Court Opinion

ID: 9655513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:13:02.996813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:18.952970
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
Inasmuch as it is sometimes helpful in gauging the scope of an appellate opinion’s rulings on questions of law to have an understanding of some of the underlying facts that gave rise to the controversy before the court, I summarize the complaints of the real parties in interest in this case.
Loretta Metzger is a former member of the faculty at Dakota State College in Madison. In February of 1982, President Op-gaard of Dakota State recommended that the Board of Regents (Board) terminate Metzger’s employment because of her misconduct. Agreeing with this recommendation, the Board subsequently terminated Metzger’s employment, whereupon she filed a grievance pursuant to the procedures established in the contract between the Board and appellant Council of Higher Education (COHE). After considering the grievance, the Board made a settlement offer to Metzger on May 20, 1982. In view of Metzger’s failure to respond to this offer, the Board withdrew it on June 24, 1982.
On October 21, 1982, the Department of Labor (department) informed the Board that Metzger had filed an unfair labor practice complaint and grievance appeal challenging the termination of her employment. Metzger alleged in this complaint that she had been wrongfully terminated and asked that the department reinstate her to her former position on the Dakota State faculty-
Appellant Zeman is a member of the Northern State College faculty. He applied for the position of chairman of the Department of Language, Literature and *454Speech. His application was rejected, and Dr. Richard Kline was subsequently appointed to this position by the president of Northern State, whereupon Zeman filed an unfair labor practice complaint alleging that his application had been rejected because of his membership in COHE. Ze-man’s complaint and claim for relief asks the department to order that he be named as chairperson of the Department of Language, Literature and Speech at Northern State College, that he be offered an additional half contract for the first summer session and with work in freshman registration during the second summer session, and that he be compensated for the entire 1981-82 school year as though he had been chairman of the department.
In June of 1980, Melinda Sanderson was appointed to the position of clinical audiologist at the South Dakota School for the Deaf. She is not a teacher, and she does not teach. In May of 1981, COHE filed an unfair labor practice complaint alleging that Ms. Sanderson’s appointment violated the contract between the Board and COHE because she was being paid a salary approximately $5,000 greater than the salary she would have received under the teachers’ salary schedule set forth in the contract. COHE’s complaint asks the department to adjust Ms. Sanderson’s salary to a level commensurate with the salary schedule set forth in the agreement between COHE and the Board.
As I read it, the majority opinion holds that the department has jurisdiction over the foregoing complaints, which would include the authority to grant the relief requested in each complaint. SDCL 3-18-15.2. Cf Fries v. Wessington School Dist. No. 2-4, 307 N.W.2d 875 (S.D.1981).
In view of this broad grant of authority to the department, it strains one’s credulity to read the majority opinion’s pronouncement “that the Board’s basic right of control is left untouched_” Reduced to a syllogism, the majority opinion’s reasoning appears to be as follows:
South Dakota Constitution, Art. XIV, Section 3, permits the legislature to impose restrictions upon the Board of Regents so long as the restrictions do not erase all Regent control.
SDCL ch. 3-18 does not erase all Board of Regent control.
SDCL ch. 3-18 is not unconstitutional as applied to the Board of Regents.
In overruling Board of Regents v. Carter, 89 S.D. 40, 228 N.W.2d 621 (1975), the majority focuses upon what it construes as the Carter court’s misreading of Worzella v. Board of Regents of Education, 77 S.D. 447, 93 N.W.2d 411 (1958). Now it is true that the decision in Worzella was based, probably incorrectly, on a delegation of powers premise. (For an incisive analysis of the Worzella decision, see “Academic Tenure at South Dakota’s State Supported Colleges and University,” 5 S.D.L.Rev. 31 (1960)). Whether the Carter court misread Worzella is irrelevant, however. The Carter decision recognized that there are limits upon the legislature’s right to impose rules and restrictions upon the Board. Although today’s majority opinion purports to reaffirm Carter, it quite clearly overrules the premise upon which Carter was based. It does so, moreover, without indicating what limits exist with respect to the legislature’s powers under Art. XIV, Section 3, unless, of course, the reaffirmation of the holding in Carlson v. Hudson, 277 N.W.2d 715 (S.D.1979), that the legislature may not statutorily establish a tenure system for the Board’s employees is an indication of the only restriction that remains upon the power of the legislature.
The majority opinion concludes by holding that because SDCL ch. 3-18 does not erase the Board’s control it does not infringe upon the constitutional authority granted to the Board by Art. XIV, Section 3. Only by indulging in the most Pickwic-kian definition of “control” can such an assertion be made.
I adhere the views set forth in my dissents in Carter and in South Dakota Board of Regents v. Meister, 309 N.W.2d 121 (S.D.1981) (all the while resisting a nigh overpowering temptation to indulge in the I-told-you-so school of appellate juris*455prudence). The authority granted to the department by today’s opinion trenches upon the essence of the Board’s right of basic control that the plurality opinion in Carter was (or thought it was) careful to protect. What control remains in the Board after today’s opinion will remain to be seen.