Court Opinion

ID: 9573662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:57:29.817596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:42:17.302129
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Moore
dissenting.
Article III of the Constitution of the. State of Colorado provides that:
“The powers of the government of this State are divided into three distinct departments — the legislative, *46executive and judicial; and no person or collection of persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others * * *”
The legislature by adoption of the Labor Peace Act mentioned specifically the employers and the employees who should be excluded from the coverage of the Act. The Act specifically declares that the employees covered thereby shall be “any person” except those excluded by express mention. Hospital employees are not among those excluded from coverage by the legislature.
As I understand the majority opinion it is clear that those judges who concur therein believe that the legislature should have excluded an additional category of “employees” to be exempted from coverage by the Labor Peace Act. By application of individual philosophical notions of what should have been done — but was not done — the opinion proceeds to add by implication this additional category — thereby giving to the statute a meaning consistent with the private notion of the majority as to what the legislation should have contained to begin with. The words used by the legislature are plain; they have a definite meaning. There is no legal basis for injection of additional exclusions “by implication.”
The majority opinion as I appraise it amounts to judicial legislation and an exercise of power exclusively belonging to the legislative branch of the government, all of which more forcefully appears in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Doyle, in which I concur.