Court Opinion

ID: 9603966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:12:02.922933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:16.284015
License: Public Domain

*254Prager, J.,
I respectfully dissent. The majority of the court have strictly construed the Kansas anti-discrimination legislation in direct opposition to the mandate of the legislature that the provisions of the act should be construed liberally. (K. S. A. 44-1006 [Weeks 1973].) By this decision the majority have withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights an extremely important area of discriminatory practices which persist at times in our society today. In my judgment the majority have failed to give due consideration to the history of anti-discrimination legislation in Kansas and by strict construction have nullified and voided some of its basic objectives.
In determining the difficult questions presented in this case it is helpful to bear in mind the recent history of the Kansas anti-discrimination legislation discussed in Kansas Commission on Civil Rights v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 216 Kan. 306, 532 P. 2d 1263. We there held that a retail store was a “place of public accommodation” even though not one of those places was specifically named in the act. Therefore, we said, the improperly motivated denial of retail credit would be an “unlawful discriminatory practice” under the act. In reaching that conclusion we cited our prior cases, noting of them that, “Taken together they may be said to indicate a tendency on the part of this court to give the statute a broad interpretation.” (p. 310.) In the opinion Mr. Justice Fontron pointed out the constantly expanding scope of the act in the following language:
“The history of anti-discrimination legislation in recent years appears to have been one of constantly expanding coverage. The Kansas experience illustrates the trend. The first Kansas Act Against Discrimination was adopted in 1961, although an anti-discrimination commission had been created in 1953, and although, also, a penal statute proscribing discrimination in certain limited areas had long been on the statute books.
“The 1961 Act pertained to unfair labor practices; it was geared to eliminate discrimination in all employment practices.’ Two years later, in 1963, the legislature amended the Act to apply also to ‘accommodations in hotels, motels, cabin camps and restaurants.’ It was not until 1965 that tire Act, through amendment, was made to apply not only to lodgings and eating places but, in addition, to ‘places of public accommodation.’ In 1970 the Fair Housing Act was adopted, extending anti-discrimination legislation to the field of housing. Until 1972 discrimination because of race, religion, color, national origin or ancestry was proscribed in areas covered within the Act. In 1972 the word sex was added to the list and in 1974, physical handicap, giving further sweep to the Act.
“Viewing Kansas Civil Rights legislation in the perspective of recent history, we discern a continuing intent on the part of the legislature to *255strengthen civil rights statutes and to enlarge the areas of their coverage. . . .” (pp. 316-317.)
We thus recognized the general areas into which the act had spread — from employment to specific public accommodations, to all public accommodations, to housing. What was not dealt with there, because the issue was not involved, was the spread of the act’s coverage to include governmental agencies. As pointed out by Mr. Justice Fontron it was not until 1963 that the legislature extended the act to apply to hotels, motels, cabin camps, and restaurants. In 1965 the act was amended to apply not only to motels and eating places but places of “public accommodations”, which term was declared to include any person who caters or offers his “goods, facilities, and accommodations to the public, but shall not include a nonprofit fraternal or social association or corporation.” It is important to note that this 1965 definition of public accommodations did not include the term “services”. (Laws of 1965, ch. 323, §2[h].)
In 1970 the definition of “public accommodations” was expanded to include “any person . . . who caters or offers his goods, services, facilities, and accommodations to the public, . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) (Laws of 1970, ch. 192, § 1 [h].) At this time governmental agencies were not specifically brought within the application of the act.
That change was effected by the enactment of chapter 194, Laws of 1972. Among other things that act enlarged the definition of the term “unlawful discriminatory practice” found in K. S. A. 44-1002 (i) and reorganized K. S. A. 44-1009, which proscribed a number of unlawful acts. Prior to the 1972 amendment 44-1002 (i) defined an unlawful discriminatory practice as discrimination or segregation in some twenty-one specific types of business establishments or facilities or in a place of public accommodations covered by this act. The 1972 amendment Laws of 1972, ch. 194, §2 (i) added the following language to 44-1002 (i):
“The term ‘unlawful discriminatory practice’ also means any discrimination against persons in the full and equal use and enjoyment of the services, facilities, privileges and advantages of any institution, department or agency of the state of Kansas or any political subdivision or municipality thereof.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The 1972 act in section 7 (c) of chapter 194, also amended 44-1009 to expand the term “unlawful discriminatory practice” to include a new section (c) (3) as follows:
*256“44-1009
“(c) It shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice:
“(3) For any person, as defined herein, to refuse, deny, make a distinction, directly or indirectly, or discriminate in any way against persons because of the race, religion, color, sex, national origin or ancestry of such persons in the full and equal use and enjoyment of the services, facilities, privileges and advantages of any institution, department or agency of the state of Kansas or any political subdivision or municipality thereof.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Paragraph (3) is the new addition. Under well-known rules of statutory construction this amendment, together with the amendment of 44-1002 (i), must be presumed to have effected some significant change in the statute. (Curless v. Board of County Commissioners, 197 Kan. 580, 587, 419 P. 2d 876; Shapiro v. Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, 211 Kan. 452, 507 P. 2d 281.) Obviously some sort of conduct was now an “unlawful discriminatory practice” under the act which would not have been covered prior to the amendment. It is clear to me that this sequence of amendments discussed above expressed the legislative intent that the term “public accommodations” should be expanded to vest in the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights the authority to investigate alleged unlawful discriminatory practices in the use and enjoyment of any services offered by any governmental agency to the public since by the amendment of 1970 the statutory definition of “public accommodations” was enlarged to include services offered to the public.
Applying a strict construction to these statutes the majority have concluded that the act does not mean what it says since the legislature in 1972 did not amend K. S. A. 44-1001 to expand the policy of the state and the purposes of the act. I cannot read the general policy declaration contained in 44-1001 as being any sort of implied limitation on the later substantive provisions of the act defining terms and proscribing specific unlawful conduct. That section, in large part, is legislative rhetoric of an aspirational nature. An amendment of this “purpose” and “policy” section to reflect any new and expanded coverage may promote symmetry in drafting but is not, in my opinion, necessary to make the amendments valid.
History reveals at least one instance where the legislature expanded the act’s coverage into an entirely new area, and only later amended the statement of policy to embrace the new coverage. In 1970 the entire “fair housing act” was adopted (Laws of 1970, *257ch. 193, now K. S. A. 44-1015 through 1029) and made “a part of the Kansas act against discrimination” (§ 15, now K. S. A. 44-1029). Yet it was not until 1972 that the purposes and policy section, 44-1001, was amended to reflect the fact that housing had been added to the areas covered. (Laws of 1972, ch. 194, § 1.) For two years one looking at 44-1001 to determine what discriminatory acts were prohibited by the act would have had no hint that discriminatory housing practices were among them. Yet I do not believe it would be contended that during those two years all fifteen sections of the fair housing act were dormant and ineffective, merely because the legislature had not formally declared that the policy so clearly reflected in those sections was in fact the public policy of the state.
On the basis of the above rationale I have concluded that the various amendments discussed above extended the act’s coverage to the actions of any public officials which discriminate against persons in the rendition of any service to the public — first, by the redefinition of the term “public accommodations” in 1970 to include any person who offers his services to the public and, second, by the amendment of 1972 which made the anti-discriminatory act applicable to the services of any institution, department or agency of the state of Kansas or any of its political subdivisions or municipalities.
There remains for consideration the question whether the term “services” includes the arrest and in-custody treatment of an alleged law violator. The trial court • after a careful examination of the statutory language found:
“2. An arrest’ is such a service within the act and a citizen is entitled not to be discriminated against in the process of being arrested.
“3. An officer is exercising his authority in perfecting an arrest of a citizen of the State of Kansas and the United States is performing a service for and on behalf of a public facility, that is, the Topeka Police Department, when he is perfecting an arrest.”
I am in complete agreement with the findings of the trial court in this respect. In my judgment what the legislature intended by amending our anti-discriminatory legislation to include all governmental agencies was that all persons should receive fair, equal and evenhanded treatment at the hands of their government. Such is the command of the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 1 of the Bill of Rights. By the anti-discrimination act the legislature simply made its creature, the commission on civil rights, an additional tool for the enforcement of the equal rights guaranteed b.y statute and the fed*258eral and state constitutions. Absent such a tool the citizen whose rights are abridged by a governmental agent could only seek recourse in the courts. While I am confident that a remedy would be forthcoming there, it is within the legislature’s competence to afford another forum which it thinks speedier and less expensive.
The majority in this case have not determined the question presented as to whether or not an arrest is a “service” of the police department so that if it is discriminatorily made it would be an unlawful discriminatory practice. The prevention, detection and suppression of crime, the control of traffic and maintenance of the peace are police functions which must, I think, all be regarded as “services” to the citizenry at large. The making of an arrest is but one aspect of those services. In performing those functions I do not think a police department or a police officer may have a policy of arresting blacks under circumstances where it would not arrest whites, any more than they may have a policy of investigating crimes against whites while ignoring crimes against blacks. Either course of conduct would deny to blacks “the full and equal use and enjoyment oí the services and facilities” of the department.
The result reached by the district court in this case necessarily flows from a consideration of the fundamental role of government in our society. In the Declaration of Independence our founding fathers recognized certain inalienable rights of all men, and went on to say, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This was to them and remains for us a “self-evident” truth. In the same vein, section 2 of our Kansas Bill of Rights recognizes that “All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and are instituted for their equal protection and benefit.” The purport of both of these statements is that government in a democracy exists only to serve those whom it governs. It has no purpose and no other reason for being.
Hence, in a large but real sense, every function government performs is a “service" to the people; if it is not, government should not be performing it. Some such “services” may be thought ill-advised and some, like taxation or arrests, may be unwelcome to their objects. They are all, nonetheless, part of the overall function of government and may properly be deemed “services” of government. In all such services equality is ordained by our statute as well as our constitutions.
*259I would hold, therefore, that the arrest of an alleged law violator and his subsequent treatment while in police custody are both governmental “services” covered by K. S. A. 44-1009 (c) (3). Since by expressed language discrimination in those functions is by definition an “unlawful discriminatory practice,” the commission is entitled to investigate an allegation of such discrimination. Under K. S. A. 44-1004 (5) it may issue subpoenas in furtherance of its investigation, and if necessary secure a compliance order from the district court. I respectfully dissent from the decision of this court holding to the contrary. I would affirm the trial court.