Court Opinion

ID: 9791168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:06:59.016652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:34.539125
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in result:
At stake here is Mrs. Seely’s claim to a renewal of her retail liquor license. The court’s opinion affirms the district court decision in her favor. While I join in the court’s judgment, I cannot concur in its pronouncement.
The Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (agency) found Mrs. Seely legally ineligible to hold a license because of her husband’s felony conviction.1 The agency ruling plainly rests on the express terms of 37 O.S.1971 § 527(a)(3). The cited statute provides that a liquor license may not issue to, or be held by, one whose “spouse . . . has been convicted of a felony.” 2 In its order setting aside the agency decision the district court found that there was no proof of “a willful violation of a prohibited act or at a minimum, a knowledge of the commission of the willful violation of the prohibited act on the part of the licensee.” Much like the trial judge, this court prefers not to pass on the constitutional validity of Mrs. Seely’s legislatively imposed disqualification but categorically refuses to give full obedience to the letter of the statute. The court seems to reject the notion that the clear and unequivocal command of § 527(a)(3) makes Mrs. Seely per se ineligible to hold a license. Its holding in her favor is sought to be ascribed to the agency’s failure of sustaining what must be divined as an extra-statutory onus. The burden cast on the agency by today’s opinion requires proof of more than the statute contemplates. It calls for a showing of some rational connection between the spouse’s felony conviction and a licensee’s alleged want of present fitness. The court appears to suggest the necessary nexus could have been supplied here by evidence to the effect that (a) she knew of her husband’s felonious activity and (b) he was participating in the operations of her retail liquor business.
I find no legal warrant for watering down the per se disqualification provision in § 527(a)(3) by judicial construction which would superimpose a statutorily unexpressed requirement that there be some rational connection between the spouse’s conviction and a licensee’s lack of fitness. If the clear command of § 527(a)(3) is in fact constitutional, our duty must be to obey it to the letter and to hold this licensee disqualified.3 It is only upon a pronouncement of statutory invalidity that we may set ourselves free to relieve Mrs. Seely from her legislatively imposed disability to hold a license. I divine no tenable ground for *539bypassing the constitutional issue that is squarely before us. It was clearly raised below. While its contours are now somewhat eclipsed by the circuitous rhetoric of appellate advocacy, this court is never chained to the exact theory on which the case was presented to the trial court when it is resolving purely public-law issues.4
The question to be answered here is whether the spousal-felony-conviction disqualification in § 527(a)(3) constitutes a bill of attainder prohibited by Art. 1 § 10, U.S. Const, and by Art. 2 § 15, Okl.Con. I would hold that it does.
So far as the provision here in question affects Mrs. Seely, § 527(a)(3) is not a statute but rather a legislative sentence condemning her complicity in her husband’s felonious conduct and her involvement in his criminal activity. It is a legislatively expressed predetermination-in most conclusive terms-of her unfitness as a liquor license holder. Her exclusion results not from her own conduct-past or present-but is predicated solely on the conviction of another.
A bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial trial. If the punishment be less than death, the enactment is termed a bill of pains and penalties.5 The provisions of our constitution which prohibit the legislature from passing a bill of attainder encompass within their terms a proscription of bills of pains and penalties.6 “Punishment”-in the attainder context-means more than imprisonment, fine or a death sentence. It comprehends “a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion from a chosen vocation.” 7
By the terms of § 527(a)(3), Mrs. Seely was excluded from being licensed as a retail liquor dealer. The legislative sentence-perpetual and conclusive-affords her absolutely no opportunity for a judicial determination of her own fitness as a licensee.8 While the XXIst Amendment to the Fed. Const, did indeed vest in the states broad powers to regulate traffic in alcoholic beverages,9 it did not free our legislature from the state’s own constitutional limitation upon the power to enact law. Art. 2 § 15, Okl.Con., which bans attainder, is a binding state-imposed limitation on permissible legislative action.
I would hold that the per se disqualification in § 527(a)(3), which made Mrs. Seely ineligible for a liquor license upon her spouse’s felony conviction, violates our constitutional interdiction of legislative attain-ders.

. The felonious act of the husband-possession of a stolen automobile-was admittedly unrelated to the wife’s liquor store operations.

. The pertinent provisions of § 527(a)(3) are: “The Board shall refuse to issue a . .. package store license either on an original application or a renewal application, if it has reasonable grounds to believe and finds any of the following to be true:
* ⅜ * * * Hs
(3) That the applicant or any partner, or spouse of the applicant or any partner, has been convicted of a felony.” [Emphasis added],

.“Courts do not concern themselves with the merits, wisdom or advisability of legislative en*539actments but only with their meaning and validity.” Blackwell Zinc Company v. Parker, Okl., 406 P.2d 965, 969 [1965].

. Application of Goodwin, Okl., 597 P.2d 762, 764 [1979]; Special Indemnity Fund v. Reynolds, 199 Okl. 570, 188 P.2d 841 [1948].

. Cummings v. State of Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 323, 18 L.Ed. 356 [1866]; United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 66 S.Ct. 1073, 90 L.Ed. 1252 [1946]; United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 85 S.Ct. 1707, 14 L.Ed. 484 [1965].

. Cummings v. State of Missouri, supra note 5.

. United States v. Lovett, supra note 5, 66 S.Ct. at 1079; United States v. Brown, supra note 5, 85 S.Ct. at 1715; Cooper v. Henslee, 257 Ark. 963, 522 S.W.2d 391, 400 [1975].

. Putty v. U. S., 220 F.2d 473, 478 [9th Cir. 1955].

. California v. LaRue, 409 U.S. 109, 93 S.Ct. 390, 34 L.Ed.2d 342 [1972].