Court Opinion

ID: 9526610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:20:52.870442+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:20:49.383970
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority's effort to reseue a tardy request for review of the decision of an administrative law judge has a ring of reasonableness to it. The legal formulation on which this rescue effort is justified, however, will not seem very attractive when used in other settings in the future.
Justice Sullivan says that the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board may decide to ignore the filing requirements of the Administrative Orders and Procedures Act for two reasons. First, the act sets the filing period as "fifteen (15) days (or any longer period set by statute) after the [ALJ's] order is served on the petitioner." Ind.Code § 4-21.5-3-29(d). Second, the Board possesses generic statutory authority to adopt rules for its own operation, and a rule setting a different filing period from the one in AOPA is thus a "period set by statute." The breadth of this reasoning is accurately described in the opening paragraph of the opinion, which declares that the holding applies to "state agencies."
I think the majority's conclusion is difficult to sustain as a matter of statutory construction. To sustain it, one must imagine that the legislature wrote a statute of general applicability and contemplated that absolutely no agency of state government would be required to follow it. A statute with such a purpose could well read: "The filing period shall be fifteen (15) days or such other period as an individual agency may set." The provision at issue, of course, says nothing of that sort.
I conclude that the phrase "or any longer period set by statute" contemplates that some laws creating agencies might feature a different time period set by the legislature for a particular agency. Thus, I regard IEERB's generic authority insufficient to the task assigned it by the majority.
More importantly, I think that assigning such weight to a governmental entity's general powers can cause much mischief. Like Congress, our legislature adopts a great many statutes of general applicability to state and local agencies, statutes protecting the environment, assuring safe workplaces, and commanding fair and open procurement practices, to name but a few. It is quite ordinary for these statutes to acknowledge that other laws particular to local governments or a state ageney may contain different and more specific provisions. Such acknowledgment typically says something like, "Except as otherwise provided by law." Today's opinion necessarily creates the opportunity for agencies, commissions, cities, and towns to argue plausibly that they may adopt their own standards on such matters because their ordinance or rule is "by law."
*1227Believing that this arrow may come down in places we will not like at all, I choose not to join in shooting it up in the air.