Court Opinion

ID: 9550655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:39:48.406027+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:05.819966
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(dissenting) — In many particulars the standards established for the administration of this act are less definite and the discretion vested in the administrator is more unlimited than in the statute held to be unconstitutional in State v. Gilroy, 37 Wn. (2d) 41, 221 P. (2d) 549.
I recognize that the favorite method of legislation today is to state an objective and then create a bureau, a commission, or a director with full authority to make enforcing regulations. The result is that we are more largely governed by such regulations, state and Federal, than by the statutes enacted by Congress and our legislature.
I see in this act an almost unconditional surrender in the particular area with which it is concerned of the principle that ours is a government of laws and not of men. This *189law and this decision will not change our form of government; but repeat it and multiply it in other areas and we will reach that stage, if we have not already passed it, where the form will have survived the substance of the faith.
I shall not prolong this dissent, but I would emphasize one phase of this delegation of legislative power, twice removed, that is now so much taken for granted that the majority, in referring to it, used it as a support for its conclusion. On p. 159 of the majority opinion, it is said:
“At the very least, however, the declaration in No. 178 requires that the state public assistance program be so administered as to qualify the state to receive, in so far as the state’s contribution permits, the fullest available measure of Federal matching funds.”
What changes there may be in the Federal regulations we have no way of knowing, but nonetheless we are to administer our public assistance program so as to receive the fullest available measure of Federal matching funds. The one certain thing about our uncertain standards is that they must change to comply with those of the Federal overlord. Well may we ask with Cassius, “Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?” (The answer would lead us into the field of economics and taxation, with which we are not here concerned.)
Being convinced that there is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power in this act, I dissent.