Court Opinion

ID: 9691574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:40:55.90808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:22.887173
License: Public Domain

(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I agree with the result reached by the majority, that is, that this case must be remanded for further proceedings. I write separately because, in my view, the trial court correctly concluded that plaintiffs, female prisoners housed in facilities operated by the Michigan Department of Corrections (mdoc), have stated a valid cause of action under the Civil Rights Act, MCL 37.2101 et seq.; MSA 3.548(101) et seq.
At issue in this case is the construction of subsection 302(a) of the act, which states:
Except where permitted by law, a person shall not:
(a) Deny an individual the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of a place of public accommodation or public service because of religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, or marital status. [MCL 37.2302(a); MSA 3.548(302)(a)].
“Public service” is defined as “a public facility, department, agency, board, or commission, owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of the state, a political subdivision, or an agency thereof, or a tax exempt private agency established to provide service to the public.” MCL 37.2301(b); MSA 3.548(301)(b). The MDOC is a state department or agency, and this state’s correctional facilities are managed and operated by it. Liberally construing the statutory definition, as this Court is required to do, see Reed v Michigan Metro *217Girl Scout Council, 201 Mich App 10, 15; 506 NW2d 231 (1993), the trial court correctly ruled that the mdoc falls within the broad statutory definition of a “public service” set forth in subsection 301(b). Defendants essentially concede as much.
According to the majority, the Legislature could not have intended subsection 302(a) to apply to prisoners housed in the mdoc’s facilities because allowing inmates to bring discrimination claims against the state would lead to an absurd or unjust result. A review of the legislative history of the statute, along with the application of basic principles of statutory construction, leads me to a contrary conclusion.
The purpose of the Civil Rights Act is to prevent discrimination directed against a person because of that person’s membership in a certain class and to eliminate the effects of offensive or demeaning stereotypes, prejudices, and biases. Noecker v Dep’t of Corrections, 203 Mich App 43, 46; 512 NW2d 44 (1993). The act is remedial and must be liberally construed to effectuate its ends. Reed, supra.
An examination of the legislative purpose of the Civil Rights Act in general and subsection 302(a) in particular actually begins with the Michigan Constitution’s Equal Protection and Antidiscrimination Clauses. Const 1963, art 1, § 2 states:
No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of his civil or political rights or be discriminated against in the exercise thereof because of religion, race, color or national origin. The legislature shall implement this section by appropriate legislation.
*218The Civil Rights Act was enacted as 1976 PA 453. Its purpose was two-fold. First, it was intended to centralize and make uniform the patchwork of then-existing civil rights statutes applying to the private sector, such as the Fair Housing Act, the Fair Employment Practices Act, and the Public Accommodations Act. See Dep’t of Civil Rights ex rel Forton v Waterford Twp Dep’t of Parks & Recreation, 425 Mich 173, 187-188; 387 NW2d 821 (1986). Second, it was intended to broaden the scope of the then-existing civil rights statutes to include governmental action:
[T]he Legislature’s addition of “public service” to [subsection] 302(a), thereby including state action violations that amount to constitutional deprivation with private sector, non-state action legislative violations, can be explained by the fact that article 1, § 2 of the Michigan Constitution provides: “the legislature shall implement this section by appropriate legislation.” It is the only provision of the Declaration of Rights to so provide. [Id., p 188 (emphasis in the original).]
Thus, insofar as subsection 302(a) of the Civil Rights Act governs “public service,” it is essentially a codification of the constitution’s Equal Protection and Antidiscrimination Clauses, broadened to include categories not covered under the constitution, such as age, sex, and marital status. See Dep’t of Civil Rights, pp 188-189.
The constitutional equal protection guarantee applies to prisoners. As explained in Jackson v Bishop, 404 F2d 571, 576 (CA 8, 1968):
Lawful incarceration may properly operate to deprive the convict of certain rights which would otherwise be his to enjoy. A classic example is [the] denial to the felon of the right to vote. . . .
*219* * *
On the other hand, a prisoner of the state does not lose all his civil rights during and because of his incarceration. In particular, he continues to be protected by the due process and equal protection clauses which follow him through the prison doors. [Citations omitted.]
Because, as our Supreme Court has stated, the protections of subsection 302(a) of the Civil Rights Act were intended to be coextensive with the Equal Protection and Antidiscrimination Clauses of the Michigan Constitution, and because prisoners do not lose their right to equal protection by virtue of their status as inmates, it follows that the Legislature also intended all persons — including inmates — to be protected under subsection 302(a).
Further, as noted by the trial court, nowhere does the language of the Civil Rights Act purport to preclude its application because of a person’s status as a prisoner or inmate. Compare Marsh v Dep’t of Civil Service, 142 Mich App 557, 569; 370 NW2d 613 (1985); Walters v Dep’t of Treasury, 148 Mich App 809, 819; 385 NW2d 695 (1986). When the Legislature has seen fit to exclude prisoners from the provisions of a statute, it has specifically done so. See, e.g., MCL 15.231(2); MSA 4.1801(1)(2), excluding “those persons incarcerated in state or local correctional facilities” from provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. A court must not judicially legislate by adding into a statute provisions that the Legislature did not include. Empire Iron Mining Partnership v Orhanen, 455 Mich 410, 421; 565 NW2d 844 (1997). Yet the majority has done precisely that by effectively adding to the Civil Rights Act an exclusion barring prisoners from bringing an action under subsection 302(a) of the act.
*220The majority believes that reading subsection 302(a) of the Civil Rights Act as applying to prisoners leads to an absurd result because, if the act applies to inmates, then the existence of separate prison facilities for men and women would violate its prohibition against gender discrimination. That is an oversimplification that fails to take into account our Supreme Court’s observation that subsection 302(a) is a codification of the Equal Protection Clause of the Michigan Constitution. Dep’t of Civil Rights, supra. As stated in Dep’t of Civil Rights, p 189:
Discrimination, in constitutional terms, refers to baseless and irrational line drawing. . . . When there is a sufficiently important governmental interest and the classification is adequately related to that interest, it does not amount to discrimination to draw legislative lines on the basis of those classifications.
It would be anomalous at best and contradictory at worst to attempt to rid the state of discriminatory practices by the use of an arbitrary standard that would prohibit, in effect, any line drawn between the genders, regardless of its relevance to the purpose of the regulation, unless the Legislature, in its wisdom and its own good time, countervails it.
Thus, merely because the state has engaged in a practice that treats men and women differently does not automatically or necessarily mean that it has engaged in unlawful gender discrimination. Rather, the test is whether the gender-based treatment serves a sufficiently important governmental interest and is substantially related to the achievement of that interest. Id., p 189. Clearly, maintaining separate prison facilities for male and female prisoners serves important penological interests and is substantially related to those interests. The state’s operation of such facilities *221therefore would not give rise to a valid discrimination claim under subsection 302(a) and would not lead to the absurd result the majority perceives. Rather, the MDOC could still treat prisoners differently on the basis of gender without violating subsection 302(a), provided that the gender-based treatment could pass constitutional muster — that is, if the gender-based treatment served important penological interests and was substantially related to the achievement of those interests. See Dep’t of Civil Rights, supra, pp 190-194.
Finally, it should be noted that this approach to state sex discrimination claims by inmates mirrors not only the analysis employed in equal protection cases, but also the analyses typically employed by federal courts in 42 USC 1983 actions. See anno: Sex discrimination in treatment of jail or prison inmates, 12 ALR4th 1219. A holding that prisoners are not excluded from the protections of subsection 302(a) of the Civil Rights Act would therefore impose upon defendants no stricter standards than those to which they must presently adhere in order to survive either a constitutional or § 1983 challenge. In the absence of any meaningful evidence that the Legislature intended to deny plaintiffs a statutory remedy for defendants’ alleged gender-based misconduct, I would affirm the order of the trial court.