Colorado State Civil Service Emp. Ass'n v. Love

Decision Date16 December 1968
Docket NumberNo. 23650,23650
Citation167 Colo. 436,448 P.2d 624
PartiesCOLORADO STATE CIVIL SERVICE EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION; Harry C. Reese; V. Craig Johnson; and C. W. Peterson, Petitioners, v. John LOVE, as Governor of the State of Colorado; the Civil Service Commission of the State of Colorado; Cy Burress, Jr., Richard Y. Batterton, and William R. Welsh, as Members of and Being and Constituting the Civil Service Commission of the State of Colorado; John Heckers, Individually and Acting as Executive Director of the Department of Revenue of the State of Colorado; David A. Hamil, Individually and Acting as Executive Director of the Department of Institutions of the State of Colorado; and E. W. Sandberg, Individually and Acting as Executive Director of the Department of Administration of the State of Colorado, Respondents.
CourtColorado Supreme Court

George Creamer, Creamer & Creamer, Denver, for petitioners.

Duke W. Dunbar, Atty. Gen., Frank E. Hickey, Deputy Atty. Gen., John E. Bush, Paul D. Rubner, Asst. Attys. Gen., Denver, for respondents.

HODGES, Justice.

This is an original proceeding, under R.C.P.Colo. 106 and 116, involving a matter of first impression before this court. The petitioners challenge the constitutionality of certain provisions of the Administrative Reorganization Act of 1968 on the ground that they contravene the civil service amendment, Colo.Const. Art. XII, § 13.

Determination of this issue requires construction In pari material of these constitutional and statutory provisions:

Colo.Const. Art. XII, § 13 is the civil service amendment, which in pertinent part provides:

'The classified civil service of the state shall comprise all appointive public officers and employees and the places which they hold, except the following: * * * The governor's private secretary and three confidential employees of his office * * * one deputy of each elective officer * * *.' (Emphasis added.)

The final clause reads:

'This section shall be self-executing.'

Colo.Const. Art. IV, § 22 adopted in 1966, is the state government reorganization amendment, which in part provides:

'All executive and administrative offices, agencies, and instrumentalities of the executive department of state government and their respective functions, powers, duties, except for the office of governor and lieutenant governor, shall be allocated by law among and within not more than twenty departments by no later than June 30, 1968. * * *'

The final clause reads:

'Nothing in this section shall supersede the provisions of section 13, article XII, of this constitution.'

The Administrative Reorganization Act of 1968, Colo.Sess.Laws 1968, ch. 53, which will be referred to herein as the 1968 Act, 'allocated by law' the executive and administrative functions of state government among 17 departments. In this statutory reorganization, the Legislature excluded the following officials from civil service:

The executive director of the Department of Administration, designated as 'deputy' to the Governor (Sec. 16 of the 1968 Act);

The executive directors of three other departments, Revenue, Institutions, and Local Affairs, each designated as a 'confidential employee of the Governor' (Secs. 17, 18, and 25 of the 1968 Act);

and,

The Coordinator of State Planning and the Coordinator of Highway Safety, each designated as 'a member of the staff of the Governor'. (Secs. 176, 9(2), and 177 of the 1968 Act.)

The four executive directors thus exempted are appointed by the Governor, with consent of the Senate, and serve at the pleasure of the Governor. The two coordinators also serve at the Governor's pleasure, but their gubernatorial appointment is not subject to Senate confirmation. The gravamen of petitioners' complaint is the exclusion of these six officials from civil service.

This proceeding involves a question of great importance to the people of the State of Colorado. The people, by adopting Section 22 as an amendment to Article IV of the state constitution, declared their collective will to restructure the executive branch of our state government. The Legislature, obeying the constitutional mandate, enacted the 1968 Act. The amendment and the 1968 Act share a laudable objective: improved efficiency in the performance of governmental functions, which have increased greatly in number and complexity since our Constitution was adopted in 1876. However, inherent in our form of government is the principle that the end alone cannot serve as justification for the means. It is not the judicial function to decide whether the legislative exclusion of six executive officials from civil service is administratively desirable. Our sole function is to determine whether the designated exemptions subvert the governing constitutional provisions.

Before considering the substantial constitutional issue submitted here, we can readily resolve the parties' conflicting contentions concerning petitioners' capacity to maintain this original proceeding. Petitioners, as taxpayers, challenge statutory provisions which involve reorganization of our state government, and the rule enunciated in Howard v. City of Boulder, 132 Colo. 401, 404, 290 P.2d 237, 238, is therefore apt and governing:

'* * * we can conceive of no greater interest a taxpayer can have than his interest in the form of government under which he is required to live, or in any proposed change thereof.'

The rights involved extend beyond self-interest of individual litigants and are of 'great public concern.' Petitioners state a justiciable controversy, because they claim violation of the Civil Service Amendment, which is fully self-executing. Crawford v. City and County of Denver, 156 Colo. 292, 398 P.2d 627; People ex rel. Quereau v. Hamrock, 74 Colo. 411, 222 P. 391; People v. Bradley, 66 Colo. 186, 179 P. 871. A precept of constitutional law is that a self-executing constitutional provision ipso facto affords the means of protecting the right given and of enforcing the duty imposed. 1 T. Cooley Constitutional Limitations 167 (8th ed. 1927). For the reasons stated, we hold that petitioners are proper parties and that the petition states a cause appropriate for exercise of this court's original jurisdiction under R.C.P.Colo. 116.

I. The Civil Service Amendment, Section 13 of Article XII, Colorado Constitution.

The meaning of the Civil Service Amendment governs the validity of the provisions of the 1968 Act which exempts six officers of the state from civil service. Our first inquiry is: What is the meaning of Colo.Const. Article XII, § 13? We hold that rules of construction are not applicable, because the language of the amendment leaves no reasonable doubt as to its meaning. The applicable rule is that stated in People ex rel. Seeley v. May, 9 Colo. 80, 85, 10 P. 641, 643:

'We place at the beginning of the inquiry * * * what we regard as the leading and controlling rule which is to guide us in this case.

'Whether we are considering an agreement between parties, a statute or a constitution, with a view to its inter-pretation, the thing which we are to seek is The thought which it expresses. To ascertain this the first resort in all cases is to the natural signification of the words employed in the order of grammatical arrangement in which the framers of the instrument have placed them. If, thus regarded, the words embody a definite meaning which involves no absurdity and no contradiction between different parts of the same writing, then that meaning, apparent on the face of the instrument, is the one which alone we are at liberty to say was intended to be conveyed. In such a case there is no room for construction. That which the words declare is the meaning of the instrument, and neither courts nor legislatures have a right to add to or take away from that meaning.' Cooley, Const.Lim. 69, 70.' (Italicized by court.)

The language used in the Civil Service Amendment is plain, its meaning clear, and no absurdity is involved. Hence, it must be declared and enforced as written: all officers of the state must be under civil service except for certain exemptions which are described in specific terms. In such a case there is nothing to interpret. People ex rel. Park Reservoir Co. v. Hinderlider, 98 Colo. 505, 57 P.2d 894. The only exemptions relevant here are: 'one deputy of each elective officer' and 'three confidential employees of his (the Governor's) office.' These words and phrases have a plain and ordinary signification in the English language, and we therefore should not resort to forced and strained definitions. Lidke v. Industrial Commission, 159 Colo. 580, 413 P.2d 200; Frost v. Pfeiffer, 26 Colo. 338, 58 P. 147; In re Senate Resolution No. 2, etc., 94 Colo. 101, 113, 31 P.2d 325.

The specificity with which the exemptions from civil service are stated in ordinary words of plain meaning precludes extension of exemption by subtle definition.

This view of the Civil Service Amendment is corroborated by the extrinsic facts of its history and previous judicial inter-pretation. In the first case involving this Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the court reviewed the legislative history of the State's merit system and took judicial notice of its past dependency upon legislative appropriations, which had varied according to whether a given legislature was favorable or hostile to civil service. People v. Bradley, 66 Colo. 186, 179 P. 871. The court declared that 'the constitutional amendment was initiated accordingly for the very purpose of avoiding the destruction or emasculation' of the civil service in the future at the discretion of the legislature. The legislature had periodically refused appropriations to support the Civil Service Commission, then passed an act in 1912 to compel appropriations, and thereafter, repealed this act in 1915. It is obvious that the public motivation for adoption of this Amendment in 1918 was to protect and promote a merit system of employment for...

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