Court Opinion

ID: 9855856
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:32:16.354052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:13.637208
License: Public Domain

Judge WHICHARD
dissenting.
The 1977 General Assembly in Chapter 727 of the 1977 Session Laws amended the Employment Security Law, G.S. 96-1 et seq., to add to the definition of the term “Employer” contained in G.S. 96-8 (5) the following:
q. With respect to employment on and after January 1, 1978, any nonprofit elementary and secondary school.
The same act amended G.S. 96-8(6) by adding a new subdivision j. to read as follows:
j. On and after January 1,1978, the term “employment” includes services performed in any calendar year by *441employees of nonprofit elementary and secondary schools.
The record indicates, as stated in the majority opinion, that the North Carolina Employment Security Commission
finances its public employment through federal grants, and that the Commission obtains these funds only after the state unemployment tax law is certified by the United States Secretary of Labor as being in compliance with the federal unemployment tax law, thus allowing the state to take a credit against the federal tax.
It also indicates that the United States Secretary of Labor has interpreted the federal statute which corresponds to Chapter 96 of the North Carolina General Statutes to include parochial and parish schools within the scope of the federal unemployment tax provisions.
I believe the General Assembly, in enacting the 1977 amendments which added subsection q to G.S. 96-8(5) and subsection j to G.S. 96-8(6), was responding to a perceived threat to federal certification and funding of North Carolina’s unemployment compensation program; and that because the federal law, as interpreted and applied by the United States Secretary of Labor, appeared to require application of the Employment Security Law to plaintiff and others similarly situated, the General Assembly intended by this amendment to make the law applicable to them. For that reason, I would vote to reverse.
I, like the majority, do not reach the constitutional questions raised by plaintiff because they were not reached by the trial court. My vote is based solely on my interpretation of the intent of the General Assembly in the enactment of G.S. 96-8(5) q and G.S. 96-8 (6) j, applying
the well-recognized rules of statutory construction that the intent of the legislature controls the interpretation of a statute, . . . and that when there are two acts of the legislature applicable to the same subject; their provisions are to be reconciled if this can be done by fair and reasonable intendment, but, to the extent that they are necessarily repugnant, the latter shall prevail.
*442Highway Commission v. Hemphill, 269 N.C. 535, 538-539, 153 S.E. 2d 22, 26 (1967) (emphasis in original).