Court Opinion

ID: 9791802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:18:20.057246+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:38.666395
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice HARNSBERGER
(concurring.)
The Chief Justice feels the principal issue in this case is the propriety of the boundary board’s action taken without notice to citizens and taxpayers and says :
“In School District No. 9, in County of Fremont v. District Boundary Board In and For Fremont County, Wyo., 351 P.2d 106, this court said that even where there is no statutory requirement for notice of the proposed action in changing a school boundary that reasonable notice is nevertheless required to be afforded to interested persons.” ;
and concludes, “This definite and unambig*842uous rule must control until it is reversed, and it cannot be sidestepped as it has been here.”
Inasmuch as I concurred in the opinion rendered in the Fremont County case but disagree completely with the learned Chief Justice’s recollection as to what the opinion said, my own views on the subject must be. stated.
The accurate quote from .the Fremont County case opinion is,
“ * * * it has been held that even where there is no statutory requirement for notice of the proposed action in changing a school boundary reasonable notice is required to be afforded to interested persons. * * * ” (Emphasis supplied.)
The difference is very material. The mere fact that in discussing decisions from other jurisdictions it was recognized that it had been held in some jurisdictions that a reasonable notice is required even in the absence of statutory provisions therefor, does not amount to this court’s having accepted such holdings as being the law of this jurisdiction. Thus what was said in the Fremont County case falls far short of becoming a “definite and'unambiguous rule” that must control this court until reversed. I did not so understand it when I concurred in the former opinion and I do not now so understand it.
The most that may justly be gleaned from this court’s opinion in the Fremont County case is that the boundary board acted arbitrarily in that when acting as a boundary board that board, as such, had nothing before it to justify the decision reached.
It might also be noted, however, that this court is committed by the decision of Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Byron School Dist. No. 1, 37 Wyo. 259, 266, 260 P. 537, 539, to the tenet that what has been delegated by the legislature to district boundary boards is a legislative function. In consequence decisions from jurisdictions, such as Colorado, which have held the function of boundary boards is judicial or quasi-judicial, are not at all helpful.
Notwithstanding what is now being said, I remain in complete agreement with the philosophy entertained by the Chief Justice, that all matters of public interest, concern, and nature should be publicly and openly considered, but as a judicial officer I have no right to inject my personal opinions and preferments into my official views as to the law. We must take the law as we find it, not as we may want it to be.
I therefore concur in the majority opinion.