State ex rel. University of Minnesota v. Chase
| Decision Date | 27 July 1928 |
| Docket Number | 26,800 |
| Citation | 220 N.W. 951,175 Minn. 259 |
| Parties | STATE EX REL. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA AND OTHERS v. RAY P. CHASE |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
The state auditor, Ray P. Chase, appealed from a judgment of mandamus of the district court for Ramsey county, Hanft, J commanding him to approve and issue his warrant in payment of an item of expense incurred by respondent Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota. Affirmed.
State organization act of 1925 construed.
1. L 1925, c. 426, the act "in relation to the organization of the state government," construed to include the state university as one of the agencies of state government intended to be subjected to the control of the governor through the Commission of Administration and Finance. That the university is a body corporate with a large degree of independence does not prevent its being considered, from the standpoint of functions and purposes, an instrument or agency of the state to accomplish the governmental end of higher education.
Board of Regents of state university independent of other executive authority.
2. The Board of Regents was incorporated by the territorial assembly (L. 1851, c. 3) with the right to "govern" the university. By the state constitution (art. 8, § 4) all the "rights, immunities, franchises and endowments" so granted were "perpetuated unto" the university. Accordingly, the Board of Regents, in the management of the university, is constitutionally independent of all other executive authority; and in so far as L. 1925, c. 426, attempts to subject the control of university finances to the supervision of the Commission of Administration and Finance it is unconstitutional.
Legislature may not place power over university affairs elsewhere.
3. The distinction between the function of the legislature and that of the regents, in respect to the university, is that between legislative and executive power. All the executive power over university affairs having been put in the regents by the constitution, none of it may lawfully be exercised or placed elsewhere by the legislature.
When adverse practical construction of constitution is disregarded.
4. That result held so plainly a necessary consequence of the constitutional confirmation of the independent power of the Board of Regents that an adverse practical construction is disregarded. In construing a constitutional provision resort must first be had to its letter and spirit in their application to the subject matter. If the meaning is plain, without going farther, it is not permissible to adopt any different practical construction, however well established it may be.
Colleges and Universities, 11 C.J. p. 976 n. 22; p. 977 n. 29.
Constitutional Law, 12 C.J. p. 702 n. 81; p. 716 n. 94; p. 748 n. 9; p. 835 n. 10.
G. A. Youngquist, Attorney General, and Charles E. Phillips, Assistant Attorney General, for appellant.
Charles W. Bunn and Everett Fraser, for respondents.
Mandamus on behalf of the University of Minnesota and its Board of Regents to require Ray P. Chase, State Auditor, to approve a voucher and issue his warrant in payment of an item of expense incurred by the regents in a preliminary survey for the purpose of installing a plan of group insurance of members of the faculty and other permanent employes of the university. On the ground of policy alone, that purpose encountered the disapproval of the Commission of Administration and Finance; hence the adverse action of the auditor. Judgment went against him, and he appeals.
On the surface of things, the contest is between the Board of Regents and the Commission of Administration and Finance, hereinafter mentioned only as the commission. But the real issue is between the regents and the governor, made for them by L. 1925, p. 756, c. 426, "An act in relation to the organization of the state government." The purpose of the law is to centralize administrative responsibility in the governor. He appoints the commission with the advice and consent of the senate. But by art. III, § 15, of the act all orders and rulings of the commission are subject to review by him; and it is provided in art. III, § 2, that he may remove any member of the commission at any time without cause.
The commission, with entire candor, "claims authority to supervise and control the expenditure of any and all moneys" by or for the university; "the making of all contracts" by the several officers, departments, and agencies of the state government, including the university and the Board of Regents; and that the latter cannot lawfully expand any money, from whatever source derived, for university support and administration "for any purpose or object which has been disapproved" by the commission or incur financial obligation for such purpose or object. The right so to control university finances is the power to dictate academic policy and direct every institutional activity. So, in sum, the claim for appellant is that the act of 1925 has subordinated the Board of Regents to the commission and has made the latter, under the governor, the final arbiter of all university affairs. The policy of such a law, whether it grants the autocratic power frankly claimed by the commission, or whether (as argued but not now considered) it extends beyond constitutional limits the veto power over appropriations, is not for us.
1. Our first problem is whether the commission's position is tenable as a matter of statutory construction. Art. I of the law establishes specified "departments and agencies of the state government." Neither the university nor the Board of Regents is among those thereby established. But the article concludes with this sweeping sentence: "All of said departments and all officials and agencies of the state government shall be subject to * * * this act." The railroad and warehouse commission, although not one of the departments created by this act, is expressly subject thereto as an agency of state government. State ex rel. Yapp v. Chase, 165 Minn. 268, 206 N.W. 396. If the university is such an agency, the power claimed by the commission is plainly within the law. Art. III, § 3, confers power "to supervise and control" expenditures by all "departments, and agencies of the state government and of the institutions under their control; the making of all contracts and the creation or incurrence of all financial or contractual obligations; * * * by or for the state or any such department, agency, or institution." By § 5 of the same article, no appropriation to any "official, department, or agency of the state government or to any institution under its control" can become "available for expenditure" without the submission to the commission of an "estimate" and its approval of the same. The obvious intention is to include everything in the way of department or institution used as a means to any end of state government. Education being one of those ends and the university the premier of the state's educational system, it is, in the ordinary and functional sense, plainly an agency of the state. Beyond that, we find stated exceptions from the law's operation, neither the university nor the Board of Regents being among them. Art. XVII declares that the act shall not apply to the state agricultural society, and art. III, § 6, that it shall not reach certain functions of the board of control. Certainly, while these exceptions were being created and stated, the university would also have been expressly excepted, if such had been the intention.
That the university is a state institution, in the legal as well as the colloquial sense, admits of no doubt. In Regents v. Hart, 7 Minn. 45, 49 (61), it was said that the Board of Regents is a public corporation, a "trustee or agent" of the state with "specified and limited powers" for use in a "particular manner for a given end." That language was construed in State ex rel. Smith v. Van Reed, 125 Minn. 194, 198, 145 N.W. 967, as recognized the university to be a "public institution * * * merely an agency of the state to exercise certain limited and specified powers." The dictum of Gleason v. University of Minnesota, 104 Minn. 359, 362, 116 N.W. 650, that the university could not be relegated to the position "of a mere agency of the state," has to do only with the independent status of the Board of Regents. It does not imply that the institution is not a mere instrumentality or agency of government in a functional sense. In that view, the government itself is but an agency of the state, distinguished as it must be in accurate thought from its scheme and machinery of government. Grunert v. Spalding, 104 Wis. 193, 212, 78 N.W. 606, 613, 80 N.W. 589. The term "government" itself, in its derivation from the Latin "gubernaculum," signifies the instrument, the helm, whereby the ship, to which the state was compared, was guided on its course by the "gubernator" or helmsman.2 Bouvier, Law Dic. (Rawle's 3 Rev.) 1366.
"Words in a constitution, as well as words in a statute, are always to be given the meaning they have in common use, unless there are very strong reasons to the contrary." Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U.S. 139, 147, 6 S.Ct. 649, 29 L.Ed. 833, 835. There being nothing in the act of 1925 to show that its controlling terms were used in other than their ordinary sense, and inasmuch as in that sense they include the university, we conclude that to have been the intention of the law. That is confirmed by the report of the interim committee of the house of representatives upon the then proposed "reorganization of state government," submitted to the legislative session of 1925. Chapter 426 was its result. The regents were listed as one of the "appointive state administrative boards" and again...
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