Court Opinion

ID: 9844256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:59:49.595362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:31.191868
License: Public Domain

McCALEB, Justice.
By .Act 239 of 1950, which amended and reenacted .Section 1994 of Title 33 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950, LSA-R.S., relative to the maximum hours of work required of firemen, the right was accorded to members of the fire department of any city with a population of between 15,000 and 250,000 to decide by their vote whether they would work a maximum of sixty hours per week. The City of Alexandria, asserting that this provision of the Act is unconstitutional in that it delegates to the firemen the right to make laws, brought suit against appellant, a labor union composed of the members of the Alexandria Fire Department, for a judgment declaring that such was the case. After a hearing in the trial court, the contention of the city was maintained and a declaratory judgment entered holding the assailed provision unconstitutional. Thereupon, appellant brought the case here for review.1
The pertinent part of LSA-R.S. 33:1994, as amended by Section 1 of Act 239 of 1950, reads: “The maximum hours of work required of firemen covered by this Sub-part in cities having a population in excess of two hundred fifty thousand in any one calendar week shall be sixty hours, and in *758municipalities having a population of two hundred fifty thousand or less, covered by this Sub-part, seventy-two hours. * * * Provided, however, that in any municipality having a population of not less than fifteen thousand (15,000) nor more than two hundred fifty thousand (250,000) if at an election held for that purpose, the majority of the members of the -fire department of any city having a maximum work week of seventy two hours, should so vote, the maximum hours of work required of firemen as herein provided in such city shall not be in excess of sixty hours in any one calendar week. * * * ”
The challenge of the City of Alexandria directed against the constitutionality of the above quoted proviso of R.S. 33:1994 is that the Legislature, by vesting in the firemen of the affected cities the right to change by their vote the maximum weekly working hours from 72 to 60, has surrendered to these individual groups its exclusive authority to legislate upon such police regulations.
Appellant denies that the assailed provision delegates to the firemen legislative authority. It asserts that the act is a complete law but that its operation has merely been suspended, being dependent upon the occurrence of a designated contingency or event, i. e., the vote of the firemen of any city of the designated class, and that such legislation is permissible.
It is an elementary principle of constitutional law that legislative power, conferred under constitutional provisions,2 cannot be delegated by the Legislature either to the people or to any other body or authority. (State v. Watkins, 176 La. 837, 147 So. 8, citing Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, 8th Ed. Vol. 1, pp. 224, 238, 239, 240, 242, 244; 16 C.J.S., Constitutional Law, § 133; 11 Am.Jur. Sec. 214.
However, an exception to this general doctrine is recognized in certain instances involving delegation to local political subdivisions. Thus, it is well established that the Legislature may delegate a part of its power over local subjects to municipal corporations and other public bodies “within the legislative classification of departments”. 11 Am.Jur. Sections 223 and 224. State v. Watkins, supra. And, too, the maxim does not forbid the delegation of powers which' are not purely legislative in nature, that is, powers which may properly be exercised by the lawmaker but which are of a nonlegislative character. 11 Am. Jur. Sec. 214, p. 923. Accordingly, the Legislature may confer upon an executive or administrative officer or board discretion in the administration of the law with the right to determine facts or a state of things iipon which the law makes or intends to *760make its own action depend, provided that the statute establish a sufficient basic standard and rule of action for the guidance of the instrumentality or officer that is to administer the law. 16 C.J.S., Constitutional Law, § 133a, pp. 340, 341; 11 Am.Jur. Sec. 232.
Another exception to the rule is • made as to legislation conditioned for its operation upon the happening of a certain contingency or future event. 11 Am. Jur. Sec. 216; 16 C.J.S., Constitutional Law, § 141; Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, 8th Ed. Vol. 1, pp. 242, 243 and 244. The reason for the allowance of this exception (which is in many cases obviously violative of the cardinal principle) is stated in 11 Am.Jur. Sec. 216 to be “that it is not always essential that a legislative act must in any event take effect as law after it leaves the hands of the legislature. If the law is in its provisions a complete statute in other respects, its taking effect may be made conditional upon some subsequent event. When that event happens, the statute takes effect and becomes the law by force of legislative action as fully as if the time when it should take effect had been unconditionally fixed”.
Considering the provision under attack in this case in the light of the foregoing tenents, we find it impossible to uphold it. The statute fixes the maximum hours of work for firemen in municipalities, having a population of 250,000 or less, during any calendar week at 72. This, unquestionably, the legislature had the right to do. But when it declares that the firemen in municipalities having a population of not less than 15,000 nor more than 250,-000 may, by a vote of the majority of the members of the fire department, reduce the maximum work week from 72 to 60 hours, the Legislature proceeds to confer upon the majority of firemen in any and all such cities the right to change and amend the law. This is purely a legislative function which cannot be delegated to any private group.
And we think it manifest that the power conferred on the firemen cannot be fitted into any of the categories of permissive legislative delegation through which the fate of unconstitutionality may be averted. This is not, as counsel for appellant contend, a case wherein the assailed provision can be upheld on the basis that it is legislation which merely becomes effective upon the happening of a specified event. Laws, to be sustainable on the theory that they are complete in themselves but that their effectiveness is contingent upon the occurrence of an event, are generally, according to Judge Cooley, local option enactments, that is, legislation which is submitted to the people of a certain locality and which is sustained as a proper delegation of legislative power because it is accepted that local judgment on such matters should control. See Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, 8th Ed. Vol. 1, page 245. And, although it appears in the multitudinous authorities on this subject that a few courts *762have .extended this exception in favor of contingent legislation so as to include within its scope matters which are not truly local option laws, this Court is not among that number. On the contrary, in City of Shreveport v. Price, 142 La. 936, 77 So. 883, State v. Watkins, supra, and the companion cases of State v. Malone, 176 La. 846, 147 So. 11, State v. Antee, 176 La. 847, 147 So. 11, City of Shreveport v. Malone, 176 La. 848, 147 So. 12, State v. Capps, 176 La. 849, 147 So. 12 and State v. Washburn, 177 La. 27, 147 So. 489, and State v. Maitrejean, 193 La. 824, 192 So. 361, our predecessors have affirmed and reaffirmed strict adherence to the principle that legislative power may not be delegated, save to municipal corporations and other local political subdivisions, and then only in such measure for which justification clearly appears by reason of the exigencies of local government and by necessity or greater convenience in the administration of public affairs.
The case of State v. Watkins, supra, furnishes a classic example. There, the Legislature, by Act 238 of 1932, provided for a referendum submitting to the electors the question whether the State prohibition law should be repealed. The act was found to be unconstitutional as an improper delegation of legislative power notwithstanding that the referendum was submitted to the people themselves, the source of all law in a democracy.
In the case at bar, the assailed provision is of a far reaching nature in that the power is delegated to a majority of the firemen in each city within the classified population to determine whether they will work a maximum of 72 or 60 hours a week. This, to paraphrase the Supreme Court of the United States in Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 56 S.Ct. 855, 876, 80 L.Ed. 1160, “is legislative delegation in its most obnoxious form; for it is not even delegation to an official or an official body, presumptively disinterested, but to private persons * * * ” who, by a majority vote, may force the police regulation upon an unwilling minority and the taxpayers of the municipality.
In the Carter Coal Co. case, where an Act of Congress provided, in part, that the maximum daily and weekly hours of labor should be those as were agreed upon in any contract or contracts negotiated between the producers of more than % of the annual national coal tonnage production for the preceding calendar year and the representatives of more than % of the mine workers employed, the position taken by the Government, in answer to the constitutional challenge of an improper delegation of legislative power, was that it was merely legislation which became .effective on the happening of a specified event (the same as contended in the instant case) and that the event was the agreement of a certain proportion of producers and employees which became legally binding upon all other producers and employees. This contention, which was rejected by the majority opin*764ion, was the s'tfbject of special comment by Chief Justice Hughes in a separate concurring opinion. He said: “I think that the argument is unsound and is pressed to the point where the principle would be entirely destroyed. It would remove all restrictions upon the delegation of legislative power, as the making of laws could thus be referred to any designated officials or private persons whose orders or agreements could be treated as 'events/ with the result that they would be invested with the force of law having penal sanctions.”
In their efforts to sustain the constitutionality of the challenged provision of Act 239 of 1950 as conditional legislation not involving an improper delegation of legislative power, counsel for appellant rely heavily upon Currin v. Wallace, 306 U.S. 1, 59 S.Ct. 379, 83 L.Ed. 441, which was decided in 1938, three years after Carter v. Carter Coal Co. That case, which involved the validity of the tobacco inspection act adopted by Congress, bears little resemblance to the matter at hand. There, Congress had found that the classification of tobacco according to type and grade affected the price received and that, without uniform standards, its value was susceptible to manipulation and speculation. Declaring that uniform standards for the protection of producers and others engaged in commerce was imperative in the tobacco industry, Congress authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to investigate the handling, inspection and marketing of the product and establish standards by which the type and grade might be determined. As an incident to the power vested in the administrative officer (Secretary of Agriculture), he was authorized to designate the markets in which tobacco was to be bought and sold at auction for movement in commerce. But he was not to designate a market unless. % of the growers, voting at a special referendum, favored it. That provision of the statute, among others, was attacked on the ground that it was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. But the Court rightly rejected the argument, simply stating that this was not an attempted surrender of any legislative functions but merely the vesting in an administrative officer the right to determine facts and make decisions according to proper standards under which the legislative policy, as declared by Congress, was to apply. Insofar as the required referendum by the Secretary of Agriculture to the growers of tobacco was concerned, the court said that this did not “involve any delegation of legislative authority” and that it was merely a condition under which the Secretary was to be bound in the exercise of his administrative powers under the Act.3
*766Accordingly, it is perceived that Currin v. Wallace, supra, is predicated entirely upon the delegation to an administrative officer of authority to find facts and exercise discretion in the application of legislative policy under proper guideposts and standards. The provision respecting the referendum by the tobacco growers, in order for the Secretary to designate a market, was merely a limitation upon his ad-, ministrative authority; it was not comparable to a case like this, where the vote of the firemen and not of the Legislature effects a change in the law.
The judgment appealed from is affirmed.

. Properly so. Section 10 of Article 7 of the Constitution vests appellate jurisdiction in this court in all cases wherein a law of the State has been declared uncons titutionah

. Section 1 of Article 3 of the Constitution of Louisiana vests the legislative power of the State in the Legislature, consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives.

. The opinion in Currin v. Wallace, supra, delivered by Chief Justice Hughes, com-' ments upon and distinguishes Carter v. Carter Coal Co., supra, on the ground that, there, the producers were given the right to make the law and force it on a minority.