Court Opinion

ID: 9580701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:07:47.043757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:27.473303
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent.
My dissenting opinion in Glendale City Employees’ Assn., Inc. v. City of Glendale (1975) 15 Cal.3d 328,346,350 [124 Cal.Rptr. 513,540 P.2d 609], posed this dilemma:
“I am compelled to make an embarrassing inquiry. How do my learned colleagues propose to enforce their order? [H] Naturally it is to be hoped that all good citizens will accept a final judicial determination of their rights and duties. But let us assume arguendo that the Glendale City Councilmen are intransigent, that they steadfastly refuse to vote to repeal [the offending ordinance] and to adopt another salary ordinance in its stead. Are my colleagues prepared to cite the entire legislative body for contempt of their order?”
The foregoing is no longer mere rhetoric; it now assumes monumental pragmatic proportions. The majority respond to my query about violating the separation of powers in the affirmative: they are indeed prepared to se.nd an entire legislative body to jail for noncompliance with a judicial order. Yesterday, in Glendale, it was a city council. Today it is a county board of supervisors. Tomorrow the state Legislature?
In Glendale the city council had a moral obligation to comply with an agreement made with representatives of municipal employees. Here the supervisors, out of respect for the judicial process upon which our form of government depends, have an equally clear moral obligation to comply with the directives of California Welfare Rights Organization v. Brian (1974) 11 Cal.3d 237 [113 Cal.Rptr. 154, 520 P.2d 970], and Cooper v. Swoap (1974) 11 Cal.3d 856 [115 Cal.Rptr. 1, 524 P.2d 97], I do not condone their refusal to do so.
However misguided the actions of the Plumas County board may be and however the supervisors’ intransigence contributes to immobilizing orderly governmental processes, such persuasive moral imperatives do not invest the judiciary with the power to breach the wall of separation of powers. We simply cannot direct a legislative body to adopt a statute or *918ordinance, whether it relates to employees’ salaries, payments of welfare benefits, or any other subject requiring a vote of the body. After being selected by the electorate, every councilman, every supervisor, and every state legislator has an inviolate right to cast an “aye” or “nay” vote upon any subject before his body, and he must be able to do so conscientiously, without apprehensively glancing up at the Damoclean sword of a potential court citation for contempt. The legislators’ responsibility is to their constituency, not to the judiciary.
I find nothing in the circumstances of this proceeding to justify carving out an exception to the venerable doctrine of separation of powers, such as, e.g., when the very ability of the judiciary to function is at stake (see State ex rel. Edwards v. Murray (1976) 48 Ohio St.2d 303 [2 Ohio Ops.3d 446, 358 N.E.2d 577]). Quite the contrary, the posture of the case cries out for invocation of judicial abstention.
It is true, as the majority state, that the trial court judgment in Cooper v. Obledo, the underlying action, directed the named defendants therein and their agents to restore welfare benefits improperly withheld. The significant issue, however, is whether the supervisors, not a party to the action, automatically become agents of Obledo and other state defendants for the purposes of this litigation. In an attempt to bridge the gap the majority cite numerous Welfare and Institutions Code sections, including those relating to state supervision of aid (§ 10603), providing for administration of state welfare laws by county boards of supervisors (§ 10800), and establishment of county welfare directors who shall abide by lawful state directives (§ 10802). None of those sections, assuming they could do so, declare that county supervisors—as distinguished from the county as an entity and county administrators as ministerial officers—become agents of a state bureau head. Indeed, it is utterly incongruous to suggest that elected public officials of one governmental entity can, by, some ipse dixit, be declared agents of an appointed administrative officer of an entirely distinct branch of government, and thus be responsible for compliance with court orders made not to them but to their purported principal.
Authorities cited by the majority are not apposite, and the quotations are loose generalities taken out of context. San Francisco v. Collins (1932) 216 Cal. 187 [13 P.2d 912], involved the right of county supervisors *919in the depths of the Great Depression to propose a bond issue for relief of the indigent sick and dependent poor. To indicate that the subject of providing relief was not entirely preempted by the state, the court declared that in issuing bonds for such purposes the county was acting as an agent of the state. County of Alameda v. Janssen (1940) 16 Cal.2d 276 [106 P.2d 11, 130 A.L.R. 1141], involved the power of the county to release liens upon the property of recipients of aid. Mooney v. Pickett (1971) 4 Cal.3d 669 [94 Cal.Rptr. 279, 483 P.2d 1231], involved the failure of an appointive county public health director to comply with a statute. In no case cited by the majority has an elected official of a county been held to be an agent of an appointed state bureaucrat.
Admittedly there would be chaos if state welfare programs, such as those involved in Brian and Cooper, could be ignored or emasculated by the perversity of individual county administrators. The Legislature anticipated this untoward possibility in the adoption of Welfare and Institutions Code section 10605 (see ante, pp. 910-911, fn. 8 of majority opn. for the full text). The section provides for notice to the county director who is remiss, and for a hearing. Thereafter if the county continues its failure to comply with state laws and regulations, the state has three options: first, to withhold state and federal funds from the county; second, to assume direct responsibility for county administration—virtually to place the county in receivership; third, to bring appropriate court action. The court action, it should be noted, is authorized if the state considers a county director to be failing, not the board of supervisors.
Section 10605 does not provide an administrative remedy the exhaustion of which is a condition to judicial jurisdiction over contempt proceedings. But it does indicate there is a way out of an intergovernmental impasse short of resort to the compulsion of a jail sentence. There is, therefore, good reason why under these circumstances courts should abstain from invoking the draconian remedy of contempt against officials of a coordinate branch of government. (See Housing Authority v. City of Los Angeles (1953) 40 Cal.2d 682 [256 P.2d 4].)
Chief Justice John Marshall said of the Constitution in his dissent in Ogden v. Saunders (1827) 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 213, 351 [6 L.Ed. 606, 653]: *920it contains “the language of restraint, not of coercion.” We should speak in the same muted tones of forbearance.
1 would annul the order of contempt.
Clark, J., and Brown (G. A.), J.,* concurred.
Petitioners’ application for a rehearing was denied. November 3, 1977. Bird, C. J., did not participate therein. Sullivan, J.,† participated therein. Mosk, J., and Clark, J., were of the opinion that the application should be granted.

 Assigned by the Acting Chairman of the Judicial Council.

Retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court sitting under assignment by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.