County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court

• Citation: 13 Cal.3d 721,119 Cal.Rptr. 631,532 P.2d 495
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Decision Date: 12 March 1975
• Parties: , 532 P.2d 495 COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Petitioners, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Respondent; Carole BURROUGHS, Real Party in Interest. L.A. 30369. In Bank

Page 631

119 Cal.Rptr. 631

13 Cal.3d 721, 532 P.2d 495

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Petitioners, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Respondent Carole BURROUGHS, Real Party in Interest.

L.A. 30369.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

March 12, 1975.

John H. Larson, County Counsel, Daniel C. Cassidy, Chief Deputy County Counsel, Joe Ben Hudgens and John M. Baskett, III, Deputy County Counsel, Los Angeles for petitioners.

No appearance for respondent.

Walter S. Weiss, William R. Jackson, Richard B. Wolf, Long & Levit, Los Angeles, and Littler, Mendelson & Fastiff, San Francisco, for real party in interest.

TOBRINER, Justice.

In this case we must determine the propriety of a discovery order which requires local legislators to disclose portions of discussions in which they participated prior to the enactment of a municipal employee salary ordinance. The real party in interest, plaintiff in the underlying taxpayer suit, seeks such disclosure to aid in establishing her contention that the board of supervisors adopted the salary ordinance as a result of a threatened illegal strike by public employees. The taxpayer suit challenges the validity of the salary ordinance on the basis of its alleged connection with the threatened strike; the trial court, over the objections of the county and the individual legislators, ordered the officials 'to answer questions as to discussions of strikes or threats of strikes at executive sessions of the Board of Supervisors.' Petitioners now seeks a writ of prohibition to restrain the trial court from enforcing its order.

As we explain, we have concluded that the discovery order violates a long-standing legal principle precluding judicial inquiry into the motivation or mental processes of legislators in enacting legislation. Although the taxpayer suggests that there is an exception to this principle when the motivation of the lawmakers is relevant to the validity of legislation, as it is claimed to be in the underlying complaint, we shall explain that even in such exceptional circumstances the authorities have prohibited any direct inquiries into the subjective reasoning of individual legislators. Accordingly, we have determined that the requested writ of prohibition should issue.

Real party in interest Carole Burroughs instituted the underlying taxpayer suit seeking to enjoin the implementation of Ordinance No. 10,922 of the County of Los Angeles, an ordinance which establishes the 1974--1975 fiscal year salaries and wages for a majority of county employees. The complaint alleges that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors 'under duress and coercion and as a direct result of . . . threatened illegal strike activities' by a variety of municipal employee organizations entered into an agreement with the employee organizations in which the supervisors agreed to enact a salary ordinance providing specified benefits in return for the employees' promise not to strike. The complaint further alleges that thereafter the supervisors enacted the challenged salary ordinance 'as a direct result' and 'under (the) duress and coercion' of the threatened illegal strike. Claiming that these circumstances render the ordinance void, the complaint seeks a declaration of invalidity and an injunction restraining the city from implementing the challenged legislation.

In preparing for the hearing on the preliminary injunction, the taxpayer deposed the five members of the board of supervisors who had voted on the ordinance, the director and deputy director of the county personnel department and the executive officer-clerk of the board of supervisors. The taxpayer attempted to question each deponent about discussions which had taken place between the supervisors and the county's labor negotiators at several executive sessions of the board preceding negotiations between the county and its employees' representatives. The taxpayer concedes that the purpose of such questioning was to probe the reasons behind the supervisors' subsequent adoption of the salary ordinance and to uncover evidence that would demonstrate that the strike threat was a substantial factor in producing the ultimate legislative wage increases.

The deponents, upon advice of counsel, refused to answer any questions relating to the executive session discussions on the ground that such information was privileged. ¹ The taxpayer then moved for an order compelling the depondents to answer all questions concerning such executive session discussions. After a hearing, the trial court granted the motion in part, ordering the deponents to reveal the contents of such discussions insofar as they involved strikes or threats of strikes. ² Petitioners seek a writ restraining the enforcement of this order.

Both parties in this proceeding appear to assume that the propriety of the trial judge's discovery order rests solely upon the application of section 1040 of the Evidence Code, ³ which establishes a conditional privilege for 'official information.' (See Pitchess v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 531, 538--539, 113 Cal.Rptr. 897, 522 P.2d 305.) Petitioners, emphasizing that section 54957.6 of the Government Code ⁴ articulates a strong public policy in favor of the confidentiality of strategy sessions between a public entity and its labor negotiators, argue that this public interest in confidentiality clearly outweighs the taxpayer's desire for disclosure. The taxpayer, on the other hand, asserts that the limited disclosure ordered by the trial court--confined only to those portions of the discussions relating to strikes or strike threats--is indispensable if she is to prove her case and further, that such disclosure does not violate any valid interest in confidentiality since the labor negotiations have already terminated. (Cf. Oceanside Union School Dist. v. Superior Court (1962) 58 Cal.2d 180, 23 Cal.Rptr. 375, 373 P.2d 439.) Under these circumstances, the taxpayer contends, the trial court did not abuse the discretion explicitly granted to it by section 1040.

In our view, however, we need not resolve these conflicting claims as to the proper application of section 1040, for we believe that the discovery order in the instant case implicates a more fundamental, historically enshrined legal principle that precludes any judicially authorized inquiry into the subjective motives or mental processes of legislators. As early as 1855, Chief Justice Murray declared in an opinion for this court: 'I know of no authority this Court possesses to inquire into the motives of the Legislature in the passage of a law; on the contrary, it has been uniformly held that they could not be inquired into.' (People v. Bigler (1855) 5 Cal. 23, 26.) This doctrine has been reiterated in literally scores of California decisions. (See, e.g., People v. County of Glenn (1893) 100 Cal. 419, 423, 35 P. 302, 304 ('(T)he motives which induced legislative action are not a subject of judicial inquiry'); Hadacheck v. Alexander (1915) 169 Cal. 616, 617, 147 P. 259, ('It is . . . the general, if not the universal, rule that the motive of the legislator may not be inquired into.').)

As Justice Field wrote for the United States Supreme Court in Soon Hing v. Crowley (1885) 113 U.S. 703, 710--711, 5 S.Ct. 730, 734, 28 L.Ed. 1145: '(T)he rule is general, with reference to the enactments of all legislative bodies, that the courts cannot inquire into the motives of the legislators in passing them, except as they may be disclosed on the face of the acts, or inferrible from their operation, considered with reference to the condition of the country and existing legislation. The motives of the legislators, considered as the purposes they had in view, will always be presumed to be to accomplish that which follows as the natural and reasonable effect of their enactments. Their motives, considered as the moral inducement for their votes, will vary with the different members of the legislative body. The diverse character of such motives, and the impossibility of penetrating into the hearts of men and ascertaining the truth, precludes all such inquiries as impracticable and futile.'

Moreover, the authorities, both in California and more generally, make clear that the rule barring judicial probing of lawmakers' motivations applies to local legislators as well as to members of the state Legislature or of Congress. (See, e.g., Nickerson v. San Bernardino (1918) 179 Cal. 518, 522--524, 177 P. 465; McCarthy v. City of Manhattan Beach (1953) 41 Cal.2d 879, 894--895, 264 P.2d 932; People v. City of Palm Springs (1958) 51 Cal.2d 38, 46--47, 331 P.2d 4; 5 McQuillen, Municipal Corporations (3d ed. 1969) § 16.90, pp. 278--290.) ⁵

On one level, the doctrine which precludes judicial delving into the subjective mental processes of individual legislators is a corollary of the related legal principle which establishes that the validity of a legislative act does not depend on the subjective motivation of its draftsmen but rests instead on the objective effect of the legislative terms. Thus, on many occasions this court has declared: ". . . (A) judiciary must judge by results, not by the varied factors which may have determined legislators' votes. . . ." (Wilke & Holzheiser, Inc. v. Dept. of Alcoholic Bev. Control (1966) 65 Cal.2d 349, 364, 55 Cal.Rptr. 23, 33, 420 P.2d 735, 745; Werner v. Southern Cal., etc., Newspapers (1950) 35 Cal.2d 121, 129, 216 P.2d 825.) As the United States Supreme Court has emphasized: 'It is a familiar principle of constitutional law that this Court will not strike down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive. . . . 'The decisions of this court from the beginning lend no support whatever to the assumption that the judiciary may restrain the exercise of lawful power on the assumption that a wrongful purpose or motive has caused the power to be exerted.' (Citation.)' (United States v. O'Brien (1968) 391 U.S....