Spain v. Employment Sec. Dept.

• Decision Date: 19 June 2008
• Docket Number: No. 80309-9.,No. 79878-8.,79878-8.,80309-9.
• Citation: 185 P.3d 1188,164 Wn.2d 252
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: Sara D. SPAIN, Petitioner, v. The EMPLOYMENT SECURITY DEPARTMENT, Respondent. Kusum L. Batey, Respondent, and The Employment Security Department, Petitioner, and Snohomish County Center for Battered Women, Additional Party.

185 P.3d 1188

164 Wn.2d 252

Sara D. SPAIN, Petitioner, v.The EMPLOYMENT SECURITY DEPARTMENT, RespondentKusum L. Batey, Respondent, and The Employment Security Department, Petitioner, and Snohomish County Center for Battered Women, Additional Party.

No. 79878-8.

No. 80309-9.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

Argued February 26, 2008.

Decided June 19, 2008.

Marcus Robert Lampson, Unemployment Law Project, Seattle, WA, for PetitionerSara D. Spain.

Deborah Maranville, U. of Washington, School of Law, Seattle, WA, for RespondentKusum L. Batey.

Jay Douglas Geck, Jerald R. Anderson, Olympia, Erika G.S. Uhl, Seattle, Atty. General's Office, for Dept. of Employment Security.

Kristopher Ian Tefft, Association of Washington Business, Olympia, WA, for Amicus Curiae on behalf of Association of Washington Bus.

Hong Thi Tran, Marcus Robert Lampson, John Tirpak, Unemployment Law Project, Seattle, WA, Laurie A. Powers, Unemployment Law Project, Spokane, WA, for Amicus Curiae on behalf of Unemployment Law Project.

Michael Christopher Hoover, Martin Lovinger, Office of Senate Counsel, Timothy George Sekerak, House of Representatives, Olympia, WA, Michele G. Radosevich, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Seattle, WA, for Amicus Curiae on behalf of Washington State Legislature.

CHAMBERS, J.

¶ 1 Washington enacted an unemployment compensation act during an earlier time of great economic insecurity and unemployment to "lighten its burden which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker."LAWS OF 1937, ch. 162, § 2.Since the beginning, the system focused on easing that burden on those of us who are in voluntarily out of work.See generallyid.ch. 162.But our legislature did not disqualify all workers who voluntarily left their jobs, only workers who left "voluntarily without good cause."Id.§ 5.Section 5 has since expanded and transformed in many ways, but the phrase "voluntarily without good cause" has remained its pivot point.

¶ 2 Our legislature has never defined "good cause."It has, however, recently amended the statutory language around it such that "(a)[a]n individual shall be disqualified from benefits [if]he or she has left work voluntarily without good cause [but](b) ... is not disqualified from benefits under (a) of this subsection when"he or she has voluntarily left work for a specific reason set forth in the statute.FormerRCW 50.20.050(2)(2006).¹We must decide whether the statutory list of reasons that do not disqualify an individual from benefits is also an exhaustive list of good cause reasons to voluntarily leave a job without losing benefit eligibility.We conclude it is not.Accordingly, we remand both cases to the Washington Department of Employment Security(Employment Security or Department) to determine whether either Sara Spain or Kusum Batey had good cause to leave their jobs based on the merits of their individual claims.

BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Both Spain and Batey tell usthey left their jobs because they found their employers unbearable.Spain suffered daily verbal abuse.Batey left her job with a battered women's shelter after sharply disagreeing with management on how their clients should be treated, among other things.Both unsuccessfully sought unemployment benefits.Importantly, no trier of fact has found that Spain and Batey did not leave their jobs because their employers were abusive, which historically has been a nondisqualifying reason for voluntarily leaving employment without losing eligibility for benefits.See, e.g., In re Pischel, DocketNo. 1-00862, Wash. Dep't of Employment Sec. Comm'rDec.2d 672 (May 22, 1981)(verbal abuse).²

¶ 4 The Department concluded in both cases that it no longer had the statutory authority to grant unemployment benefits when an employee voluntarily leaves a job for any reason other than those listed as not disqualifying in former RCW 50.20.050(2).Since, the Department concluded, neither Spain nor Batey had left for those reasons, they were both denied benefits.Both appealed.Spain argued that Employment Security had misunderstood the legislation: that employees were still eligible for unemployment benefits if compelling personal reasons created good cause to leave their jobs.Batey argued that the legislature's attempt to amend the law was ineffective because the bill titles did not adequately state the subject of the law.Batey won at the Court of Appeals.Batey v. Employment Sec. Dep't,137 Wash.App. 506, 154 P.3d 266(2007).Spain won at the superior court level and lost at the Court of Appeals.Spain v. Employment Sec. Dep't. noted at137 Wash App. 1005, 2007 WL 404712, 2007WashApp. LEXIS 200.We granted review for both petitions.162 Wash.2d 1010, 178 P.3d 936(2008).

ANALYSIS

¶ 5 Only questions of law are presented.Our review is de novo.Dreiling v. Jain,151 Wash.2d 900, 908, 93 P.3d 861(2004)(citingRivett v. City of Tacoma,123 Wash.2d 573, 578, 870 P.2d 299(1994)).Due deference is given to the agency's interpretation of the statutes it implements.SeeState ex rel. Evergreen Freedom Found. v. Wash. Educ. Ass'n,140 Wash.2d 615, 635-36, 999 P.2d 602(2000).The statute before us says in relevant representative part:

(2) With respect to claims that have an effective date on or after January 4, 2004:

(a)An individual shall be disqualified from benefits beginning with the first day of the calendar week in which he or she has left work voluntarily without good cause. ...

. . . .

(b)An individual is not disqualified from benefits under (a) of this subsection when:

(i)He or she has left work to accept a bona fide offer of bona fide work as described in (a) of this subsection;

(ii)The separation was necessary because of the illness or disability of the claimant or the death, illness, or disability of a member of the claimant's immediate family. ...

FormerRCW 50.20.050.The statute lists other reasons for voluntarily leaving a job that are "not disqualif[ying]."Id.§ (2)(b).³

¶ 6 The employee claimants argue that by the statute's plain terms, there are still two categories of good cause: a broad undefined category established by former RCW 50.20.050(2)(a) and a narrow category defined by the specific reasons listed in former RCW 50.20.050(2)(b)(i)-(x).The State argues that by the statute's plain terms, good cause is restricted to the nondisqualifying reasons listed in former RCW 50.20.050(2)(b)(i)-(x).

¶ 7This statute is not a model of clarity and both sides propose tenable interpretations.Statutes that can be reasonably interpreted multiple ways are ambiguous.Shoreline Cmty. Coll. Dist. No. 7 v. Employment Sec. Dep't,120 Wash.2d 394, 405, 842 P.2d 938(1992)(citingYakima v. Int'l Ass'n of Fire Fighters, Local 469,117 Wash.2d 655, 669, 818 P.2d 1076(1991)).In such cases, courts may turn to extrinsic evidence of legislative intent, such as legislative history.Cockle v. Dep't of Labor & Indus.,142 Wash.2d 801, 808, 16 P.3d 583(2001)(citingHarmon v. Dep't of Soc. & Health Servs.,134 Wash.2d 523, 530, 951 P.2d 770(1998)).⁴

¶ 8 The difficulty with the State's position is that the legislature did not say that "good cause is" the 10 (now 11) listed categories.This is not a classic case of expressio unius est exclusio alterius, as it would be if the statute had simply said "good cause is" those legislatively blessed reasons for voluntarily leaving a job.Cf.Wash. Natural Gas Co. v. Pub. Util. Dist. No. 1,77 Wash.2d 94, 98, 459 P.2d 633(1969)("Where a statute specifically designates the things or classes of things upon which it operates, an inference arises in law that all things or classes of things omitted from it were intentionally omitted by the legislature. ...").Instead the statute says that employees "shall be disqualified" if they"[leave] work voluntarily without good cause" and are "not disqualified" if they leave work for the specified reasons.Former RCW 50.20.050(2)(a), (b).That can be read very naturally to mean either that only those listed reasons are sufficient or that a worker is disqualified if she left her work voluntarily without good cause and is not disqualified if she left for certain statutory reasons.

¶ 9We can also see how this awkward statutory phrasing could be intended to accomplish what the State contends it did accomplish.Originally, the disqualification statute did not attempt to define "good cause" in any way, leaving it to Employment Security to decide on a case by case basis.LAWS OF 1937, ch. 162, § 5.Then, for a time, the disqualification statute effectively created two categories of good cause: good cause per se and good cause arising out of compelling personal reasons.LAWS OF 1977, 1 st Ex. Sess., ch. 33, § 4(creating subsections 2-4 of the statute)(codified as formerRCW 50.20.050(1977)).⁵But this 1977statute certainly did not create the Department's power to find good cause; instead, it merely limited its preexisting discretion to determine it existed.FormerRCW 50.20.050(3)(1977);see generallyAyers v. Dep't of Employment Sec.,85 Wash.2d 550, 553, 536 P.2d 610(1975);In re Bale,63 Wash.2d 83, 385 P.2d 545(1963).The 2003amendments amended language that had served various purposes over the years, rather than use new language to serve a new purpose.Viewed historically, and given how easy it would have been for the legislature to say "good cause means,"we are persuaded the legislature did not intend to create an exclusive list of good cause reasons to voluntarily quit.

¶ 10Amicus Association of Washington Business contends that the statutory list was intended to be exclusive and that exclusivity was "the finishing stroke of a multi-year public policy compromise between business and labor over the nature of the Unemployment Insurance system ... and the eligibility for unemployment benefits for persons who voluntarily leave their job[s]."Amicus Br.at 1.This may well be true.Unfortunately, we have not been...