Court Opinion

ID: 9591348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:03:43.204761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:09.839201
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur in the majority opinion in this case, and I am in complete agreement with all the propositions that it encompasses. In addition, I must disagree with the attempt by Doidge to preserve his prior position as a vacancy while serving as Superintendent of the State Hospital. That effort to maintain his tenured status on the staff evidences a clear conflict of interest. If one assumes that a full staff is important to the delivery of those services that are to be furnished by the State Hospital, the maintenance of that vacancy as a fall-back position for himself was incompatible with Doidge’s duties as Superintendent. The effort to preserve a vacancy for himself, at the expense of a full staff, should not be countenanced.
Furthermore, § 25 — 1—201(b)(i), W.S.1977, provides that the State Board of Charities and Reform:
“(b) * * * [SJhall appoint and may remove without cause the following officers:
“(i) Superintendents of the Wyoming * * * state hospital * * *; (emphasis added).”
An appointment is different from a promotion, and the applicable statutory language serves to distinguish this case from the case of Spurlock v. Board of Trustees, Carbon County School District No. 1, 699 P.2d 270 (Wyo.1985).
One cannot be appointed to an office or position without one’s consent. Perhaps the same notion applies to a promotion, but the two means of advancement do not encompass the same dynamics.
“ * * * To appoint is to designate or assign to a position. To promote is to advance or progress to a higher grade, position or degree.” Daub v. Coupe, 9 A.D.2d 260, 193 N.Y.S.2d 47, 52 (1959). “Ordinarily the word, ‘appoint,’ means to name or designate some person to hold an office. It involves a matter of choice in the selection of the person to hold the office.” State ex rel. Brothers v. Zellar, 7 Ohio St.2d 109, 218 N.E.2d 729, 732 (1966).
While the distinction may be fine, it is significant. The statutory authority to appoint the Superintendent of the State Hos*885pital assumes an unfettered choice vested in the State Board of Charities and Reform. If its statutory authority were to promote, then it would be required to fill the position from tenured staff. It is not required to do that, however, and the result is that the appointee, even if previously a member of the tenured staff, assumes the appointment with no greater privileges, and the same impediments, as an appointee from outside the tenured staff. Doidge voluntarily sought that status when he pursued the appointment.
It is clear that Doidge was not promoted, and he cannot be demoted. Under the language of the statute, he could be removed without cause, and that is what the Board did. The removal left him with no right to be reinstated in his tenured position. He voluntarily severed that relationship when he sought, and received, the appointment.
URBIGKIT, Justice, dissenting, with whom GOLDEN, Justice, joins.
We are presented with an appeal involving appellant John R. Doidge, Ph.D., J.D., a terminated State employee, and appellee State of Wyoming as employer. This court cites only one case in analysis of contention and decision. That case is Spurlock v. Board of Trustees, Carbon County School Dist. No. 1, 699 P.2d 270 (Wyo.1985), decided five years ago by a unanimous court.
It is my perception that unless we reverse Spurlock, we play word games in affirming denied rights to this recently discharged State employee. Consequently, I dissent and would apply Spurlock in its plain terms. After all, appellant only asked for a hearing on retention within his tenured employee status obtained before promotion to the Superintendent of the Wyoming State Hospital, and even that has been denied to him. My enthusiasm for requiring hearing protection for this employee upon termination comes from the failure, when he was offered the position, of any advice that he would, unlike Spur-lock, sacrifice all of his earned right as a tenured State employee if he accepted the offer. He was not informed by the Board of Charities and Reform or its administrative director and he was not alerted by anything in personnel rules or regulations. As a matter of law, he was probably mislead by the Spurlock decision being both recent and well known. There was a total absence of statement in the Wyoming state personnel rules warning a covered employee that upon promotion to a non-tenured administrative responsibility in the same agency, the promotion would be considered to be a resignation causing loss of any previously earned rights under the Wyoming state personnel rules.
To play fair in this business, it seems to me appellant should have been told when considering the advancement in the agency that the acceptance constituted resignation from the previous position so that all of his eggs would be in one basket of success as the promoted administrator. This could have been done either by notice with the offer or by provisions of the personnel rules which define rights for state employees. Neither was done.1
It is unquestionable that appellant, in his employment at the Wyoming State Hospital as a psychologist, had earned tenured status and general rights provided by the Wyoming state personnel rules. It also is unquestionable that those rules, with propriety of adoption unquestioned in this record, have the force and effect of law since adoption is specifically directed and controlled by the statutes cited in the rules for their authority. W.S. 9-2-1001, 9-2-1002, 9-2-1019 through 9-2-1022 and 16-3-101 through 16-3-115.2 Yeik v. Depart*886ment of Revenue and Taxation, 595 P.2d 965 (Wyo.1979). In Spurlock, the decision favoring the employee’s retention of his rights upon promotion to administrator was found in the statute which provided for tenure as a teacher in public education, W.S. 21-7-102(a)(ii)(A). Here, the retained right flows directly from a statute equally effective as was the case in Spurlock.
In Spurlock, 699 P.2d at 272, we said:
Appellant became tenured as a teacher pursuant to the provisions of the Wyoming Teacher Employment Law. His continued employment as a certified professional employee did not change his tenured position as a classroom teacher. There is nothing in the act to reflect that such a change should occur. Accordingly, appellee had to afford appellant the procedural and evidentiary standards incident to a tenured classroom teacher position before it could discharge appellant from such position.
In Doidge, I would similarly say:
Appellant became tenured as a State employee pursuant to the provisions of the Personnel Rules of the Executive Branch of Wyoming State Government adopted pursuant to Wyoming statute. His continued employment as a hospital superintendent did not change his tenured position as a staff psychologist. There is nothing in the personnel rules to reflect that such a change should occur. Accordingly, appellee had to afford appellant the procedural and evidentiary standards incident to a tenured state employee position before it could discharge appellant from such position.
I resist this decision because effectively we, as a court, now write new personnel rules for each and every public employee in the state where any rights to a hearing before discharge may be provided by the agency except the teachers in the public school system who alone have the benefit of either notice or Spurlock. Consequently, I would reverse and remand to require a hearing before this state employee can be separated from his tenured rights provided by the Wyoming state personnel rules.

. I also have some procedural questions about the process utilized for denied hearing. Another concern exists about a question pervading this record, that with the removal as superintendent, appellant properly, as a result of that removal, should also be pushed out of the agency so that his successor would not be subject to disruption of the new administration. However, I will confine consideration to Spurlock and lack of employee’s advance notice of the risk of what has now been done to him.

. For coverage, the rules in part provide:
Section 2. Coverage. These rules apply to all positions and employees in the Executive Branch, provided that the University of Wyoming and the positions of Governor, Secretary of State, State Auditor, State Treasurer, Super*886intendent of Public Instruction, and District Attorney are exempt. The Governor is exempt from Chapters II through VII in the appointment of agency heads. Personnel Rules of the Executive Branch of Wyoming State Government, ch. 1 (July 1986).