Court Opinion

ID: 9523898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:48:14.088282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:32.710251
License: Public Domain

*314Caporale, J.,
concurring.
While I concur in the majority’s judgment, I write separately to lament the continued use, in interpreting a statute, of what was said on the legislative floor and characterizing those statements as the “legislative history.”
Without again detailing the difference, in interpreting the meaning of an ambiguous statute, between relying on what the Legislature did as contrasted to relying on what an individual legislator or group of legislators said, as set forth in my concurrence in Omaha Pub. Power Dist. v. Nebraska Dept. of Revenue, 248 Neb. 518, 537 N.W.2d 312 (1995) (Fahrnbruch and Lanphier, JJ., joining), I point out that the statute in question, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 20-148 (Reissue 1991), is not ambiguous. It reads:
(1) Any person or company, as defined in section 49-801, except any political subdivision, who subjects or causes to be subjected any citizen of this state or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the United States Constitution or the Constitution and laws of the State of Nebraska, shall be liable to such injured person in a civil action or other proper proceeding for redress brought by such injured person.
(2) The remedies provided by this section shall be in addition to any other remedy provided by Chapter 20, article 1, and shall not be interpreted as denying any person the right of seeking other proper remedies provided thereunder.
There is no mention therein of an exhaustion of administrative remedies. There is no mention of the Administrative Procedure Act. There is no mention of the Nebraska Fair Employment Practice Act. Section 20-148 clearly and unambiguously provides that a person or company that violates a Nebraska citizen’s constitutional rights shall be liable to such person in a civil action brought by that person. A simple reading of the statute provides the answer to the question posed without resort to any legislative source, legitimate or otherwise. See, also, Southern Neb. Rural P.P. Dist. v. Nebraska Electric, 249 *315Neb. 913, 546 N.W.2d 315 (1996) (Caporale, J., concurring; Lanphier, J., joins).
The evils inherent in resorting to the statements of individual legislators when investigating the meaning of an ambiguous statute are compounded when an unambiguous statute is at issue. When the text of the statute is clear and we resort to legislative sources, we deprive legislators of the assurance that we will give ordinary terms, used in an ordinary context, a predictable meaning. Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 111 S. Ct. 2354, 115 L. Ed. 2d 348 (1991) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Such practice also unnecessarily increases the cost of litigation by multiplying the research time necessary to litigate the meaning of a statute. W. David Slawson, Legislative History and the Need to Bring Statutory Interpretation Under the Rule of Law, 44 Stan. L. Rev. 383 (1992); Kenneth W. Starr, Observations About the Use of Legislative History, 1987 Duke L.J. 371. See, also, Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Corp., 341 U.S. 384, 71 S. Ct. 745, 95 L. Ed. 1035 (1951) (Jackson, J., concurring).
Fahrnbruch and Lanphier, JJ., join in this concurrence.