Armistead v. State Personnel Board
Decision Date | 22 September 1978 |
Docket Number | S.F. 23688 |
Citation | 583 P.2d 744,149 Cal.Rptr. 1,22 Cal.3d 198 |
Parties | , 583 P.2d 744 James H. ARMISTEAD, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. STATE PERSONNEL BOARD et al., Defendants and Respondents. |
Court | California Supreme Court |
Turner & Sullivan and Robert J. Sullivan, Sacramento, for plaintiff and appellant.
Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., Steven A. Merksamer, Talmadge R. Jones, and Robert L. Mukai, Deputy Attys. Gen., for defendants and respondents.
When a state employee submits a written resignation and then six days later withdraws it, may his employer "accept" the resignation? The State Personnel Board and the Department of Water Resources, respondents here, answer Yes. They rely on section 525.11 of the board's Personnel Transactions Manual (PTM), which reads:
Government Code section 19502 provides: "Resignations from the state civil service are subject to board rules. . . ." The board rule that applies here is No. 445 (Cal.Admin.Code, tit. 2, § 445), which states: "An employee may resign from state service by submitting a written resignation to the appointing power. . . ."
Applying that rule we see no reason for denying an employee the right to withdraw a resignation he has submitted, assuming that (1) it has not yet been accepted, (2) the time he set for resignation has not yet expired, (3) the appointing power has not been prejudiced by any reliance on his letter or other form of notice. 1
PTM section 525.11, quoted above, does not govern or guide us here because it is an invalid rule. It is invalid because it was not duly promulgated and has not been duly published. For future cases the board, if it so chose, could validate it by ensuring compliance with chapter 4.5 of the California Administrative Procedure Act (Gov.Code, §§ 11371-11445).
The board argues that PTM section 525.11 does not reflect "the exercise of any quasi-legislative power" (see Gov.Code, § 11420), "relates only to the internal management of the state agencies" (see § 11371(b)), and therefore was exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). We now discuss those arguments.
What is "quasi-legislative power"?
Concerning the Legislature's intent as to agency rulemaking generally, two sections of the Government Code are illuminating (and demonstrate a desire to achieve in the California APA a much greater coverage of rules than Congress sought in the federal APA 2). Section 11420 states:
Section 11371(b) states:
Legislative views regarding personnel board rules and the PTM are evidenced by this excerpt from the First Report of the Senate Interim Committee on Administrative Regulations to the 1955 Legislature (pp. 37-38):
Those two Government Code sections and that excerpt from the Senate Committee report make it clear that section 525.11 and comparable rules in the PTM clearly are the product of rulemaking and, thus, do reflect an exercise of quasi-legislative power within the meaning of the California APA.
What rules relate only to internal management?
Section 11371(b) of the APA, quoted above, exempts every rule that " relates only to the internal management of the state agencies." The board argues that PTM section 525.11 is such a rule. We disagree.
PTM section 525.11 is designed for use by personnel officers and their colleagues in the various state agencies throughout the state. It interprets and implements board rule 445. It concerns termination of employment, a matter of import to all state civil service employees. It is not a rule governing the board's internal affairs. 3
The board argues that, since the PTM is supposed to be distributed only to personnel officers and since others' requests to see it are screened to ensure that reasons for examining it are legitimate, we should infer that it was written for internal use only. That it is not readily accessible to affected employees and the public does not persuade us that section 525.11 relates to internal management only. The section obviously was intended to be generally applied, to make specific for all state civil service employees the limits on their right to withdraw resignations. In fact, the insistence on restricted access does indeed increase our concern. (See art. 2 of ch. 4.5 of the APA, which governs the filing and publication of rules; cf. Martin v. State Personnel Bd. (1975) 46 Cal.App.3d 558, 561, 120 Cal.Rptr. 160, which does not discuss the APA.)
Should section 525.11 be given weight as an administrative interpretation?
The board argues that, even if section 525.11 is invalid because of APA requirements, it still merits deference as an interpretation by the administrators of a rule that needs interpretation.
A major aim of the APA was to provide a procedure whereby people to be affected may be heard on the merits of proposed rules. Yet we are here requested to give weight to section 525.11 in a controversy that pits the board against an individual member of exactly that class the APA sought to protect before rules like this are made effective. That, we think, would permit an agency to flout the APA by penalizing those who were entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard but received neither.
Under sections 11371(b), 11420 and 11440 of the APA, rules that interpret and implement other rules have no legal effect unless they have been promulgated in substantial compliance with the APA. Therefore section 525.11 merits no weight as an agency interpretation. To hold otherwise might help perpetuate the problem that more than 20 years ago was identified in the First Report of the Senate Interim Committee on Administrative Regulations, Supra, as follows (at pp. 8-9):
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