Ector v. City of Torrance

• Decision Date: 02 October 1973
• Citation: 514 P.2d 433,10 Cal.3d 129,109 Cal.Rptr. 849
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 514 P.2d 433 Silas ECTOR, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. CITY OF TORRANCE et al., Defendants and Respondents. L.A. 30100.

Page 849

109 Cal.Rptr. 849

10 Cal.3d 129, 514 P.2d 433

Silas ECTOR, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. CITY OF TORRANCE et al., Defendants and Respondents.

L.A. 30100.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

Oct. 2, 1973.

Kurlander, Solomon & Hart, Stephen Warren Solomon, and Ronald L. Gould, Santa Monica, for plaintiff and appellant.

Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, Christopher Burdick, Jacobs, Blanckenburg, May & Colvin, and Reynold H. Colvin, San Francisco, as amici curiae on behalf of plaintiff and appellant.

Stanley E. Remelmeyer, City Atty., and Ralph H. Nutter, Los Angeles, for defendants and respondents.

Roger Arnebergh, City Atty., Los Angeles, John A. Daly, Jack L. Wells, Asst. City Attys., Thomas M. O'Connor, City Atty., City and County of San Francisco, Burk E. Delventhal, Deputy City Atty. Edward A. Goggin, City Atty., Oakland, and William C. Sharp, Deputy City Atty., as amici curiae on behalf of defendants and respondents.

MOSK, Justice.

This is an appeal by a former city employee from a judgment denying his petition for writ of mandate to compel respondent City of Torrance to vacate its order terminating his employment and to reinstate him with full back pay. Appellant contends that the requirement of respondent's charter that its officers and employees reside within its borders contravenes a state statute forbidding such a job qualification (Gov.Code, § 50083) and denies him certain constitutional rights. We conclude that neither of appellant's points is well taken and hence that the judgment must be affirmed.

Respondent City of Torrance is a charter city. Article VII, section 6, of its charter declares that 'All officers and employees of the City of Torrance shall be or become residents of said City within six (6) months after their appointment or date of employment provided, however, that as to appointive officers or employees having technical, special or professional knowledge or abilities, the City Council may waive the residence requirements. No officer or employee may be appointed permanently in the classified service unless and until he has become a resident of the City.'

In 1968 appellant was employed by respondent as a librarian, and in the following year received an appointment in the city's classified civil service. He never became a resident of Torrance, however, and in 1971 he was discharged for violation of the residence requirement of article VII, section 6. ¹ He brought this action in administrative mandamus, challenging the validity of the residence requirement. The trial court upheld the provision and denied relief.

Appellant contends that Government Code section 50083 prohibits respondent from requiring residence as a condition of employment. Section 50083 provides in its entirety that 'No local agency or district shall require that its employees be residents of such local agency or district.' Appellant relies on section 50001 of the same code, which declares generally that "Local agency' as used in this division (i.e., including § 50083) means county, city, or city and county, unless the context otherwise requires.' It is urged that respondent is a 'city' within the definition of section 50001 and hence is bound by the prohibition of section 50083. As will appear, however, when the legislation is read together with certain governing provisions of the Constitution 'the context otherwise requires' a more limited meaning for the term 'local agency' in section 50083: i.e., when the agency in question is a city, the section is intended to apply only if it is a general law city rather than a charter city. Respondent, as noted above, is the latter.

To begin with, this is not the usual case in which the courts are without constitutional guidance in resolving the question whether a subject of local regulation is a 'municipal affair' and hence within the general home rule power vested in charter cities by subdivision (a) of section 5, article XI, of the Constitution. ² (See, e.g., Bishop v. City of San Jose (1969), 1 Cal.3d 56, 62, 81 Cal.Rptr. 465, 460 P.2d 137, and cases cited.) Here we have the benefit of a specific directive in subdivision (b) of that section, which grants 'plenary authority' to charter cities to prescribe in their charters the 'qualifications' of their employees. ³ A requirement that a municipal employee reside within the boarders of the city that hires and pays him has long been deemed a 'qualification' for the employment in question, similar in this regard to minimum standards of age, health, education, experience, or performance in civil service examinations. (Marabuto v. Town of Emeryville (1960), 183 Cal.App.2d 406, 410--411, 6 Cal.Rptr. 690; Galli v. Brown (1952), 110 Cal.App.2d 764, 775, 243 P.2d 290; Dierssen v. Civil Service Commission (1941), 43 Cal.App.2d 53, 57, 110 P.2d 513; cf. Ballf v. Public Welfare Department (1957), 151 Cal.App.2d 784, 788, 312 P.2d 360; Denton v. City & County of San Francisco (1953), 119 Cal.App.2d 369, 375, 260 P.2d 83.) ⁴

It follows that a statute purporting to prohibit charter cities from perscribing municipal employee residence requirements in their charters would contravene that explicit constitutional authorization. We must presume that in adopting section 50083 the Legislature intended to enact a valid statute (In re Kay (1970), 1 Cal.3d 930, 942, 83 Cal.Rptr. 686, 464 P.2d 142), and therefore meant to limit its reach to general law cities.

In the present context, moreover, the presumption is confirmed by legislative history. Section 50083 was enacted in the 1970 session. In the immediately following session Assembly Bill 1935 was introduced, proposing to expand section 50083 by declaring that "Local agency' for the purpose of this section includes charter cities and charter counties.' Obviously aware of the constitutional prohibition against his proposal, the author of this bill simultaneously introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 53, which would have added the following exception to subdivision (b) of section 5, article XI (Ante, fn. 3): 'No provision of this article shall limit the power of the Legislature to prohibit charter cities from imposing a residence requirement upon their employees as a qualification for employment.' ⁵

After passing the Assembly in an amended form, Assembly Bill 1935 was further amended in the Senate to exclude from its reach 'a charter city and county'--i.e., San Francisco--and 'charter cities of over 2,000,000 population'--i.e., Los Angeles. The measure was debated on the floor and narrowly defeated on its third reading by a roll call vote of 13 to 12. (5 Sen. J. (1971 Sess.) pp. 9242, 9247.) We may reasonably infer that by so voting the Legislature rejected the very extension of the statute which appellant now asks us to adopt under the guise of judicial construction. This, of course, we may not do.

Appellant also contends that the residence requirement of respondent's charter is unconstitutional. ⁶ In Detroit Police Officers Assn. v. City of Detroit (Mich. 1971), 385 Mich. 519, 190 N.W.2d 97, a similar municipal employee residence requirement was sustained against a charge that it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. An appeal was taken to the United States Supreme Court, but that court ordered the matter 'dismissed for want of a substantial federal question.' (405 U.S. 950, 92 S.Ct. 1173, 31 L.Ed.2d 227.) Shortly thereafter a federal circuit court of appeals held that the dismissal amounted to a decision on the merits by the United States Supreme Court that such a municipal employee residence requirement does not violate any provision of the federal Constitution. (Ahern v. Murphy (7th Cir. 1972), 457 F.2d 363.) The rule of construction invoked by the Ahern court has been recognized in California decisions. (Samson Market Co. v. Alcoholic Bev. etc. Appeals Bd. (1969), 71 Cal.2d 1215, 1221, fn. 4, 81 Cal.Rptr. 251, 459 P.2d 667; People v. Superior Court (1972), 28 Cal.App.3d 600, 619--620, 104 Cal.Rptr. 876.) Applied here, it leads us to reject this attack on the validity of respondent's residence requirement.

We need not, however, rest our conclusion exclusively on the foregoing reasoning. In addition to the Detroit Police Officers Assn. case, a number of other decisions have held that a municipal employee residence requirement bears a rational relationship to one or more legitimate state purposes, and hence is constitutional under the traditional equal protection test. (See, e.g., Hattiesburg Firefighters Local 184 v. City of Hattiesburg (Miss.1972), 263 So.2d 767; Williams v. Civil Service Com'n of City of Detroit (1970), 383 Mich. 507, 176 N.W.2d 593, 596--598; Mercadante v. City of Paterson (1970), 111 N.J.Super. 35, 266 A.2d 611, affd. per curiam (1971), 58 N.J. 112, 275 A.2d 440; Salt Lake City Fire Fighters Local 1645 v. Salt Lake City (1969), 22 Utah 2d 115, 449 P.2d 239, 240; Marabuto v. Town of Emeryville (1960), supra, 183 Cal.App.2d 406, 6 Cal.Rptr. 690; Kennedy v. City of Newark (1959), 29 N.J. 178, 148 A.2d 473, 475--476.)

Among the governmental purposes cited in these decisions or now urged by amici curiae are the promotion of ethnic balance in the community; reduction in high unemployment rates of inner-city minority groups; improvement of relations between such groups and city employees; enhancement of the quality of employee performance by greater personal knowledge of the city's conditions and by a feeling of greater personal stake in the city's progress; diminution of absenteeism and tardiness among municipal personnel; ready availability of trained manpower in emergency situations; and the general economic benefits flowing from local expenditure of employees' salaries. We cannot say that one or more of these goals is not a legitimate state purpose rationally promoted by the municipal employee residence requirement here in issue.

Appellant contends in the alertnative that respondent's residence requirement...