Court Opinion

ID: 9768723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:46:17.995499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:03:16.583204
License: Public Domain

HECHT, Justice,
concurring.
I join in Justice Cook’s opinion for the Court and in Justice CoRNYN’s concurring opinion. To summarize the Court’s decision, five Members of the Court — Justice Cook, Justice Gonzalez, Justice HightoweR, Justice Coenyn and myself — hold that article III, section 19 of the Texas Constitution 1 does not prohibit an officeholder who resigns his position from serving in the Legislature during a time when he would otherwise have remained in his former office. These five Justices also hold that Lee v. Daniels, 377 S.W.2d 618 (Tex.1964), and Kirk v. Gordon, 376 S.W.2d 560 (Tex.1964), are overruled to the extent that they conflict with today’s decision. No one who joined in the Court’s opinion in Dawkins v. Meyer, 825 S.W.2d 444 (Tex.1992), has expressed disagreement with that decision today. I write separately only to respond to the dissenting opinions of Chief Justice Phillips and Justice Doggett.
Justice Doggett is adamant that there is but one reasonable construction of article III, section 19, and it is that anyone who resigns a lucrative office in this state, the federal government, or any foreign country, is ineligible to serve in the Legislature during the time that he would have held his former office had he not resigned. So plain is the language of section 19 in his view that the only explanation for the Court’s failure to reach the same conclusion is that the Court has substituted its own views of what the provision should say for what it does say. Justice Doggett goes even further, of course, assailing not only the Court’s construction of section 19 but the Court itself for ignoring the language and history of the constitution altogether and abandoning our Dawkins decision earlier this year.
It is not clear to me which view of article III, section 19, the Court's or the dissenters’, is better policy. In any event, this is certainly not the issue we are to decide, and the Court does not decide it. We are obliged to construe the text as written and to effectuate the intention of the framers in adopting it, whether we agree with the policy it embodies or not, and that is what the Court does. One may certainly disagree with the result the Court reaches; there are easily two views of the provision, *773and neither is free of difficulty. But Justice Doggett is absolutely wrong to suggest that the Court has violated its obligation of fidelity to the constitutional text.
Article III, section 19 makes certain specific officials — -judges, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and court clerks — and any other person “holding” lucrative office in any government (except one of our sister states) ineligible to serve in the Legislature. If this were all section 19 said, its construction would be a simple matter. A person who resigns his office is no longer “holding” office and therefore is not made ineligible by this provision. However, section 19 adds that a person’s ineligibility lasts “during the term for which he is elected or appointed”. This additional phrase creates an ambiguity in the text. On the one hand, section 19 applies only to persons “holding” office, not persons who have ever held office. On the other hand, if section 19 does not apply to persons who have resigned office, it is not clear what the additional phrase adds to the meaning of the provision.
One court has held that this same “during the term” phrase in a statute virtually identical to section 19 does not extend the period of ineligibility beyond the point of resignation. Rugg v. Town Clerk of Arlington, 364 Mass. 264, 303 N.E.2d 723 (1973). The court in Rugg acknowledged that it had reached the opposite conclusion in 1929, but observed that its prior decision had not attempted to suggest a rationale for its construction, and in fact, none could be shown. To adopt a construction which had no discernible rationale, the court recognized, raised serious constitutional questions. The court also reasoned that reading the provision as inapplicable to officers who have resigned does not make the “during the term” language surplusage. The court noted that an officer may be required to hold over after his terms has expired awaiting the qualification of his successor, and that the “during the term” phrase would prevent him from being declared ineligible to hold other office during any holdover period of a prior office. In other words, the court read the “during the term” language as limiting the period of ineligibility rather than expanding it.
We, too, have previously construed the “during the term” phrase to mean that a person who has held office and resigned remains ineligible throughout the period he would have served had he not resigned. Lee; Kirk. Those cases did not offer a rationale for their construction of article III, section 19, or attempt to justify its consequences. They did not consider the arguments adopted by the court in Rugg. They focused entirely on the word “term”. I agree that a “term” of office usually means that fixed period of time after which an officeholder cannot continue to hold the office without being reappointed or reelected, or without holding over for a successor. Ordinarily, we do not consider that a term of office ends when the holder leaves. The dissenters cite many examples of this meaning of “term”, as well as the decisions of other state supreme courts in applying similar constitutional and statutory provisions in the same context. In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 94 Fla. 620, 113 So. 913 (1927); Rowe v. Tuck, 149 Ga. 88, 99 S.E. 303 (1919); In re Opinions of the Justices, 95 Me. 564, 51 A. 224 (1901) (not the opinion of a majority of the court); Wachter v. McEvoy, 125 Md. 399, 93 A. 987 (1915); Richardson v. Hare, 381 Mich. 304, 160 N.W.2d 883 (1968); State ex rel. Childs v. Sutton, 63 Minn. 147, 65 N.W. 262 (1895). Each of these cases holds that term of office is distinct from an officeholder’s tenure, and that a term does not end when an officeholder leaves.
The trouble is, if the word “term” in article III, section 19 is given what I concede is its more common meaning, the provision has no sound rationale. A person who served the first day of a full term of office and then resigned would be ineligible for the Legislature for varying periods of time, depending on the office held: two years for most city council members, four years for district judges, six years for most university regents, eight years for a federal magistrate, fourteen years for a bankruptcy judge, and life for a federal district or appellate judge. It is not at all clear why the period that an officeholder is ineli*774gible to the Legislature should depend upon the fixed term of the office held, nor why, to take the extreme case, a federal district judge who retires from office should be ineligible to serve in the Texas Legislature for the remainder of his or her life (even if the judge did not regard the disability as too serious). The reason Chief Justice Phillips and Justice Doggett offer — and the only reason that appears ever to have been put forward for this application of article III, section 19 — is that the purpose of the constitutional provision is to discourage trafficking in offices and the neglect of those offices occasioned by campaigning for the Legislature. Now if the dissenters are right about this, the provision does little to further its purpose, for it does not disqualify all officeholders from all other offices for the duration of their “terms”, but only certain officeholders from legislative office. It is an odd rule that allows a person who resigns from the Santa Pe city council and moves to El Paso to serve in the Texas Legislature before the fixed term of his council seat expired, but prohibits a member of the El Paso city council or a member of the government of Ciudad Juárez from doing the same thing. And it is an odd rule to prevent trafficking in offices and distracting campaigns that allows an officeholder to resign and run for any other office in Texas except the Legislature.
The dissenters attempt to show that the framers actually intended this construction of article III, section 19, odd consequences and all. Yet the historical evidence available to us indicates only that the provision did not contain the phrase, “during the term for which he is elected or appointed”, prior to 1875, when it was added by amendment on the floor of the constitutional convention. Despite the absence of any record of debate concerning the purpose of the amendment, the dissenters conclude that it must have been intended to operate as they now construe it. But this is not the only conclusion to be drawn from the evidence. Indeed, I doubt whether it occurred to the framers that article III, section 19 would operate to disqualify someone in relator’s position from running for the Legislature. See Rugg, 303 N.E.2d at 725. If we were to resort to speculation — which is all we could do in the absence of any evidence of what the framers actually intended — we might as well suppose that the phrase was added to clarify that a person holding office was ineligible for the Legislature only so long as the “term” of office, and not thereafter. But we are not allowed to speculate, and the history of section 19 does not illumine the matter.
The dissenters point to the same phrase in the immediately preceding provision, article III, section 18, as evidence of the meaning to be given section 19. Section 18 declares legislators ineligible for other state office during the “term” for which they were elected if the appointment is made by the Legislature, or if the office was created or its emoluments increased during “such term".2 Justice Doggett observes that if the Court’s construction of “term” were applied to this provision, it would not prohibit a legislator from appointment to any of the offices described as long as the legislator first resigned his seat. This difficulty with the Court’s position cannot be denied. On the other hand, using the dissents’ meaning of “term”, a legislator who resigned midterm would be ineligible for appointment to an office if its emoluments were later increased, and perhaps even if they could be later increased. This situation has arisen several times in the federal government, requiring a construction of the essentially identical provision in article I, section 6, clause 2 of the United States Constitution.3 In 1882, At*775torney General Benjamin Harris Brewster advised President Arthur that former Senator Kirkwood was ineligible for appointment as tariff commissioner, a position that was created after he had served as a U.S. Senator, resigned, served as Secretary of the Interior, and resigned, but before the senatorial term which he would have served had he not resigned had expired. The Attorney General stated that he had found no state or federal case of assistance, and that he considered himself to be bound by what he regarded as the “precise and clear” language of the Constitution, irrespective of any policy it served. 17 Op.Att’y Gen. 365 (1882). Eighty-seven years later Attorney General Ramsey Clark reversed this position, advising Melvin R. Laird that he could commence his term as Congressman and still accept an appointment as Secretary of Defense, even if his salary as Secretary were increased by the Congress in which he would have served. 42 Op.Att’y Gen. 381 (1969).4 The Attorney General has maintained this latter position, arguing in 1979 that Congressman Abner Mikva could be appointed U.S. Circuit Judge even though his pay would probably be increased by the same Congress. 3 Op.Off.Legal Counsel 286, 298 (1979). If the dissenters’ reading of “term” were used in article III, section 18, a state senator who resigned midterm could not be appointed to any office before the full term for which he was elected expired, if the emoluments of the office could be increased in the next session of the Legislature at which, of course, he would not be present. In short, difficulties attend both the Court’s and the dissenters’ reading of “term” in article III, sections 18 and 19.
The dissenters’ position boils down to this: we are bound to give “term” its ordinary meaning, whether section 19. thus construed, has any discernible rationale or not. I certainly agree that it is not our place to review the wisdom of the provision or to substitute our own views in its place. We must construe the provision as written. But if there is more than one reasonable construction available, we should consider the effects of each construction in attempting to ascertain the framers’ intent. They were entitled, of course, to write a provision with a doubtful purpose or no purpose at all, but we ought to presume that they did not do so. In deciding the proper construction of a constitutional provision, we must consider the effects of reasonable alternatives, not to find the one which we believe expresses the better policy, but to determine which construction, given its consequences, is most likely to have been the one the framers intended.
If “term” in article III, section 19 refers to an officeholder’s time of service, the consequences of the provision are less troublesome. The period of disqualification no longer depends upon the fixed term of the office previously held, the disparities in treatment of officeholders in similar circumstances disappear, and legislative office is not singled out for special protection from among all offices which could be held. The effect of the provision is to prohibit a person from holding legislative office and any other lucrative office in this state, the federal government, or a foreign country at the same time. The obvious, and legitimate, purpose of the provision is to maintain the separation of powers in this State and to remove the Legislature from the influence of federal and foreign governments.
The consequences of the dissenters’ position not only cast doubt upon the reasonableness of their construction; they also raise serious charges, which Wentworth argues in this case, that section 19 thus construed is in violation of constitutional guaranties of equal protection. The dissenters would hold, based upon Clements v. Fashing, 457 U.S. 957, 102 S.Ct. 2836, 73 L.Ed.2d 508 (1982), that the equal protec*776tion challenges to their reading of section 19 are without merit.5 But Clements cannot be read so broadly. Only a plurality in Clements concluded that there is any rational purpose for the construction of section 19 that the dissenters’ adopt in this case. Chief Justice Phillips argues that this does not “weaken the effect of Clements”, post, at 783, suggesting that the Clements Court would have reached the same decision had they been confronted by Wentworth’s arguments. Whether that assessment is accurate, the point remains that if section 19 as construed by the dissenters should have a rational purpose to it, one is hard pressed to conceive what it might be. Assuming, as Chief Justice Phillips asserts, that the State has “a legitimate interest in preventing abuse and neglect by all its officers” and in “encouraging officeholders to serve out their terms”, post, at 783, section 19 does not fairly serve that interest. Officeholders are perfectly free to abuse and neglect their offices and leave them whenever they choose as long as they run for any other office in the state, from dog catcher to Governor, except the Legislature. The dissenters' reading of section 19 unavoidably treats candidates for the Legislature differently from candidates for any other office, and no justification for this discrimination has been suggested.
The Court correctly adopts a construction of article III, section 19 which avoids the serious equal protection challenges to the dissenters’ position. Although this construction would almost certainly have affected the arguments made in Dawkins earlier this year, the relator in that case had not resigned at the time we heard and decided her petition for mandamus, and thus the meaning of the “during the term” phrase was not in issue. Even on motion for rehearing, relator submitted only a resignation to be effective just before she would have assumed office as a legislator. It would have been improper for the Court to have anticipated and decided in Dawkins the issues we decide today. Justice Dog-gett suggests that overruling Lee and Kirk destroys the foundation for Dawkins. Dawkins rests squarely upon Willis v. Potts, 377 S.W.2d 622 (Tex.1964). It cites Lee and Kirk only as cases involving examples of offices other than those mentioned specifically in article II, section 19, which have been held to be covered by that provision. Even the parties in this case have not argued that the decision we reach today would be inconsistent with Dawkins. The foundation of Dawkins remains intact.

. "No judge of any court, Secretary of State, Attorney General, clerk of any court of record, or any person holding a lucrative office under the United States, or this State, or any foreign government shall during the term for which he is elected or appointed, be eligible to the Legislature.”

. "No Senator or Representative shall, during the term for which he was elected, be eligible to (1) any civil office of profit under this State which shall have been created, or the emoluments of which may have been increased, during such term, or (2) any office or place, the appointment to which may be made, in whole or in part, by either branch of the Legisla-ture_”

. "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or *775the Emoluments whereof shall have increased during such time_”

. Attorney General Clark attempted to distinguish Attorney General Brewster’s opinion as dealing with creation of an office rather than an increase in its emoluments, "a crucial factual difference” in Clark’s words. That distinction, however, does not appear to warrant a different construction of the constitutional provision. The Brewster opinion is simply rejected.

. Justice Doggett notes that Wentworth did not raise an equal protection issue until after argument in the court of appeals. Of course, Went-worth was not required to do so, as this is an original proceeding.