Court Opinion

ID: 9783603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:50:41.36874+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:20.565027
License: Public Domain

D.P. MARSHALL JR., Judge, dissenting. ^School teachers (and other similarly situated individuals) are not entitled to unemployment benefits during breaks if they are reasonably assured that they will have a job after the break. Ark.Code Ann. § 11-10-509 (Supp.2009). Is a substitute teacher, who is under contract to do the same work during the coming school year, entitled to unemployment benefits during the intervening summer? The Board of Review answered yes — mainly because, rather than being employed by a school district, the teacher was employed by a company that provided substitutes to school districts. We should reverse the Board’s misreading of the governing statute. 1. The Department and SubTeachU-SA, Inc., agreed on the essential facts. LaJuanda Coleman used to work for the Helena-West Helena School District as a substitute teacher. After the District contracted with SubTeachUSA to provide substitutes, Coleman went to work for that company. Here is her testimony about her work for both the District and Sub-TeachUSA: [Counsel for SubTeachUSA]: Were the services that you performed as a substitute teacher any different after SubTea-chUSA took over? [Coleman]: No. [Counsel for SubTeachUSA]: So basically, regardless of whether the check was coming from SubTeachUSA, the job that you were doing was the same, is that correct? [Coleman]: Yes, that’s correct. During the 2007-2008 school year, she substituted in the Helena-West Helena District through SubTeachUSA. She had a contract with the company to do the same work in the same District during the 2008-2009 school year. Coleman sought unemployment benefits |infor the intervening summer. SubTeachUSA appeals the Department’s decision awarding Coleman benefits. 2. SubTeachUSA’s appeal asks a question of law: what does § 11-10-509 ** | n mean on these undisputed facts? The Board couched its ultimate decision in terms of findings. But that label cannot obscure the purely legal issue our Court must decide. Because all the key facts were undisputed, the substantial-evidence standard does not apply. This Court’s repeated invocation of that standard is mistaken. In general, appellate review of statutory-construction questions is de novo: “[I]t is for this court to decide what a statute means.” MacSteel Division of Quanex v. Arkansas Oklahoma Gas Corp., 363 Ark. 22, 29, 210 S.W.3d 878, 882 (2005). We must focus first on § 11-10-509’s words. And if those words are plain and clear, our work is done. The Supreme Court summarized this settled law in the Yamaha Motor case. The first rule in considering the meaning and effect of a statute is to construe it just as it reads, giving the words their ordinary and usually accepted meaning in common language. When the language of a statute is plain and unambiguous, there is no need to resort to rules of statutory construction. In other words, if the language of the statute is plain and unambiguous, the analysis need go no further. Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A. v. Richard’s Honda Yamaha, 344 Ark. 44, 52, 38 S.W.3d 356, 360 (2001) (internal citations omitted); see generally Michael W. Mul-lane, Statutory Interpretation in Arkansas: How Should a Statute Be Read? When Is It Subject to Interpretation? What Our Comis Say and What They Do, 2004 Ark. L. Notes 85. Here are the General Assembly’s disputed words. “With respect to service performed in an instructional, research, or principal administrative capacity for an educational institution, benefits shall not be paid ... for any week of unemployment ... between two (2) successive academic years or terms....” Ark.Code Ann. § 11-10-509(a). These controlling words, | ^though perhaps a bit clunky, are plain and clear. And giving the words in this broadly written introductory phrase their ordinary and usually accepted meaning yields one conclusion: Coleman was ineligible for benefits during the summer of 2008. She was a substitute teacher. She thus performed a service in an instructional capacity. She was under contract, through SubTeachUSA, to do this work for the Helena-West Helena School District — an educational institution — on both sides of the summer 2008 break. On the undisputed facts, the plain meaning of § 11-10-509(a) undermined Coleman’s claim for benefits. In a sense, the case boils down to the ordinary meaning of the statutory word “for.” This Court, echoing the Board, reads “for” to mean “while employed by.” This reading comes with at least two problems. First, the General Assembly spoke in broad and general terms in § 11 — 10— 509(a). It is neither the Board’s office nor ours to strike a capacious word from a statute and replace it with a narrowing phrase. E.g., Arkansas Dep’t of Econ. Dev. v. William J. Clinton, Presidential Foundation, 364 Ark. 40, 47-50, 53, 216 S.W.3d 119, 124-25, 128 (2005). Second, reading “for an educational institution” as “while employed by an educational institution” ignores the “ordinary and usually accepted meaning in common language[]” of the word “for.” Yamaha Motor, 344 Ark. at 52, 38 S.W.3d at 360. If I thank the plumber for fixing my leaky faucet, she will not say “you’re welcome, but I did not do it for you, I did it for my employer, XYZ Plumbing, Inc.” In law, an agent (such as the plumber or Coleman) is acting for her principal and for the benefit of a third party (such as me or the School District). But precedent requires us to use plain meaning, not lawyer’s meaning. The | ^statute’s “for” means — as it would to the common reader or speaker — for the District’s benefit. Concise Oxford English DictionaRY 553 (10th ed., rev.2002). The Helena-West Helena School District must provide substitute teachers. It does so through SubTeaehUSA. Coleman and the rest of those substitutes are providing instructional services for the District. Would a parent say that Coleman was a substitute teacher for SubTeachU-SA? No. The parent would say that she was a substitute teacher for the school. Our analysis of what § ll-10-509(a) means should therefore go “no further.” Yamaha Motor, 344 Ark. at 52, 38 S.W.3d at 360. 3. Is this statute ambiguous? Is it, in the words of our cases, “open to two or more constructions” or “of such obscure or doubtful meaning that reasonable minds might disagree or be uncertain as to its meaning”? Ibid. I do not think so. Neither the Department’s Appeal Tribunal nor the Board of Review saw any ambiguity. And the Department does not argue ambiguity on appeal. Yet the Court, in its alternative holding, discusses ambiguity. The Court says that, if there is ambiguity, then we must defer to the Department’s interpretation. This is a correct but incomplete statement of law. First, absent ambiguity, plain meaning governs and the Department’s interpretation is beside the point. Yamaha Motor, 344 Ark. at 52, 38 S.W.3d at 360. Second, while the implementing agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute is highly persuasive and should not be disregarded unless clearly wrong, ibid., appellate review does not stop with the agency’s word. When the meaning of any statute is unclear, the court must “look to the language of the statute, the subject matter, the object to be accomplished, the purpose to be served, the remedy to be provided, the legislative history, and other appropriate means that shed light on the subject.” MacSteel, 363 Ark. at 30, 210 S.W.3d at 882-83. Here, the Department’s reading of § 11-10-509 fails on its own terms and on the more searching inquiry the law requires of a reviewing court facing an ambiguous statute. Why did the Department conclude that this statute did not cover Coleman? Because SubTeaehUSA, not the School District, employed her. The Department did not analyze the statute’s words, object, or purpose. The Department did not rely on its expertise or some long-standing agency interpretation. Cf. Yamaha Motor, 344 Ark. at 52, 38 S.W.3d at 360. The Department did cite the statute’s title, which speaks of employees of educational institutions and thus weighs in favor of the Department’s interpretation. But this title, it seems, came from the Arkansas Code Revision Commission, not the General Assembly. Cf. Ark. Stat. Ann. § 81-1105(g) (Supp.1985), with Ark.Code Ann. § 11-10-509 (Michie 1987). More importantly, a title is not dispositive of an ambiguous statute’s meaning. Baker Refrigeration Systems, Inc. v. Weiss, 360 Ark. 388, 400-01, 201 S.W.3d 900, 907 (2005). The core of the Department’s decision was the undisputed fact about who employed Coleman. There simply is no other why in the Department’s decision. The Court says that SubTeachUSA claims that it is an educational institution. Supra at 852. SubTeachUSA makes no such claim or argument. Instead, the company’s straightforward contention is that its employees provide instructional services for educational institutions such as the Helena-West Helena District. And therefore, the company continues, those employees are ineligible for unemployment benefits under § 11-10-509 during the summers between school years. SubTea-chUSA is correct. If this statute is ambiguous on this issue, then other appropriate means for discerning | T-its meaning support SubTeachU-SA’s interpretation. In a later subsection, the General Assembly used the phrase “in the employ of an educational service agency” to describe a class of individuals. Ark. Code Ann. § 11 — 10—509(d)(1). The Legislature’s choice of this locution for another subsection, but not the one in dispute, cuts against reading a school-employment criterion into § ll-10-509(a). Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23, 104 S.Ct. 296, 78 L.Ed.2d 17 (1983). Finally, the purpose of this subsection is manifestly to exclude returning teachers (and others similarly situated) from receiving unemployment benefits in the summer. These individuals have jobs that, by definition, include periods when they are not working. That purpose covers SubTea-chUSA’s employees as surely as it does the District’s employees. Considered in light of its purpose and language as a whole, § 11-10-509 covers Coleman and SubTea-chUSA. Coleman recognized this truth in her application for benefits: “I am not working now because school is out for the summer.” 4. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision that Coleman was entitled to benefits. That her employer is now SubTeachUSA instead of the District should make no legal difference under the wide net cast by the General Assembly in this statute. KINARD, J., joins.   § 11-10-509. Eligibility — Employees of educational institutions. (a) With respect to service performed in an instructional, research, or principal administrative capacity for an educational institution, benefits shall not be paid based on services for any week of unemployment commencing during the period between two (2) successive academic years or terms, during a similar period between two (2) regular but not successive terms, or during a period of paid sabbatical leave provided for in the individual’s contract to any individual if: (1) The individual performs the services in the first of the academic years or terms; and (2) There is a contract or a reasonable assurance that the individual will perform services in any such capacity for any educational institution in the second of the academic years or terms. (b)(1) With respect to services performed in any other capacity for an educational institution, benefits shall not be paid on the basis of services to any individual for any week of unemployment that commences during a period between two (2) successive academic years or terms if: (A) The individual performs the services in the first of the academic years or terms; and (B) There is a reasonable assurance that the individual will perform the services in the second of the academic years or terms. (2)(A) If compensation is denied to an individual under subdivision (b)(1) of this section and the individual was not offered an opportunity to perform the services for the educational institution for the second of the academic years or terms, the individual, if otherwise eligible, is entitled to a retroactive payment of compensation for each week for which the individual filed a timely claim for compensation and for which compensation was denied solely by reason of subdivision (b)(1) of this section. (B) The individual shall apply for the retroactive payment described in subdivision (b)(2)(A) of this section within two (2) weeks after receipt of notification from the educational institution that he or she will not have an opportunity to perform the services at that educational institution in the second academic year or term. (c) With respect to any services described in subsection (a) or (b) of this section, compensation payable on the basis of these services shall not be payable to any individual for any week of unemployment that commences during an established and customary vacation period or holiday recess if: (1) The individual performs these services in the period immediately before a vacation or holiday recess; and (2) There is a reasonable assurance that the individual will perform the services in the period immediately following the vacation period or holiday recess. (d)(1) With respect to any services described in subsections (a) and (b) of this section, compensation payable on the basis of services in any such capacity shall be denied as specified in subsections (a)-(c) of this section to any individual who performed the services in an educational institution while in the employ of an educational service agency. (2) For purposes of this subdivision, the term “educational service agency” means a governmental agency or governmental entity which is established and operated exclusively for the purpose of providing such services to one (1) or more educational institutions.