effectively created a blanket rule, or exception, for rights accruing under a pension plan, regardless of variations in the wording or cireumstances of the legislation creating the plan, and that both remain binding precedent for this jurisdiction. Especially in light of our later characterizations of and reliance upon these two cases, this proposition can hardly be ignored or summarily dismissed as lacking support. See Colo. Springs Fire Fighters Ass'n, Local 5 v. City of Colo. Springs, 784 P.2d 766, 770 (Colo.1989) (citing McPhail for the proposition that "[rlights which accrue under a pension plan are contractual obligations which are protected under article II, section 11, of the Colorado Constitution and article I, section 10, of the United States Constitution"); see also Peterson v. Fire & Police Pension Ass'n, 759 P.2d 720, 723-25 (Colo.1988) (applying the principles of McPhail and Bills to survivor benefits for a member who was not eligible for retirement before he died).
143 By distinguishing the cost-of-living-adjustment provisions at issue here on the basis of their failure to include language of entitlement or duration and their numerous subsequent amendments, the majority implicitly rejects this broad reading of McPhail and Bills. By the same token, however, by merely distinguishing theese COLA provisions, it fails to directly address the court of appeals' rationale or otherwise account for our post-MePhail and Bills characterizations of those cases, as a direct result of which the court of appeals considered itself bound to find a contract. Moreover, by distinguishing these COLA provisions in the manner it does, the majority strongly implies that McPhail and Bills remain binding precedent with regard to any statutory pension provisions not so distinguishable. Although the majority conclusorily overrules any implication that pension legislation is not subject to the presumption against legislative contracting, nowhere does it offer the slightest explanation for our failure to apply that presumption in our McPhail and Bills opinions.
T44 Instead the majority offers only the fact that these two cases preceded our holding in In re Estate of DeWitt, 54 P.3d 849, 855 (Colo.2002), which explicitly aligned our own Contract Clause with the three-pronged balancing test for assessing a violation of the federal Contract Clause. DeWitt, however, did not involve a governmental contract of any kind, much less adopt, address, or purport to alter in any way the presumption against contracting by legislation. Rather, the presumption against legislative contracts, rebuttable only by a showing of "unmistakable" legislative intent to contract, see Winstar, 518 U.S. at 873, 116 S.Ct. 2432 (tracing history of unmistakability doctrine from Justice Marshall's opinion in Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 3 L.Ed. 162 (1810)), had been expressly applied in modern federal, pension jurisprudence since at least the New Deal, see, eg., Dodge v. Bd. of Educ., 302 U.S. 74, 78, 58 S.Ct. 98, 82 L.Ed. 57 (1937); see also Atchison, 470 U.S. at 466, 105 S.Ct. 1441, and had been expressly applied in this state long before DeWitt, see, eg., Colo. Springs Fire Fighters Ass'n, 784 P.2d at 773. The law governing statutory contracts in general, and the question whether statutory pension plans establish contractual relationships in particular, was therefore in no way at issue or affected by our opinion in DeWitt.
{45 The salient point is that McPhail failed to even acknowledge an awareness of, much less actually address, a distinction between the requisites of private and legislatively created contracts. (In fact, its analysis appears to be premised more on equitable principles, in the nature of promissory estop-*215pel, than on contract analysis at all.) Whether this court's decision in McPhail should be understood, notwithstanding its failure to acknowledge the presumption against legislative contracts, as implicitly finding an unmistakable legislative intent to tender a contract whenever a pension plan is created by legislation; or as carving out a pension plan exception to the presumption under the unique provisions of the state constitution; or perhaps as simply failing, in the absence of a request by the litigants to do so, to treat a popularly ratified and amended city charter as legislative in nature, I believe some explanation why the court of appeals' reading was incorrect and some guidance concerning the continued vitality of these cases is called for.
{46 Whether rightly or wrongly, if McPhail simply failed to consider city charter provisions to be legislative in nature, that case would lack any precedential value for the COLA statutes at issue here. With regard to the possibility of an independent state constitutional ground, although McePhail references only the Contract Clause of the state constitution, it nevertheless makes no attempt to actually distinguish the state constitution from the federal constitution in this regard. In light of subsequent pronouncements by this court expressly refraining from understanding such a reference to intend a decision on separate state constitutional grounds, see Price v. City of Lakewood, 818 P.2d 763, 766 n. 4 (Colo.1991); People v. Gann, 724 P.2d 1318, 1820 (Colo. 1986), as well as our express reliance in Colorado Springs Fire Fighters on both state and federal constitutions as the basis for our holding concerning the contractual nature of rights accruing under pension plans, I also would reject any interpretation of McPhail as finding an exception to the presumption against contracting by legislation in the state constitution. Finally, our McePhail opinion offers no suggestion that legislatively granted pension benefits necessarily evidence an intent by the enacting body to bind itself and its successors in contract, and none is readily apparent or offered by either the plaintiffs or the court of appeals. Quite the contrary, the court of appeals made abundantly clear that it considered itself obligated to follow McPhail and its progeny, despite expressing skepticism about their rationales and continued vitality, and it therefore merely remanded for consideration of the public policy aspects of the Contract Clause balancing test.
[ 47 While I agree with the majority that there are significant differences between the COLA provisions at issue here and the Denver police pension benefit increases at issue in McPhail and Bills, by simply resting its holding on these distinctions and a legislative willingness to continuously amend the COLA provisions, the majority in my view not only fails to rebut the court of appeals' rationale but actually undereuts the presumption against contracting by legislative bodies as well. While it may be true that the statutes in this case, unlike the city charter in McPhail, do not contain language of entitlement or duration, such words are, in any event, not language of contract and would indicate nothing about an intent to contract, even if they had been included. Cf. U.S. Trust Co. of N.Y. v. N.J., 431 U.S. 1, 18, 97 S.Ct. 1505, 52 L.Ed.2d 92 (1977) (finding language of contract where the statute stated, "The two States covenant and agree with each other and with the holders of any affected bonds...."). At best, words of entitlement and duration merely define the rights intended under a statute unless and until they are changed, but they indicate nothing about a legislature's intent to enter into a binding contract or preclude subsequent amendment. Dodge, 302 U.S. at 78, 58 S.Ct. 98 (finding language fixing retirement benefit of school teachers "annually and for life from the date of such retirement" does not evidence legislative intent to create a contractual right). And while the repeated amendment of COLA formulae may serve to emphasize a legislature's awareness of the inherently unpredictable nature of economic conditions from year to year, including changes in the cost of living relative to returns on investments, we have often made clear that the intent of one legislative body most certainly is not dispositive of the intent of a prior legislature. See Union Pac. R.R. Co. v. Martin, 209 P.3d 185, 188 (Colo.2009). Such distinctions are unnecessary, however, because under well-accepted standards for assessing whether the presumption against *216legislative contracts has been overcome, the Denver City Charter provisions at issue in McPhail and Bills could no more constitute a contract tendered by the government than could the COLA provisions at issue today.
[48 Legislative action can, of course, create a vested right, in the sense of a right that has attained some independent existence and therefore cannot necessarily be erased by simply abrogating the statute from which it originated, without doing so by contract. In the very series of limitations barring laws impairing the obligation of contracts, the state constitution more broadly bars the general assembly from passing laws that are retrospective in their operation. Colo. Const. art, II, § 11. We have, however, long made clear that even the abrogation of a vested right, while an important consideration, must nevertheless be balanced against public policy considerations similar to those of the Contract Clause balancing test before the abrogating legislation could be struck as retrospective. In re Estate of DeWitt, 54 P.3d 849, 855 (Colo.2002); Ficarra v. Dep't of Regulatory Agencies, Div. of Ins., 849 P.2d 6, 21 (Colo.1993). Apparently to avoid any pub-lie policy considerations whatsoever, the plaintiffs in this action have limited their claim of a vested right to one originating in contract and contend that our holdings in McPhail and Bills have created a pension-rights exception from even the Contract Clause balancing test. While I believe that much broader protections against retroactive divestment of vested rights exist in the state constitution, I also believe that statutory contracts, whether or not the statute at issue provides rights accruing under a pension plan, can be judicially recognized to exist only in the face of an unmistakable indication of legislative intent to contract, which I consider to be wholly absent from the COLA statutes at issue in this case.
4 49 Because I would therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals, but for reasons quite different from those of the majority, I concur only in the judgment of the court.