Court Opinion

ID: 9575316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:57.359466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:50.865728
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
{concurring). Both parties in this case agree that this court’s interpretation in prior cases of the statutory phrase "circumstances of the offense” was not true to the text of the statute and raised problems in application. The majority now describes "the circumstances of the offense” in a variety of ways: as the elements of the offense, as the character-related facts surrounding the offense, as the deeper causes of criminal behavior ("fostering circumstances” such as "the opportunity for criminal behavior, the reaction to responsibility, or the character traits of the person”) and as the essential concomitants of the offense (e.g., the propensity of anyone who commits armed robbery to use force or the threat of force to achieve goals or objectives).
One purpose of the Fair Employment Act (Act) is to prohibit an employer from prejudging an applicant’s or employee’s suitability for a job on the basis of a conviction record. Contrary to the assertions of the majority, the Act does place a burden on an employer to consider each applicant or employee to ascertain whether the circumstances of the offense are substantially related to the circumstances of the job.
I fear that what may emerge from the majority opinion is an emphasis on describing the circumstances of the offense at a high level of generality. At the highest level of generality,. according to the majority opinion, an individual convicted of a crime is an "anti-social” "recidivist,” and anti-social recidivists *832are fit for few employment positions. Clearly the majority cannot have intended this kind of approach, because such an approach tends to eviscerate the statute. The legislature could not have intended to adopt an eviscerated statute.