Court Opinion

ID: 9538834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:42:19.026988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:11.541766
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
Government Code section 69898, subdivision (d) authorizes the superior court of a county to transfer duties from an elected county clerk like the petitioner in this case to an administrator appointed by the superior court, but says nothing about the permissible timing of such a transfer. From this silence, the majority concludes that the Legislature intended to empower the superior court to implement a transfer of duties from the county clerk at any time. I cannot agree that the Legislature intended this interpretation of section 69898, in light of the harm it causes to the people’s right to vote.
The right to vote stands at the heart of our democratic institutions. “ ‘ “No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election .... Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.” ’ ” (Canaan v. Abdelnour (1985) 40 Cal.3d 703, 714-715 [221 Cal.Rptr. 468, 710 P.2d 268, 69 A.L.R.4th 915].) If qualified *1164voters are denied the opportunity to cast a ballot, no one would question that their right to vote is infringed. That right is also impaired when, as occurred here, after the election the voters’ ballots are rendered largely meaningless because the elected official’s major duties are taken away before expiration of the term of office and given to one not elected to perform them. Nonetheless, in this case the majority holds that the Fresno County Superior Court may still the voice of the electorate by divesting petitioner of the major duties that the electorate had chosen her to perform. Because, for the reasons stated below, I do not share the majority’s view that the Legislature intended to grant the judicial branch the power to perform this bait-and-switch on the voters, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal that the Fresno County Superior Court’s transfer of duties from the county clerk cannot take effect until the end of petitioner’s term.
I
The Fresno County Clerk’s Office was the subject of inquiry and criticism by grand juries, courts, lawyers, the press, and the public from approximately 1974 to 1990. The criticism focused on allegations that the then incumbent county clerk was failing to perform the duties of the office adequately, including those affecting the superior court. As a consequence, petitioner Susan B. Anderson and four others ran for the office of county clerk in 1990. Petitioner, an attorney, campaigned on a promise to reform the office. Petitioner received 49.3 percent of the vote in the primary election and 84 percent in the ensuing runoff. In the same election in which she was elected, the voters rejected a ballot measure that would have made the county clerk’s office appointive rather than elective.
During her first term, from 1991 to 1995, petitioner did reform the office as she had promised the electorate. Petitioner was reelected county clerk on June 4, 1994, for a four-year term beginning on January 2, 1995. On October 4, 1994, after petitioner’s election but before the start of her second term, the judges of the Fresno County Superior Court adopted local rule 22 to take effect December 30, 1994. Rule 22, promulgated under the authority of Government Code section 69898, appoints the superior court’s executive officer the clerk of the superior court; it transfer two-thirds of the employees and more than one-half of the duties of the county clerk from petitioner’s office to the superior court. According to the presiding judge’s explanation to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, rule 22 was adopted to promote court efficiency and to avoid the loss of potential funding by the state Trial Court Budget Commission. (Gov. Code, § 68502.5.)
Petitioner brought this action as an original proceeding in the Court of Appeal. The court stayed the implementation of rule 22 and subsequently *1165issued a writ of mandate, holding that rule 22 could not be implemented during petitioner’s term of office because to do so would impinge upon the electorate’s right to vote.
II
This case presents the question of whether Government Code section 69898, subdivision (d) (hereafter section 69898(d)) permits the transfer of superior court clerk duties from the county clerk before the expiration of the term for which the county clerk has been elected. By virtue of our state Constitution, the county clerk is ex officio the clerk of the superior court of that county. (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 4.) Section 69898(d) authorizes the superior court of a county, by promulgating a local court rule, to transfer duties related to the courts from the county clerk to an administrator appointed by the court.1 The statute is silent as to the timing of when such a transfer may take effect.
In Zumwalt v. Superior Court (1989) 49 Cal.3d 167, 180 [260 Cal.Rptr. 545, 776 P.2d 247] this court held that court-related duties could constitutionally be transferred from a county clerk to a court administrator. We had no occasion in that case, however, to consider whether section 69898(d) or the California Constitution imposed any restrictions on the timing of such a transfer.
The question of whether section 69898(d) permits the superior court to transfer duties from the county clerk before the end of the county clerk’s term is one of legislative intent. The majority asserts that because section 69898(d) is silent on the timing of the transfer, it therefore unambiguously authorizes the superior court to effect the transfer at any time. I disagree. Because the statute does not address the question of timing, the ordinary meaning of its language does not resolve one way or the other whether the superior court is authorized to take away the bulk of a county clerk’s duties after the clerk’s election and before the end of the term for which the clerk was elected. On its face, the statute is open to either interpretation.
When a statute delegates a power but is silent as to the manner in which the power may be exercised, it may be appropriate to infer from the statute’s *1166silence that the Legislature intended no restriction on the exercise of the power the statute delegates. Such an inference is certainly not automatic, however. Our duty to construe statutes so as to avoid constitutional questions may lead to the conclusion that a statute delegating a power contains implicit limitations on the exercise of that power: “ ‘ [W]here a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter.’ ” (People v. Davenport (1985) 41 Cal.3d 247, 264 [221 Cal.Rptr. 794, 710 P.2d 861], quoting United States ex rel. Atty. Gen. v. Delaware & H. Co. (1909) 213 U.S. 366, 408 [53 L.Ed. 836, 849, 29 S.Ct. 527].) In addition, the subject matter of the statute and the context in which it operates may show that it is more reasonable to conclude that the Legislature implicitly intended some limits on the exercise of the power delegated by the statute.
Thus, in deciding the issue of statutory interpretation presented here— whether section 69898(d) authorizes a superior court to transfer duties from a county clerk at any time—it is appropriate to examine the impact on the constitutional right to vote if superior courts possessed that transfer power. In my view, the serious interference with the right to vote outlined below that would result from granting a superior court the power to remove, at any time, duties from the county clerk, makes it improbable that the Legislature intended by the statute’s silence to grant the superior court that power. Accordingly, adhering to our duty to construe statutes to avoid constitutional questions, I conclude that section 69898(d) does not authorize a superior court to transfer duties from the county clerk between the time of the clerk’s election and the end of the term to which the clerk was elected. Because I decide this issue as a matter of statutory construction, it is unnecessary for me to decide, as the majority does, whether it would be constitutional for the Legislature to enact such a statute.
I now turn to an examination of the effect of section 69898(d) on the constitutional right to vote, in order to illuminate the probable intent of the Legislature and the proper construction of section 69898(d). “It is beyond cavil that ‘voting is of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure.’” (Burdick v. Takushi (1992) 504 U.S. 428, 433 [119 L.Ed.2d 245, 252, 112 S.Ct. 2059].) Indeed, the right to vote “may be the most fundamental of all.” (Board of Supervisors v. Local Agency Formation Com. (1992) 3 Cal.4th 903, 913 [13 Cal.Rptr.2d 245, 838 P.2d 1198].) This court has observed: “ ‘[A] fundamental goal of a democratic society is to attain the free and pure expression of the voters’ choice of candidates. To that end, our state and federal Constitutions mandate that the government must, if possible, avoid any feature that might adulterate or, indeed, frustrate, that free and pure choice . . . .’” (Canaan v. Abdelnour, supra, 40 *1167Cal.3d at p. 716, quoting Gould v. Grubb (1975) 14 Cal.3d 661, 677 [122 Cal.Rptr. 377, 536 P.2d 1337].) Undoubtedly, the Legislature is as fully aware as we are of “the need to protect the fundamental right to vote.” (Canaan v. Abdelnour, supra, 40 Cal.3d at p. 722.)
In particular, this court has recognized that taking away the major duties of an elected officeholder before the expiration of the term of office can infringe the right to vote. We so concluded in People v. Kelsey (1868) 34 Cal. 470 (hereafter Kelsey). In that case, a county sheriff at the time of his election was assigned by statute the duties of tax collector. (Id. at pp. 472-473.) Before the end of his term, however, the Legislature transferred those duties to the county treasurer. (Ibid.) This court held that the transfer was unconstitutional as applied to the sheriff’s current term of office and could not take effect until the sheriff’s term had expired. (Id. at pp. 475-476.) We stated that the Legislature’s power to transfer those duties from the sheriff to the treasurer did not imply that the Legislature had the power to make that transfer effective before the end of the term of a sheriff “elected in contemplation of performing the duties of Tax Collector.” (Id. at p. 476.)
Forty-eight years later, a similar issue arose in People v. Gunn (1916) 30 Cal.App. 114 [157 P. 619]. In that case, Napa County had a single elective office that combined the duties and offices of auditor and recorder. The county board of supervisors sought to remove the duties of auditor from the office and transfer them to a new position before the end of the term of the person who had been elected to fill the combined auditor/recorder office. (Id. at pp. 114-116.) The Court of Appeal, applying our decision in Kelsey, supra, 34 Cal. 470, held that the duties could not be transferred before the end of the officeholder’s term. In so holding, it stated: “It is safer and, we think, better that the principle enunciated in the Kelsey case, supra, should be followed, and the choice of the electors remain undisturbed until... the next election . . . .” (30 Cal.App. at p. 121.)
The majority, however, reads Kelsey, supra, 34 Cal. 470, and People v. Gunn, supra, 30 Cal.App. 114, narrowly as limiting the transfer of duties from an elected officer only if the transferred duty was one that could be performed exclusively by a person elected to do so. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1160.) In my view, however, Kelsey and Gunn are not so narrowly confined but rest on the broader principle that “once the electorate has voted for a public officer, having in mind that he [or she] will perform a particular bundle of duties, then it would impermissibly negate that exercise of elective choice to take those duties from the official and give them to one not elected to perform them.” (Beck v. County of Santa Clara (1988) 204 Cal.App.3d 789, 794 [251 Cal.Rptr. 444].)
*1168The principle on which Kelsey, supra, 34 Cal. 470, turned was not merely that the officeholder’s duties were transferred to someone not elected to perform them, but that the duties were taken away from someone whom the electorate had chosen to perform them, thereby nullifying the voters’ choice. This court made this clear when, shortly after Kelsey, it decided Mills v. Sargent (1868) 36 Cal. 379. The parties in Mills were the successors in office to the parties in Kelsey, the new sheriff maintained that because the statute had sought to make the transfer of the duties of tax collector from the old sheriff to the treasurer effective before the end of the old sheriff’s term, it was unconstitutional not only as applied to the old sheriff but for all purposes. (Id. at p. 382.) In the course of rejecting that contention, this court emphasized that Kelsey had been grounded on the fact that, in transferring the duties, the choice of the electorate had been negated, and that this ground had disappeared once new elections were held in which the voters were informed that the person they elected as treasurer, and not the one they elected as sheriff, would serve as tax collector: “[W]e held [in Kelsey], that, under the Constitution which required a Tax Collector to be elected, as such, by the people, it was incompetent for the Legislature, after a Tax Collector had been elected for a term by the people, to transfer the office from the party so elected with a view to that office, to another party who was not elected with any view to a discharge of so important duties. ... [*[0 ... At the next general election the Board of Supervisors, in their proclamation, made in pursuance of the statute, stated that a Treasurer would be elected, who would be ex officio Tax Collector; and the people, under the law, elected a Treasurer with the express understanding that he would act in the double capacity of Treasurer and Tax Collector . . . .” (Id. at pp. 382-383, italics added.)
In constructing its distinction between nontransferable elective duties and transferable appointive duties, the majority also relies on Attorney-General v. Squires (1859) 14 Cal. 12. In that case, a sheriff who was also tax collector challenged a statute that divested him during his term of office of the duty of collecting a license fee from foreign miners; the court held that the transfer was permissible because it did not take away the “necessary duties of the Tax Collector.” (Id. at p. 18.) As I read Squires, it stands only for the unexceptionable and pragmatic conclusion that the electorate’s right to vote is not substantially infringed when the duty that is transferred during the term of office is only peripheral to that office. By contrast, this case involves the transfer of the majority of the county clerk’s duties; thus, Squires offers no support to the majority’s position.
The final case that the majority relies on in drawing its distinction between duties assignable to elective and appointive officers, Kelly v. Kane *1169(1939) 34 Cal.App.2d 588 [94 P.2d 384], is not relevant. In that case, duties were transferred from one appointive office to another appointive office. (Id. at pp. 589, 591.) Because there was no transfer of duties from an elected officer, no question arose in that case as to the electorate’s right to vote or the restrictions on transferring duties from an elected officer.
The majority also relies on a 1953 opinion of the Attorney General as support for its distinction between nontransferable elective duties and transferable appointive duties. (22 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 177 (1953).) In that opinion, the Attorney General, by an analysis similar to the majority’s in this case (and one that I find similarly defective), concluded that the duties of clerk of a county board of supervisors could be transferred from the elected county clerk to an appointed official. (Id. at pp. 179-181.) In particular, the Attorney General, like the majority here, relied on Kelly v. Kane, supra, 34 Cal.App.2d 588, to distinguish Kelsey and Gunn; as I have previously stated, this reliance is misplaced because in Kane the duties were transferred from one appointed official to another appointed official.
There is another consideration that weighs against the majority’s construction of section 69898(d). As the majority notes (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1155), the statute’s purpose is to enhance the efficiency of court operations by permitting a superior court to transfer duties where appropriate from the county clerk to a court administrator. As I observed earlier, the statute is silent on the timing of such a transfer. The majority concludes from this silence that a superior court may cause the transfer to occur at any time. Henceforth, however, what is to prevent the superior court judges in a particular county from awaiting the outcome of a county clerk election and then taking away important duties from the clerk out of antipathy to the person elected clerk or to the clerk’s policies with respect to court-related duties? It is quite dubious that, in enacting section 69898(d), the Legislature intended any transfer of duties from a county clerk to be grounded on the identity or policies of the person elected clerk, rather than on the promotion of judicial efficiency.
In sum, I presume that in enacting section 69898(d) the Legislature was mindful of the respect due to the people’s right to vote; of the “ ‘mandate that the government must, if possible, avoid any feature that might adulterate, or, indeed, frustrate’ ” (Canaan v. Abdelnour, supra, 40 Cal.3d at p. 716) the choices expressed by the electorate; of existing legal precedent restricting the timing of transfers of duties from elected officeholders during their terms; and of the potential for thwarting the will of the people inherent in delegating to the judicial branch the power to take away duties from an officeholder elected to perform those duties. I conclude therefore that the *1170Legislature intended that section 69898(d) be construed in conformity with, and not contrary to, these fundamental structural principles of our government and with our precedent in Kelsey, supra, 34 Cal. 470.1 certainly would not impute the opposite purpose to the Legislature, as the majority does, without clear and firm evidence that it intended to silently delegate to the superior court the awesome power of turning a vote of the people into a hollow act. Mere silence on a matter of this gravity is not enough to support the conclusion that the Legislature intended to grant this power.
For these reasons, I would construe section 69898(d) so as not to impinge on the people’s right to vote by depriving the county clerk of the major duties of the office to which the people have elected the clerk. Accordingly, I would hold, as the Court of Appeal did, that this statute grants the superior court the power to transfer duties from the county clerk subject to the implied limitation that such a transfer be made effective only at the end of the term to which the clerk has been elected.2

Section 69898(d) provides in full: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a superior court having an executive or administrative officer may, by local rule, specify which of the powers, duties and responsibilities required or permitted to be exercised or performed by the county clerk in connection with judicial actions, proceedings and records shall be exercised or performed by the executive or administrative officer. The county clerk shall be relieved of any obligation imposed on him [or her] by law with respect to these specified powers, duties and responsibilities, to the extent the local rule imposes on the executive or administrative officer the same powers, duties and responsibilities.”

I concur in the majority’s holding (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1162) that petitioner is entitled to recover her attorney fees and costs of suit.