Court Opinion

ID: 9535872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:45:54.402721+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:22.292273
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: I find the court’s distaste for dealing with the merits of this case and the disposition it reaches troublesome. The ruling extends the mootness doctrine beyond all limits traditionally recognized by courts of review. Because it does nothing to resolve an ongoing controversy, it is a ruling which I predict will thoroughly confuse both the parties involved in this case and the circuit court of Cook County, whose order this court stayed on May 28,1982. It is difficult to discern from the majority opinion’s brief discussion what rendered this case moot. The majority appears to reason that since the strict subject of controversy was the propriety of an injunction order and because that order was tailored only to May and June of 1982, the passage of time beyond those months rendered the injunction order a nullity, regardless of whatever underlying rights the parties possessed, and extinguished the object of the dispute. It was my understanding from the briefs and the oral arguments that the parties considered their underlying legal rights to be at issue in this litigation. Defendants argued at length that they were not required by statute to continue paying benefits of $162 per month if funds were unavailable for that purpose and that the legislative intent behind the funding measure passed at defendants’ behest on May 14, 1982 (House Bill 2211), was to require defendants to pay only $144 per month for May and June. In an actual as well as a practical sense, the subject of the controversy was the monetary amount which the defendants owed the plaintiffs for May and June; the circuit court injunction which was stayed by this court was merely a vehicle for enforcing payment of $162 in May based on the assumption that $162 was the proper monetary amount, rather than requiring the plaintiffs to go without the full payment in that month and sue for the arrearage later. To hold that this cause is mooted by the expiration of the order is tantamount to saying that the amount owing in May ceases to be owing altogether once May ends. This is not realistic. The case cited by the majority, Madison Park Bank v. Zagel (1982), 91 Ill. 2d 231, stands only for the general proposition that this court will not review cases when they are in fact moot, and is of little help here. We declared that case moot when we discovered that the taxpayer had already paid the Department of Revenue everything it claimed without protest, so that no matter how the case was decided no money would change hands. In this case the issues of whether defendants had the authority to reduce monthly aid payments from $162 to $144 and whether the claimed deficiency is owing for May and June remain in dispute: the defendants not only have not paid any of the disputed arrearage but have vigorously advocated their authority not to do so throughout this litigation and have every reason to continue to do so now, as more payments have come due" since the end of June to which the same issues appear to apply. Even if the instant controversy can be viewed as involving nothing broader than a circuit court injunction good only for the months of May and June, the case is moot only because this court made it moot by issuing its stay order in the May 1982 term of court and then postponing resolution until the next term of our court in September 1982. The issue of the propriety of the order was certainly a live one in May when this court stayed its effect and agreed to hear the case instead of allowing it to be executed or go to the appellate court, where it might have been decided sooner on the merits of the issue. The majority recognizes that “[t]he preliminary injunction and the order entered [by the circuit court] affected only payments to be made for the months of May and June 1982. The questions whether defendants were possessed of the authority to reduce the payments [from $162 to $144] and whether such reduction was in violation of any constitutional or statutory provision remain for decision.” (Emphasis added.) (92 Ill. 2d at 515.) Having accepted this case by direct appeal, we should not avoid deciding these questions by characterizing them as moot or by adopting the view that they were not really the essence of the case. There are two reasons. First, our interference has precluded decisions on these questions which might otherwise have been made by the circuit court or the appellate court before the June payments were completed. Second, as I have mentioned above, the State may be liable for additional payments for May and June as well as for any succeeding months in which less than $162 was paid if it turns out that it reduced the General Assistance payments for May and June without statutory authorization. Far from being moot, the controversy and the underlying issues on which its resolution will turn are very much alive. It is unseemly and a waste of time and judicial resources for us to avoid deciding them after having interfered with their decision by the circuit judge or the appellate court. The cost to the plaintiffs and to the legal system of the majority’s action is underscored by the fact that when the plaintiffs requested the circuit court in July to issue an order declaring that they were entitled to a monthly payment of $162 in that month, the circuit judge refused to act on the request on the ground that an issue involving the proper level of the May and June payments was then pending before the supreme court and that our disposition of that case would affect his ruling. He apparently based his conclusion that his decision as to July would be governed by our decision as to May and June on the language in section 12 — 4.11 of the Public Aid Code that “[a]id payments shall not be reduced” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 23, par. 12—4.11). His reasoning seems to have been that if the State was entitled to pay $144 in May or June, it was entitled to continue to do so in July, but not otherwise. The circuit judge, unenlightened by our decision as to what the State was entitled to do in May or June, will now presumably have to decide that himself in order to resolve satisfactorily the issue of what the plaintiffs are entitled to in July — and once he issues an order pertaining to July, the appellate court and this court will presumably be prevented from reviewing the order by this court’s novel view of the mootness doctrine, since the month of July is already over. The merits of this case should have been addressed and resolved in favor of the plaintiffs. I base this on section 12 — 4.11 of the Public Aid Code, which provides in relevant part: “The standards [by which grant amounts and need for public aid are determined] shall provide a livelihood compatible with health and well-being for persons eligible for financial aid under any Article of this Code. They shall include recognition of any special needs occasioned by the handicaps and infirmities of age, blindness, or disability. Standards established to determine the eligibility of medically indigent persons for aid under Articles V or VII shall take into account the requirements of the spouse or other dependent or dependents of the applicant for medical aid. The quantity and quality of the items included in the standards established for food, clothing, and other basic maintenance needs shall take account of the buying and consumption patterns of self-supporting persons and families of low income, as determined from time to time by the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other nationally recognized research authorities in the fields of nutrition and family living. The items in the standards shall be priced annually for changes in cost, as provided in Section 12 — 4.15, and prices of the standards adjusted as indicated by the findings of such surveys. The Department, with due regard for and subject to budgetary limitations, shall establish grant amounts for each of the programs, by regulation. The grant amounts may be less than the prices of the standards and may vary by program, size of assistance unit and geographic area and may be established in the form of a percentage of the standards for any or all programs. Aid payments shall not be reduced except for changes in (1) cost of items included in the standards, or (2) the expenses of the recipient, or (3) the income or resources available to the recipient, or (4) grants resulting from adoption of a consolidated standard.” (Emphasis added.) Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 23, par. 12—4.11. Section 12 — 4.11 was amended in 1980 to provide for annual rather than periodical pricing for changes in costs and to add the italicized portion of the third paragraph quoted. (1980 Ill. Laws 3982, 3987-88, effective Jan. 1, 1981.) Defendants argue that the italicized provision authorizes them to revise the payment level as needed to prevent expenditures from exceeding the sums appropriated. However, the General Assembly, in amending the section, left intact the provision in the last paragraph quoted concerning changes which would authorize a reduction in aid payments. Had it intended that reductions be effected because of “budgetary limitations” without the occurrence of one of the four changes listed in that paragraph, it would have been a simple matter to so provide. Statutes must be read as a whole, and a court may not read a statute so as to render any sentence meaningless or superfluous. (People v. Warren (1977), 69 Ill. 2d 620, 627; Coalition for Political Honesty v. State Board of Elections (1976), 65 Ill. 2d 453, 466.) The only construction of the statute which would preserve the meaning of the paragraph concerning changes authorizing reductions in aid payments, which is phrased in exclusive language, is to interpret the provision upon which defendants rely as applying only to the establishment of grant amounts for future years where inflation might otherwise indicate an increase in such amounts through the operation of the second paragraph quoted. In other words, the provision on which the defendants rely was designed to control increases in payments, not to authorize reductions. This interpretation seems the more natural, in that the provision in question occurs in the paragraph requiring annual pricing of standards rather than at the beginning or end of the section or in the paragraph dealing with reductions in aid payments. The provision does not authorize the State to reduce aid payments in the absence of one of the four changes enumerated in the paragraph dealing with reduction. Defendants also point to House Bill 2211, the measure which provided funding for public aid payments over May and June 1982, as embodying the intent of the General Assembly that benefit levels for those months be $144 rather than $162. The State musters support for this claim by referring to statements in the legislative debate of Senator Schaffer and Representatives Wolf, Matijevich, Currie, Bullock, Levin, and Jaffe expressing a belief that the measure mandated monthly payment at the $144 level, and a similar statement made by Governor Thompson on signing the bill. However, this belief as to the purport of the measure was by no means unanimous: other representatives, including Representatives Currie, Matijevich and Levin in the same passages cited by defendants, referred to the llth-hour nature of the bill and stressed that its only purpose was to provide some funds for General Assistance where otherwise there would be none. The statements by individual legislators concerning their belief as to the effect of the bill, if it is ever an accurate indicator of the intent of the legislature as a whole, is certainly a misleading guide in this case, where so many members of the General Assembly expressed contrary opinions. More significant is the fact that the bill, as passed, contained no provisions purporting to set the level of payment at $144 per month but simply transferred a sum of money originally appropriated for Group Care to the line appropriation for General Assistance. The same bill amended other budgetary items not related to the needs of the Department of Public Aid. Passage occurred in the 11th month of the 1982 fiscal year, and the legislative debate reveals that it was the result of at least one emergency request for funds. The evidence indicates to me that the legislature intended the bill as an emergency appropriations measure and did not mean to make any changes in the monthly payment level or the standards of assistance. The bill, once viewed as an appropriation, cannot constitutionally be interpreted as changing the State’s substantive duty under section 12 — 4.11 to maintain the General Assistance payment level at $162. (Ill. Const. 1970, art. IV, sec. 8(d); Benjamin v. Devon Bank (1977), 68 Ill. 2d 142.) This rule is designed to prevent minorities in the legislature from taking advantage of the crisis-like atmosphere so typically created by budgetary shortfalls late in the fiscal year to force passage of substantive changes in existing laws where those changes might not otherwise command enough votes to pass. Finally, I find nothing in the 1980 amendment to section 12 — 4.11, the appropriations bill of May 1982, or the regulations adopted by the Department of Public Aid for the 1982 fiscal year which could be construed as a “[change] in *** grants resulting from adoption of a consolidated standard” so as to permit reduction of aid payments under the terms of section 12 — 4.11. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 23, par. 12—4.11.) While it is true that the notice of adopted rules issued by the Department and published in the Register on October 9, 1981, regarding Rules 3.5161, 3.5171, 3.5818, and 3.5191 expresses an intention to base payment standards on consolidated or flat-grant figures rather than on individual determinations of need, as had been done in the past, there is nothing in the record to indicate that any change in payment levels actually arose “from [the] adoption of [the] consolidated standard.” JUSTICE CLARK joins in this dissent.