Court Opinion

ID: 9585273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:58:29.203354+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:37:28.677698
License: Public Domain

LANDAU, P. J.,
dissenting.
At issue in this case is whether the position of “interventionist” is “academically licensed” within the meaning of ORS 243.650(1) when the position requires no “license.” The Employment Relations Board (ERB) originally concluded that the position is not “academically licensed,” because it requires no “license” in the ordinary meaning of the term. On reconsideration, ERB changed its mind. In my view, ERB got it right the first time.
The majority disagrees. It begins with the assertion that the term “licensed” ordinarily means “a right or permission granted in accordance with law by a competent authority to engage in some business or occupation[.]” 163 Or App at 563 (quoting Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary, 1304 (unabridged ed 1993)). It then concludes, however, that, when *572combined with the modifier “academic,” the word becomes ambiguous. The majority then resorts to legislative history and maxims of construction to arrive at the conclusion that the term “licensed” means merely training, whether or not that training leads to a license. Thus, the majority ultimately holds that the position of interventionist, which requires no license, nevertheless is “academically licensed.”
The majority’s analysis is flawed and its conclusion incorrect. There is nothing ambiguous about ORS 243.650(1). It says that an appropriate bargaining unit cannot contain both “academically licensed” and “unlicensed or nonacademically licensed school employees.” ORS 243.650(1). The statute does not define what the term means, but it does expressly say what it includes, namely, “teachers, nurses, counselors, therapists, [and] child development specialists * * Id. When a statute defines a term merely indicatively, the general rule is that anything else that is to be included must partake of the common characteristics of what the legislature has listed in its statutory examples. That is the rule of ejusdem generis. See, e.g., Gaston v. Parsons, 318 Or 247, 253, 864 P2d 1319 (1994).
Ordinarily, I am skeptical of the use of such textual maxims, because they are so easily manipulated; a given list of items in a statute can have any number of different characteristics in common. In this case, however, the legislature has gone to the trouble of telling us what, at a minimum, must be considered a common characteristic: There must be a “license.” That unremarkable insight is borne out by the fact that each of the occupations listed in ORS 243.650(1) by way of example of what is meant by “academically licensed” requires a “license” in the common, ordinary meaning of the term.1
*573That being the case, the issue before us is easily resolved. It is undisputed that the position of interventionist requires no “license” within the ordinary meaning of that term. It necessarily follows that the position cannot be “academically licensed” within the meaning of the statute.
The linchpin of the majority’s contrary conclusion appears to be its assertion that there is something ambiguous about the term “licensed” as it is used in ORS 243.650(1). “Ambiguity” itself is a term of art, however; it refers to cases in which statutory or contractual language is reasonably capable of meaning more than one thing. State v. Cooper, 319 Or 162, 167, 874 P2d 822 (1994) (statutory language is ambiguous when capable of two interpretations and “either interpretation is reasonable”); Tee v. Albertson’s, Inc., 148 Or App 384, 390, 939 P2d 668 (1997), rev den 326 Or 465 (1998) (“There must be some evidence contained in the language of the statute that gives rise to a reasonable conclusion that the legislature may have intended more than one meaning.”). The majority never identifies the plausible, multiple meanings of the term at issue.2 Its argument, therefore, fails at the outset.
The majority then attempts to reason its way around the problem as follows. First, it identifies the ordinary meaning of the term, as I have described above. Then it suggests that, based on the context of the statute, it appears that the legislature may have intended a “broader” meaning of the term. The “context” to which the majority refers is a 1981 decision of the Employment Relations Board (ERB), Mid-Valley Bargaining Council v. Greater Albany School Dist., 6 PECBR 4766 (1981), which the majority reads as using language that the legislature could have relied on in crafting the *574term “academically licensed” in ORS 243.650(1). The majority’s reasoning is too much of a stretch for me.
To begin with, I question whether it is appropriate to rely on a single decision of an administrative agency as “context” for a statute enacted 14 years later. The term generally refers to information about which the legislature likely was aware during the enactment process. Given that our objective is the ascertainment of the intentions of the enacting legislators, ORS 174.020, that only makes sense. Thus, for example, other statutes on the same subject are considered context only if they were enacted before the statute at issue. Stull v. Hoke, 326 Or 72, 79-80, 948 P2d 722 (1997). Even judicial opinions are regarded as context for a statute only when there is some connection between the earlier opinions and the enacted language, that is, some basis from which the courts can infer that the legislature might have taken the opinions into account during the enactment process. Thus, in Jones v. General Motors Corp., 325 Or 404, 419, 939 P2d 608 (1997), the Supreme Court rejected the suggestion that federal cases construing the federal summary judgment rule provided context for the construction of the Oregon summary judgment rule. The court reasoned that nothing in the language of the Oregon rule suggested a connection to the preexisting federal case law. Id.
In this case, the majority offers no textual basis for inferring that the legislature might have been aware of the Mid-Valley decision, much less that, more than a dozen years later, the decision formed the basis for the legislature’s coinage of the term “academically licensed” in ORS 243.650(1).3 *575To the contrary, the majority acknowledges that the Mid-Valley decision never mentioned the term “academically licensed.” The best the majority can offer is the fact that, in Mid-Valley, ERB used some terms that were similar in phrasing, albeit — in the majority’s own characterization— substantially broader phrasing than what appears in the statute.
In that regard, I suggest that, even assuming that the Mid-Valley decision properly may be regarded as context, the decision does not lend the support that the majority draws from it. The Mid-Valley decision used not the term “academically licensed,” but the phrase “academic certificate, license, degree or the equivalent.” If we are to assume that the legislature was aware of that language and relied on it in enacting ORS 243.650(1), then it is apparent that the legislature apparently chose not to use ERB’s language and instead chose to eliminate from the statutory terminology any reference to “certificate, * * * degree or the equivalent.” Thus, the majority anomalously relies on Mid-Valley to read back into the statute precisely what the legislature chose to leave out. I suggest that, to the extent that Mid-Valley can be relied on for anything with respect to the interpretation of ORS 243.650(1), the decision supports the proposition that the statute means no more than what it says.
Even the majority concedes that Mid-Valley lends weak support for its reading of the statute. Accordingly, it proceeds to an examination of the legislative history. Relying on the statements of two lobbyists, the majority finds further support for its reading of the statute. The statements of lobbyists, however, provides little evidence of the intentions of the enacting legislators without some suggestion that the legislature agreed with, and relied on, the statements. As the Supreme Court cautioned in State v. Guzek, 322 Or 245, 261, 906 P2d 272 (1995):
“ ‘In general, an examination of legislative history is most useful when it is able to uncover the manifest general legislative intent behind an enactment. By contrast, an examination of legislative history is most fraught with the potential for misconstruction, misattribution of the beliefs of a single legislator or witness to the body as a whole, or abuse in the form of “padding the record” when the views of only a *576small number of persons on a narrow question can be found.’ ”
(Quoting Errand v. Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Inc., 320 Or 509, 539 n 4, 888 P2d 544 (1995) (Graber, J., dissenting).) In this case, there is no one, much less a small number of persons, speaking to the narrow question at issue. The statements of the two lobbyists the majority quotes did not concern the issue of defining the meaning of “academically licensed.” The statements did not even concern the same version of the bill that ultimately was enacted as the statute at issue in this case.
The majority insists that the legislative history nevertheless is “informative,” although it concedes that it is not dispositive. It therefore proceeds to a “third-level” maxim of statutory construction, namely, that we attempt to construe a statute to conform to its purposes. I do not quarrel with the maxim. But the majority does not properly apply it in this case.
The maxim of effectuating legislative purpose presupposes an identifiable purpose, which is used as the basis for selecting between competing constructions. The rationale is that, when confronted with competing interpretations otherwise in semantic equipoise, we assume that the legislature would have intended us to select the interpretation that best effectuates the statute’s broader purpose. Thus, in Welliuer Welding Works v. Farmen, 133 Or App 203, 210, 890 P2d 429 (1995), we resolved an ambiguity in a provision of the workers’ compensation statute by reference to its purpose as explicitly stated in the statute itself.
In this case, there is no such clearly stated purpose. Indeed, the majority does not ever identify precisely what the purpose of the statute is. Moreover, the majority never explains why its construction effectuates the purpose of the statute, whatever it may be, and why the construction that it rejects does not effectuate that purpose. Instead, the majority reverts to the legislative history — the same legislative history that the majority previously conceded has limited value — to arrive at the conclusion that it “tip[sj the scales” in favor of its reading of the statute. 163 Or App at 570. Thus, somewhere between the second and third levels of analysis— *577with no additional evidence of legislative intent — the same legislative history that was once inconclusive is transformed into being dispositive.
Disposition of this case does not require such feats of semantic sleight of hand. As ERB correctly held in its original decision, the legislature made clear its intentions with the language it enacted. An “academically licensed” position requires a “license.” The position of interventionist requires no license. Therefore, it is not “academically licensed” within the meaning of ORS 243.650(1). The majority errs in concluding otherwise. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.

 Thus, the majority’s complaint that the list of items in ORS 243.650(1) is too “short” to warrant reliance on the rule of ejusdem. generis makes no sense. Because the legislature itself has told us what the common feature of the items is, the number of enumerated items is irrelevant. In any event, whatever the merits of the majority’s suggestion that a minimum, critical mass of enumerated items is required before relying on the rule, the fact is that in this case, the enumerated list in ORS 243.650(1) numbers a half dozen — twice what the Supreme Court has required to invoke the rule. See Gaston, 318 Or at 253 (three enumerated items).

 The majority offers what it characterizes as two alternative readings of the term “academically licensed.” On the one hand, the majority says — correctly—that it could mean that the term may require a license with formal academic prerequisites. On the other hand, the majority says that it could mean merely that particular academic training is required to be entitled to engage in the particular occupation with no license requirement. 163 Or App at 565-66. The problem is that the majority has not offered two plausible interpretations of the term “academically licensed,” given that its second interpretation explicitly assumes that the term “licensed” has no meaning. I do not understand, and the majority does not explain, how a plausible construction of a term includes declaring that it simply means nothing.

 The majority cites our opinion in DLCD v. Jackson County, 151 Or App 210, 948 P2d 731 (1997), rev den 327 Or 620 (1998), as referring to the use of decisions of administrative agencies as context for legislative enactments. The decision actually does not say that, however. In that case we referred to statements of policy, by both the legislature and administrative agencies, as context for the meaning of statutes and administrative rules, respectively:
“Statutes and rules often contain statements of general policy * * *. Such expressions can serve as contextual guides to the meaning of particular provisions of the statutes or rules * *
Id. at 218 (emphasis in original). The caution is not about the use of administrative decisions as context for interpretation of statutes. It is about the use of statements of administrative policy as context for the construction of administrative rules.