State v. Coppage
| Decision Date | 06 July 1912 |
| Docket Number | 18,088 |
| Parties | [*] THE STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, v. T. B. COPPAGE, Appellant |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Decided July, 1912.
Appeal from Bourbon district court.
Judgment affirmed.
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.
1. CRIME-- Employer and Employee -- Coercing an Employee to Make Agreement. An employer has no inherent right to coerce an employee, as a condition of remaining in his employment, to make a written or verbal contract not to become or remain a member of a labor organization.
2. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - - Employer and Employee--Coercion of Employee. The legislature deeming such coercion against public policy violated no constitutional rights of employers in the enactment of sections 4674 and 4675 of the General Statutes of 1909, and such sections are valid.
R. R Vermilion, of Wichita, for the appellant.
John S. Dawson, attorney-general, and Chester A. Ramsey, county attorney, for the appellee. pellee.
J. I. Sheppard, James S. Sheppard, and Kate Sheppard, all of Fort Scott, as amici curiae.
OPINION
About July 1, 1911, one A. R. Hedges was employed as a switchman in the yards of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company at Fort Scott, Kan., and was a member of a labor organization called the Switchmen's Union of North America. The appellant was employed by the railway company as superintendent. The appellant, as such superintendent, requested Hedges to sign an agreement, which he presented to Hedges in writing, and informed him that if he did not sign it he could not remain in the employ of the railway company. The following is the writing presented:
(Signed) . . . .
. . . .
. . . .
Hedges refused to sign the writing and refused to withdraw from the labor organization. Thereupon appellant, as such superintendent, discharged Hedges from the service of the railway company. Thereafter this criminal action was instituted by information, setting forth, in substance, the above facts. The appellant moved to quash the information on several grounds, the principal ones of which were that the information charged no public offense under the laws of the state of Kansas, and that there was no valid law making the acts charged in the information a public offense. The motion was overruled. The case came regularly on for trial, a jury was waived, and the parties stipulated that the case be tried to the court. Arraignment was waived and a plea of not guilty entered. Thereupon the state offered evidence of the facts above stated and the appellant submitted the case without evidence. On consideration thereof the court found the appellant guilty as charged. Motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment were overruled and proper exceptions saved. The only question presented on the appeal is the validity of sections 4674 and 4675 of the General Statutes of 1909, which read:
Each party, in argument, assumed that if section 4675, making it a misdemeanor to do any of the things denounced as unlawful in section 4674, is constitutional and valid, then the ruling on the motion to quash the information and the final judgment of the court should be affirmed, otherwise the ruling and judgment of the court should be reversed. Our attention has been called to no other decision upon a statute, except The State, ex rel., v. Daniels, (Minn. June, 1912), 136 N.W. 584, like the statute in question. The statute of Minnesota, the validity of which was involved in the decision, is practically the same as ours. The syllabus reads:
"Under the decision of the supreme court of the United States in Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161, 52 L.Ed. 436, 28 S.Ct. 277, which this court must follow and apply, it is held that a criminal complaint based on section 5097, R. L. 1905, which merely alleges that the employer required the employe to enter into a verbal agreement not to remain a member of a labor organization as a condition of retaining his employment, does not state a criminal offense." (Syl. P p 1.)
The relator was charged and had been convicted of requiring an employee of a railroad company, as a condition of remaining in such employ, to enter into a verbal agreement not to remain a member of a certain labor organization. He was convicted and sentenced to jail in the custody of the sheriff. The district court in a habeas corpus proceeding released him from custody. The case in the supreme court was on the appeal of the sheriff from that judgment.
It will be observed that the Minnesota decision is based upon the Adair case. In the latter case the accused was not convicted of requiring the employee to make an agreement not to become or remain a member of a labor organization, but was convicted for discharging the employee because of his membership in a labor organization. After discussing the case generally, the opinion (Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161, 52 L.Ed. 436, 28 S.Ct. 277) says:
"It thus appears that the criminal offense charged in the count of the indictment upon which the defendant was convicted was, in substance and effect, that being an agent of a railroad company engaged in interstate commerce and subject to the provisions of the above act of June 1, 1898, he discharged one Coppage from its service because of his membership in a labor organization--no other ground for such discharge being alleged." (p. 171.)
In the next paragraph of the opinion the court formulated the question presented as follows:
"May congress make it a criminal offense against the United States--as by the tenth section of the act of 1898 it does--for an agent or officer of an interstate carrier, having full authority in the premises from the carrier, to discharge an employee from service simply because of his membership in a labor organization?" (p. 171.)
By the syllabus it also appears that the provision in section 10 of the act, making it a crime for an employer to discharge an employee for the reason that the employee is a member of a labor organization, was the only provision of the act which was held unconstitutional. We think the Adair case does not support the Minnesota decision and has no application to the case at bar.
It is a matter of common knowledge, of which legislatures and courts should take cognizance, that many individual laborers are unable to cope on an equal footing with wealthy individual or corporate employers as to the terms of employment; also that both employers and employees are in fact separately associated in organizations for the purpose of advancing their respective and, in certain respects, conflicting interests. It goes without saying that the individual employee can not coerce his employer from remaining a member of his association and that the individual employer may so coerce his employee unless restrained therefrom by law. If no restraining law is held valid by the courts, we then have this situation: the employers' association prescribes to its members conditions which they, perhaps under penalty, must impose upon their several employees; the individual employee is, in the supposed case, pitted not only against his employer in contracting the conditions of employment, but also against the aggregation of associated employers. That such a condition, if real, tends to reduce employees to mere serfdom can not be questioned. The public can not be said to be uninterested. The legislature stands in the place of the public as its representative, and, if the legislature is not debarred therefrom by constitutional limitations, it devolves upon it to determine whether any restrictions are necessary and, if so, what the restrictions shall be. The courts should enforce the acts of the legislature unless they are repugnant to the constitution of the nation or state. If experience and changed conditions demonstrate that the constitutional limitations work or permit injustice, there is still a remedy but it is not in the courts.
It is said that an employer has the right to prescribe such conditions of employment as he may choose and the employee may accept or reject them. This, if true, does not dispose of this case. Here the employer required the employee to make a contract pledging his honor not to do an act which he had a legal right to do, which did not necessarily affect his duty to his employer, and which the legislature by the act in question, in effect, said it is against public policy and unlawful to coerce an employee to do.
The gravamen of the offense charged in this action is the attempt to coerce, require, demand or influence any person or persons to enter into any agreement, either written or verbal, not to join or become or remain a member of any labor organization or association, as a condition of...
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Coppage v. State of Kansas
...in the county jail not less than thirty days. The judgment was affirmed by the supreme court of the state, two justices dissenting (87 Kan. 752, 125 Pac. 8), and the case is brought here upon the ground that the statute, as construed and applied in this case, is in conflict with that provis......