Court Opinion

ID: 9784940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:58:00.521946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:00.722534
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice MULLARKEY,
concurring in part and concurring in the result:
I concur with Part ILD and Part III of the majority's opinion holding that the Department of Human Services' (DHS) transfer of teachers from the Lookout Mountain juvenile corrections facility (Lookout Mountain) complies with the relevant statutes and regulations, and that the DHS acted within its authority in contracting with Metropolitan State College of Denver (Metro) I also concur with the majority's ultimate conclusion in Part ILB that the reorganization of the educational program at Lookout Mountain did not violate article XII, section 13 of the Colorado Constitution. However, because I believe the majority fails to address adequately the potential concerns raised by article XII, section 13, I do not join its reasoning and I concur in the result only.
Colorado has established its state personnel system through the integration of constitutional amendments, see Colo. Const. art. XII, §§ 13-15 (the Civil Service Amendment), statutory provisions, see § 24-50-101 to -706, 7 C.R.S. (1999) (the State Personnel System Act), and regulatory rules and procedures, see 4 C.C.R. § 801-1 et seq. (1999).1
These sections of the Colorado Constitution and the associated statutory and regulatory provisions provide for two broad categories of state employees-employees within the state personnel classification system, and those exempt from it. Article XII, section 13 makes this delineation, stating, in relevant part:
The personnel system of the state shall comprise all appointive public officers and employees of the state, except the following: . faculty members of educatlonal institutions and departments not reformatory or charitable in character....
Colo. Const. art. XII, § 182),
For those employees within the state personnel system, the Civil Service Amendment provides that appointments or promotions must be premised on "merit and fitness, to be ascertained by competitive tests of competence without regard to race, creed or color, or political affiliation." Id. § 18(1). Further, employees within the personnel system "shall hold their respective positions during efficient service." Id. § 18(8).
There is no dispute here that the teaching positions at issue are filled by state employees. The question is whether those teaching positions are within the state personnel system or are exempt from it. This issue is raised because article XII, section 13(2), quoted above, creates an exemption from the personnel system for faculty members "of educational institutions and departments." Id. § 18(2). However, that exemption does not apply to educational institutions and departments that are "reformatory or charitable in character." Id. For convenience, I will refer to these two parts of subsection (2) as the "faculty exemption" and the "reformatory exception." If a position is within the faculty exemption, it is exempt from the state personnel system. If a position comes within the reformatory exception, then it is within the state personnel system.
The majority holds that the Lab School Agreement satisfies the requirements of the Civil Service Amendment and the associated provisions of the State Personnel System Act because (1) the Lab School faculty are employees of Metro, an educational institution exempt from the personnel system; and (2) the classified. employees at Lookout Mountain prior to the reorganization were not involuntarily separated from the state personnel system. With respect to the first conclusion, the majority asserts that "since the teachers are functionally employees of Metro, the Department of Personnel's decision to grant the exemption did not violate the Civil Service Amendment." Maj. op. at 20. I am concerned, however, with the ma*173jority's failure to articulate why the faculty of Metro working at a reformatory such as Lookout Mountain come within the scope of the faculty exemption for "faculty members of educational institutions and departments not reformatory or charitable in character." I, therefore, write separately to expand on what I believe is the rationale supporting this conclusion.
As stated previously, subsection (2) of article XII, section 18, which sets forth several exemptions from the personnel system, states that "the personnel system of the state shall comprise all appointive public officers and employees of the state except ... faculty members of education institutions and departments not reformatory or charitable in character." See Colo. Const. art. XII, § 18(2). This provision is subject to two potential constructions, one focused on the function or job duties of the position and the other focused on the employer of the position. First, the provision may be interpreted as providing a functional limitation on the faculty exemption by precluding application of that exemption for those faculty members performing educational duties at a reformatory. Under this approach, the Lookout Mountain teaching positions, and the faculty that fill those positions, would come within the reformatory exception to the faculty exemption and must be included in the state personnel system. The court of appeals adopted this interpretation, concluding that the teachers at the reorganized Lookout Mountain facility "must be considered to be 'faculty members' at a 'reformatory' As such, any person filling such a position must be a member of the classified service." In re May, 976 P.2d 281, 286 (Colo.App.1998).2
Second, and in my view more appropriately, the phrase "reformatory or charitable in character" can be interpreted to describe the type of "educational institution or department" that employs those positions and faculty members. Under this interpretation, the appropriate inquiry is not a functional test of the duties assigned to the position. Rather, this approach seeks to determine (1) whether the employer of that faculty member is an educational institution or department and thus the position is within the faculty exemption, and (2) whether that employer is reformatory in character and thus the position is within the reformatory exception.
The constitutional language-"faculty members of educational institutions and departments not reformatory or charitable in character"-supports adopting the second approach. Had the drafters intended to limit the faculty exemption so that it would exclude all faculty members teaching in an institution that is reformatory in character, they could have done so in a direct manner. Instead, they refer to "faculty members of educational institutions or departments" rather than to faculty members of reformatory or charitable institutions. This choice of wording suggests to me that the location where a faculty member teaches is not determinative of the applicability of the faculty exemption.
Further, another exemption within subsection (2) demonstrates that the drafters of this amendment contemplated and articulated an exemption from the personnel system based on both the job duties performed and the employer of the positions in question. Subsection (2) exempts "the employees in the offices of the governor and the lieutenant governor whose functions are confined to *174such offices and whose duties are concerned only with the administration thereof." Colo. Const. art. XII, § 18(2). Through the use of express language, the drafters of the amendment exempted from the personnel system employees of the governor or lieutenant governor who administer those two offices. An employee of the governor who worked in another executive department would not be exempt.
The faculty exemption, however, does not have a similar restriction. It says nothing about where a faculty member teaches. It addresses only the entity that employs the faculty member.
We must give effect to the contrasting language of the two exemptions within the same constitutional subsection. Cf De'Sha v. Reed, 194 Colo. 367, 371, 572 P.2d 821, 823 (1977) (recognizing that provisions of the Colorado Constitution should be construed in the context of the constitution as a whole); of. Zamarripa v. Q & T Food Stores, Inc., 929 P.2d 1832, 1341 (Colo.1997) ("[This court] must construe the statute as a whole so as to give consistent, harmonious, and sensible effect to all its parts ...." (internal quotation marks omitted)). This basic principle of construction leads me to conclude that the drafters did not intend to adopt a functional test for the faculty exemption. That is, the phrase, "not reformatory or charitable in 'character," does not describe the place of performance or the particular duties required of a faculty member in order to come within the faculty exemption of the personnel system. Thus, I would conclude that the reformatory exception describes the employer, ie., the subset of educational institutions or departments whose faculty members are subject to, rather than exempt from, the personnel system.
Section 24-50-1835 of the State Personnel System Act further supports such a conclusion, providing that "[aldministrators [meeting certain criterial employed in educational institutions and departments not charitable or reformatory in character ... shall be exempt from the state personnel system." § 24-50-135(1), 7 C.R.S. (1999) (emphasis added). This section illustrates that it is the nature of the employing entity-whether that entity is reformatory in character-that determines whether the positions in that organization fall within the state personnel system.
Applying this interpretation of subsection (2) to the case at hand, I would reach the conclusion that all faculty members of Metro are excluded from the state's personnel system. Like the majority and for the reasons set forth in its opinion, I would conclude that the new faculty of the Lookout Mountain facility are employees of Metro. See maj. op. at 166. Because only a small component of the operation of Metro is reformatory in nature, I would conclude that Metro is not an educational institution that is reformatory in character. Consequently, the exemption found in article XII, section 18(2) for "faculty members of educational institutions and departments not reformatory or charitable in character" would apply to exempt the faculty positions of the Lab School from the state personnel system. Therefore, like the majority, but through an expanded analysis, I would hold that all faculty members of Metro are excluded from the state's personnel system.
Based on this reasoning, I would hold that the allowable transfer, see maj. op. at Part IILD., of personnel system employees from Lookout Mountain and the subsequent employment of faculty members in positions not subject to the personnel system do not implicate the privatization concerns this court has addressed in the past. Cf. Horrell v. Department of Admin., 861 P.2d 1194 (Colo.1993); Colorado Ass'n of Pub. Employees v. Department of Highways, 809 P.2d 988 (Colo.1991).
Because the majority's analytic approach fails to address adequately the application of article XII, section 18 to the issues raised by the Lab School Agreement, I respectfully concur in the result, but must write separately with regard to the analysis used to reach that result.

. Over the extended history of the state personnel system, the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory provisions have undergone a number of amendments that are not implicated by this case.

. To support its position adopting this approach, the court of appeals references this court's decision in Board of Education v. Spurlin, 141 Colo. 508, 349 P.2d 357 (1960). In that case, this court determined that the then-current articulation of the faculty exemption to the state personnel system included administrators within the Department of Education. See id. at 520, 349 P.2d at 363. In doing so, the Spurlin court stated that "it was the intention of the people in adopting Article XII, Section 13 to exclude from the classified service all educators except those who teach in institutions reformatory or charitable in character." Id. However, whether an institution was reformatory or charitable in character was not implicated in that case. Further, the Spurlin decision addressed constitutional language different from that before us today. See id. at 510, 349 P.2d at 358 (reproducing the amendment in force at the time, which excluded from "classified civil service" "officers and teachers in educational institutions not reformatory or charitable in character."). For these reasons, I do not view this isolated language in Spurlin to compel a result in this case. Cf. Main Elec. Ltd. v. Printz Servs. Corp., 980 P.2d 522, 526 & n. 2 (Colo.1999) ("Dictum is not the law of the case and is not controlling precedent.").