Court Opinion

ID: 9711418
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:31:26.675459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:04.774682
License: Public Domain

*261MESCHKE, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I have said before that “[s]overeign immunity, a hallmark of totalitarianism, is contrary to our constitutions.” Dickinson Public School Dist. v. Sanstead, 425 N.W.2d 906, 911 (N.D.1988) (Meschke, Justice, concurring).1 Therefore, I disagree with today’s decision to reconstitute the foreign relic of sovereign immunity.
I recognize that past decisions of this court have levitated the second sentence of one of our Declaration of Rights into a restriction on individual rights by immunizing state government from judicial review. But stare decisis is no more a barrier to judicial reconsideration of the “injustices of state immunity” than to abrogation of governmental immunity for the political subdivisions of the state. Kitto v. Minot Park District, 224 N.W.2d 795, 802-03 (N.D.1974). Unjust and unsupportable interpretations should be reconsidered.
This perverse constitutional interpretation did not begin until Wirtz v. Nestos, 51 N.D. 603, 200 N.W. 524 (1924), decided more than a third of a century after the 1889 adoption of the original Declaration of Rights. The Nestos interpretation was an afterthought in a long opinion about the lack of vested rights in a State Guarantee Fund for insolvent banks. No history of the source of these declared Rights was traced. No meaning was given to the prime sentence of the section declaring individual rights beyond the power of the State government and legislature:
All courts shall be open, and every man for any injury done him in his lands, goods, person or reputation shall have remedy by due process of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay.
N.D.Const. art. I § 22 (now renumbered as art. I § 9). Engraftment of the foreign concept of sovereign immunity on these deeply rooted rights of individuals surely called for more thoughtful examination and interpretation than the afterthought thrown into Nestos. Unfortunately, no careful interpretation has been undertaken.
Our “open courts” Declaration came from comparable expressions in the Magna Carta, as I explained in Sanstead, 425 N.W.2d at 911, n. 2. See A.E. Dick Howard, The Road from Runnymede: Magna Carta and Constitutionalism in America, 483-86 (1968); The Magna Charta, reprinted in 13 North Dakota Century Code 1-9. Our form of this Declaration, including the second sentence, can be traced back to 1790 when Pennsylvania, one of our first 13 states, adopted a provision identical in wording. Scholarly study of the history of this provision has demonstrated “that the lawyer-draftsmen framers of the 1790 [Pennsylvania] Constitution could not possibly have said that [the state] is immune from all lawsuits without its consent.” Sloan, Lessons in Constitutional Interpretation: Sovereign Immunity in Pennsylvania, 82 Dick.L.Rev. 209, 210 (1978). That history should be heeded in interpreting our “open courts” Declaration. Pennsylvania and five other states have rejected sovereign immunity under like constitutional provisions.2 Mayle v. Pennsylvania Dept. of Highways, 479 Pa. 384, 388 *262A.2d 709, 719, n. 80 (1978). The well reasoned construction of a like constitutional provision in another state from which ours is derived is highly persuasive. 2A N. Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 52.04 (4th ed. 1984). North Dakota should also reject sovereign immunity.
The effect of the unstudied Nestos ruling and its repetitions transformed a constitutional prescription for judicial review into a prohibition. Judicial legerdemain made the subordinate sentence of a constitutional clause into the controlling sense, compromising a customary principle of constitutional interpretation that the Declaration of Rights are an instrument of limitations on state government rather than an instrument of grants to state government. See Senger v. Hulstrand Const., Inc., 320 N.W.2d 507, 510 (N.D.1982) (Justice Sand, concurring). Other principles for construing constitutional language are similar to those for construing statutes. State ex rel. Link v. Olson, 286 N.W.2d 262, 269 (N.D.1979). Thus, we should be “guided by the common-sense principle that a [constitution] is to be read to give effect to each of its provisions, whenever fairly possible.” County of Stutsman v. State Historical Society, 371 N.W.2d 321, 325 (N.D.1985). It does not make sense to read the subordinate sentence in the “open courts” Declaration as supervening the meaning of the declared rights.
As I said in Sanstead, “[u]ninformed and unsupported past precedents of this court, applying an unexpressed and unintended limitation on access to the courts of this state, should no longer be followed. See Kitto v. Minot Park District, 224 N.W.2d 795 (N.D.1974) (at 799: ‘a crumbling legal concept’). While the legislature may ‘direct’ the course of claims against the State and its officials, it should be clarified that all citizens are entitled to the equal protection of their Constitution against State government.” 425 N.W.2d at 911, n. 6. I believe that sovereign immunity of the State and its officials should be discarded as unconstitutional.
The majority opinion brushes aside, as unsupported, well shaped arguments that the judicially formulated doctrine of sovereign immunity violates federal and state constitutional guarantees. Larsons conveyed the trial court’s reluctance in this case: “I too question the need for sovereign immunity when [the State has] clearly taken upon [itself] a function which can be handled by private parties.” Larsons quoted a recent legal encyclopedia summary “that the doctrine of governmental immunity from suit is currently in disfavor, and that today courts are disposed to hear an action against the state unless good reason stands in the way.” 72 Am.Jur.2d States, Territories, and Dependencies § 101 (1974). Larsons cited NDCC 31-11-05(1) (“When the reason of a rule ceases so should the rule itself.”), Kitto, 224 N.W.2d at 798, n. 3 (quoting the Amicus Brief of the then North Dakota Attorney General: “The doctrine of governmental immunity in North Dakota is legally viable but morally wrong and discriminates against those of our citizens who encounter state or local governmental entities....”), and modern decisions of the United States Supreme Court protecting property interests from governmental action by applying due process standards. Larsons concluded:
[R]igid adherence to sovereign immunity renders moot the protections set forth in Article I, section 9. The better interpretation is that while the state can regulate the method and manner of cases brought against it, denial of complete access to our state court system is unwarranted.
Today’s decision also sweeps aside assurances made in Nestos, 200 N.W. at 535, when this rigid immunity for the State was first suggested:
The rights of the citizen to due process, to the maintenance of the legal sanctity of the obligation of a contract, to the equal protection of the law, and to the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the state and of the *263nation, will be open to vindication, and their violation to redress against the commission, no less than against any person, natural or artificial. Neither the guaranty fund commission nor any officer may, under our legal system, set the Constitution at defiance; officers and private individuals alike must obey it and respect the rights of persons thereunder. No such rights are in jeopardy in the case at bar, and, if any such rights be endangered by the commission in the future, no injured person will be denied the redress or the remedies to which he is entitled under the fundamental law of the land.
Neither the State nor its officials should be above the Constitution.
“How ‘uniquely amiss’ it would be, therefore, if the government itself — ‘the social organ to which all in our society look for the promotion of liberty, justice, fair and equal treatment, and the setting of worthy norms and goals for social conduct’ — were permitted to disavow liability for the injury it has begotten.” Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 651, 100 S.Ct. 1398, 1415, 63 L.Ed.2d 673 (1980) (Mr. Justice Brennan, speaking for the majority). See Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 3-26 (2d ed. 1988). “Moreover, as Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer [427 U.S. 445, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 49 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976)] explicitly recognizes, the fourteenth amendment, also an important source of congressional power, is itself framed as a limit on state action.” Id. at 186. See also Howlett v. Rose, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 2430, 110 L.Ed.2d 332 (1990). I believe that the doctrine of sovereign immunity of the State, foreign to a constitutional democracy, cannot survive serious constitutional scrutiny.3
It is unimaginable, in the long run, that State government can be excused from respecting individual rights guaranteed by our Constitutions. “This Constitution ... shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound, thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” U.S. Const, art. VI, cl. 2. Each North Dakota judge takes a constitutional oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of North Dakota;_” N.D.Const. art. XI, § 4. In a democracy that safeguards individual rights in a constitution, the judiciary cannot be impotent to rectify private injustices inflicted in the name of public interests.
Reversal here would not make the State liable for the conduct of its boiler inspectors unless, by trial, they were found at fault. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Levine, J., joins.

. My reasons then included the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which declares that government "shall make no law respecting ... the right of the people ... to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” "The right to petition extends to all departments of the government; the right of access to the courts is but one aspect of the right of petition.” 16A Am.Jur.2d Constitutional Law § 526 (1979). It applies to civil actions and to state governments. Id. § 528. See also De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 81 L.Ed. 278 (1937).

. Of course, most states have retreated from the doctrine of sovereign immunity. When it threw out the doctrine in 1983, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma said that "... today, there are not more than five states, including Oklahoma, which have not abolished the doctrine or have not, in some manner, retreated from its universal application as an immutable concept of the law.” Vanderpool v. State, 672 P.2d 1153, 1155 (Okla.1983). See generally, Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts, p. 1043-1051 (5th ed. 1984). *268through June 30, 1991. See 1989 N.D.Sess.Laws Ch. 394.

. It is interesting to note that, when the Minnesota Supreme Court abolished the tort immunity of the State of Minnesota more than a decade ago in Nieting v. Blondell, 306 Minn. 122, 235 N.W.2d 597 (1975), it sidestepped consideration of constitutional guarantees:
We have been urged to declare the doctrine of sovereign immunity to be unconstitutional as a violation of due process or equal protection. However, because of our belief that the legislature will recognize the fairness and wisdom of allowing a wrongfully injured party to be compensated for his injuries, we decline to consider these constitutional questions.
235 N.W.2d at 603, n. 14. The constitutional arguments presented by today’s appellants (which this court declines to address) are neither novel, unique, or unsupported.