Court Opinion

ID: 9725945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:21:55.174858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:21.667082
License: Public Domain

PARAS, J.
I concur in the result and in that portion of the lead author’s reasoning which finds the trespass statute unconstitutional as narrowly applied to the facts of this case. Additionally I concur in the *216reversal of defendant Medrano’s conviction for insufficiency of evidence. However I emphatically disavow so much of the opinion’s reasoning as treats of the “preemption doctrine” as if it were a viable issue in the case. The litigants and the amici curiae, along with the author, have all inadvertently fallen into the error of assuming the doctrine to be at least rationally arguable. It is not, being wholly foreign to the true legal issues in this case.
Preemption, as applied in the NLRA field, is rooted in the “supremacy clause” of the federal Constitution. It simply reiterates the fundamental principle that where the Congress has acted in a given area, within its constitutional purview (as for example under the commerce power), such congressional action is supreme over legislation of the states in the same area. (4 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law (8th ed. 1974) Torts, § 401 et seq., p. 2660 et seq.) The analogue of the federal principle exists between a state and its political subdivisions, such as counties and cities. Where state legislation has “occupied the field,” local ordinances or regulations purporting to contravene, or inconsistent with, such legislation are invalid. (5 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law (8th ed. 1974) Constitutional Law, § 445 et seq., p. 3743 et seq.); stated otherwise, where a matter is of general or statewide concern, the Legislature has paramount authority. (Id., § 452 et seq., p. 3749 et seq.) Thus a sine qua non of preemption is the existence of two governmental entities, one of which is subordinate to the other in its lawmaking function. In the absence of two such bodies politic, preemption has no greater relevance than the rule-in Shelley's case.
Once we recall this touchstone of preemption, we forthwith note that the doctrine is utterly meaningless here. The ALRA is a California statutory enactment of general and statewide application, as is the trespass law (Pen. Code, § 602). The two share equal stature and neither merits any greater or less dignity vis-a-vis the other. It is senseless to assert that either has “occupied the field” so as to preempt the other.
There is a second conceptual defect in the asserted applicability of federal preemption principles to this case, or to any other like it. The NLRA is a federal civil enactment, while Penal Code section 602 is a criminal statute. Considering the basis of preemption, it is incongruous to claim that federal legislation occupied the field of a state’s penal *217statutes. Carried to its logical extreme, this would mean that if a picketer is shot by an employer’s agent during peaceful and otherwise lawful picketing, the agent may not be prosecuted for aggravated assault under state penal laws because his act was an unfair labor practice. This is, of course, absurd.
Unfortunately this aspect of preemption has not been discussed in any case I have read. Indeed, in all the federal Supreme Court opinions involving preemption only civil action of the state was involved. (See cases noted in 18A Kheel, Business Organizations (1973) §§ 9.03, 9.04.) The only cases dealing with federal preemption and involving criminal prosecutions were Commonwealth v. Noffke (Mass.App. 1977) [364 N.E.2d 1274], People v. Bush (1976) 39 N.Y.2d 529 [384 N.Y.S.2d 733, 349 N.E.2d 832], People v. Goduto (1961) 21 Ill.2d 605 [174 N.E.2d 385], and State of Maryland v. Williams (Md. 1959) 44 L.R.R.M. 2357. Noffke and Williams held that NLRA preemption applied, Goduto and Bush that it did not. But none of them addressed the conceptual difficulty of applying preemption where its effect is that federal civil legislation emasculates a state’s penal laws. Nor did they consider that this has neither been done nor has been discussed with approval in any federal case.
I have concluded that preemption was never intended to go this far. My conclusion is bolstered by the repeated reservation to the states of their right to control and prevent violence in labor disputes. (See 18 A Kheel, Business Organizations, supra, § 9.04.) In addition, I quote the following language of Justice Douglas, concurred in by Justices Warren and Black, dissenting in Auto Workers v. Wisconsin Board (1956) 351 U.S. 266, at page 276 [100 L.Ed. 1162, at page 1173, 76 S.Ct. 794]: “Of course the States may control violence. They may make arrests and invoke their criminal law to the hilt. They transgress only when they allow their administrative agencies or their courts to enjoin the conduct that Congress has authorized the federal agency to enjoin.” (Italics added.)
This is not to say that the enactment of civil legislation such as the NLRA or ALRA may not under certain circumstances have an effect upon local penal statutes. On the contrary, such a civil enactment may create a “privilege,” which furnishes a defense to a criminal prosecution. Or, there may be constitutional rights which the civil legislation seeks to further and promote, and which, as here, render the penal statute unconstitutional in its specific application to a given case. As between a *218civil and a penal statute of the same political entity, inconsistent language may give rise to statutory construction questions, including the rule that the specific prevails over the general. Indeed, civil legislation can have an effect upon penal statutes. But it cannot “preempt” them.
A petition for a rehearing was denied March 20, 1978.