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So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question. General rule of thumb, if the constitution says "x has complete the power t

So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question. General rule of thumb, if the constitution says "x has complete the power to do y", and you aren't x, your attempt to do so is unconstitutional even if x could simply overrule you. At the federal level, you see this play out in things like the "dormant commerce clause" - States don't have the power to regulate interstate commerce. Sometimes they try in spaces where congress hasn't acted yet. Congress doesn't have to explicitly overrule them, they are simply unconstitutional in the first place. It's not your power to play with. You also see it play out in congress trying to regulate for the general welfare (a power reserved to states). In this case, if the constitution says "the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp", and they decided, and you attempt to adjust that, that's probably unconstitutional. The 100% normal thing that would happen is a court would sever it and say "to the degree the statute tries to adjust who gets workers comp, that part is null and void ". It's just that here, the statute explicitly says "if that provision is found unconstitutional, the whole statute should be struck down". So the court did. One side thing to keep in mind, because it often plays into these things later - when a court finds a statute unconstitutional, they are finding that it was always unconstitutional from day 0, not just moving forward. In such cases, it is considered "void ab initio" - it is like it never existed. So assuming this holds up, the next thing that will happen is a bunch of folks will then come and file cases about what they should have gotten in the intervening time period. (void ab initio in practice is becoming harder to manage, and arguably being moved away from, but ..)

thaumasiotes 5y ago
First, thanks for responding! > So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question. This is related, I guess, but I see my argument as being about something different. The claim of the ruling seems to be that: (I) The Legislature has the unlimited power to determine who does and who doesn't get worker's comp. (II) The Legislature has, using their discretion, given worker's comp to one category of worker (employees) and withheld worker's comp from another category of worker (contractors). (III) Therefore, no other group has the power to determine who belongs to which category, because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to determine who has worker's comp. But I don't think this works. Suppose the Legislature managed to get Proposition 209 repealed and subsequently determined that blacks receive worker's comp and whites don't. The implication of this ruling is that an initiative defining who is black and who is white would be invalid because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to define the worker's compensation scheme they want. And this is true in general - the Legislature's power to determine who gets worker's comp now automatically includes the power to determine who belongs to any category, as long as they first decide to award worker's comp to that category, or to withhold it from that category. [1] I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category. For a different hypothetical, suppose that all workers employed in driving were already ineligible for worker's comp. Proposition 22 then would have had no impact on who was eligible for worker's comp. There's no difficulty with a "dormant commerce clause"-style argument that it should be invalid anyway because, even though the Legislature hasn't yet extended worker's compensation to drivers, they might do so in the future. But it seems to me that, in order to make that argument, you would first have to argue that it is impossible for the Legislature to extend worker's compensation to independent contractors -- otherwise, what's the difference between discretionarily extending worker's comp to driving employees before Prop 22 and discretionarily extending it to driving contractors after Prop 22? [1] I'm having difficulty forming the hypotheticals I really want because the body given unlimited power over worker's comp in this case is the official legislature, which tends to make examples sound less ridiculous than I think they should, as the legislature already possesses most other legislative powers. But with so much being rested here specifically on their power over worker's comp (since that power is immune to statutory propositions and most others aren't), I think it's worth separating them conceptually. What if the constitution endowed a separate body, the "California Worker's Compensation Authority", with this plenary power? Then by this ruling, the official legislature would no longer have the power to define who is an independent contractor and who isn't -- that would interfere with the constitutional grant of authority to the CWCA. But I suspect the CWCA also wouldn't have the power to define who is an independent contractor. Who would?
- DannyBee 5y ago
  Of course, happy to. Okay, so thanks for framing it this way. When framed this way, this is precisely one of the kinds of "who has what power" issues and what happens when someone else tries to do something that often comes up. Congress uses its power to create groups A and B who are taxed different (or whatever). The groups are never perfectly well drawn. A state comes along, and takes some folks in the "grey area", and says "yeah we're just gonna say that these folks are in group B" (I use congress and the states because they are easy to think about, but feel free to substitute any two groups that have explicit separation of powers) In that case, and in your first case, the answer is "you probably can't do that". To start with, again, the normal resolution would be for the court to simply say "you can say what you want but you can't affect who gets worker's comp by what you say - period. It's not your power". The court is literally disallowed from doing this in this case But to dive into it: "I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category." It only does to the degree necessary to effectuate the scheme and normally would only apply to the scheme (unless said otherwise). Again, the normal path would be to interpret the provision in a way that does not cause constitutional issues, or to sever it. But prop 22 doesn't allow this. So normally, the court would say "to whatever degree this provision attempts to control who has workers comp, it fails at that. No matter what exists now or in the future, only the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp. To the degree the provision has any other effect, it still does". But again, it can't here. So it appears weird in that it appears to grant one group more power. But it's not, really. It's really saying "you won't let us sever or reinterpret this, so we aren't" FWIW - You can make arbitrarily close calls here that rub people either way. For example - imagine the statute said "once in your lifetime, you enter your name into a computer and 1 in a trillion times it says no. If it says no, you are in group B. Otherwise, nothing happens". This has no effect 99.9999999999% percent of the time. It still would be struck down (and my experience is it also feels "wronger" to people than your version). To both your hypotheticals, for starters you are taking them farther than they normally would go in most states/etc. California is a little weird here. In the first one, in federal court, and most states, if it had no effect, you wouldn't have standing to challenge it at all, and in most places, standing is a jurisdictional bar (IE without standing, the court literally does not have the power to hear your case). California does not consider standing a jurisdictional bar, so it may hear it anyway. So you could end up in a case in california about something that has no effect, but it would not really happen elsewhere. The next thing that would happen is to determine who has the power to regulate this area, and have they regulated. If it's not you, and they have regulated, you generally can't do much of anything (this is not perfectly true, but we'll dive very far into esoterics too quickly) This is where your first hypothetical will likely get knocked out. If it's not your power to exercise, you don't get to say anything about it. The court will try to ensure it interprets things in a way to cause the least "destruction of statutes" as possible, but you don't get to say anything about it. It may do that by determining you have had no effect, etc. But it will often do it by removing the section that says anything, even consistent. This is because it avoids issues later on when the group with the power to define the scheme changes it. Otherwise, everyone will be back in court saying "well, this other things says this", and the court will have to decide again "yeah, again, they don't have the power to change that". In the second hypothetical you give, that body actually would have the power to define who is an independent contractor for the purposes of worker comp. It will in fact, get to define everything it wants to define for the purposes of workers comp. None of those will have any effect outside of workers comp. and nobody could affect their definitions as-applied to workers comp. So to the degree the legislature's definition of something affected workers comp, it would be held to not affect workers comp :) Or it would be held entirely unconstitutional if they had an explicit no-savings clause. It's not infrequent to see definitions that change depending on agency context and use and power because of this happening. For example, defining "spouse" for the purposes of federal railroad benefits vs "spouse" for the purposes of "family medical leave" vs "spouse" for the purposes of immigration law vs ....

thaumasiotes 5y ago

First, thanks for responding! > So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question. This is related, I guess, but I see my argument as being about something different. The claim of the ruling seems to be that: (I) The Legislature has the unlimited power to determine who does and who doesn't get worker's comp. (II) The Legislature has, using their discretion, given worker's comp to one category of worker (employees) and withheld worker's comp from another category of worker (contractors). (III) Therefore, no other group has the power to determine who belongs to which category, because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to determine who has worker's comp. But I don't think this works. Suppose the Legislature managed to get Proposition 209 repealed and subsequently determined that blacks receive worker's comp and whites don't. The implication of this ruling is that an initiative defining who is black and who is white would be invalid because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to define the worker's compensation scheme they want. And this is true in general - the Legislature's power to determine who gets worker's comp now automatically includes the power to determine who belongs to any category, as long as they first decide to award worker's comp to that category, or to withhold it from that category. [1] I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category. For a different hypothetical, suppose that all workers employed in driving were already ineligible for worker's comp. Proposition 22 then would have had no impact on who was eligible for worker's comp. There's no difficulty with a "dormant commerce clause"-style argument that it should be invalid anyway because, even though the Legislature hasn't yet extended worker's compensation to drivers, they might do so in the future. But it seems to me that, in order to make that argument, you would first have to argue that it is impossible for the Legislature to extend worker's compensation to independent contractors -- otherwise, what's the difference between discretionarily extending worker's comp to driving employees before Prop 22 and discretionarily extending it to driving contractors after Prop 22? [1] I'm having difficulty forming the hypotheticals I really want because the body given unlimited power over worker's comp in this case is the official legislature, which tends to make examples sound less ridiculous than I think they should, as the legislature already possesses most other legislative powers. But with so much being rested here specifically on their power over worker's comp (since that power is immune to statutory propositions and most others aren't), I think it's worth separating them conceptually. What if the constitution endowed a separate body, the "California Worker's Compensation Authority", with this plenary power? Then by this ruling, the official legislature would no longer have the power to define who is an independent contractor and who isn't -- that would interfere with the constitutional grant of authority to the CWCA. But I suspect the CWCA also wouldn't have the power to define who is an independent contractor. Who would?

DannyBee 5y ago
Of course, happy to. Okay, so thanks for framing it this way. When framed this way, this is precisely one of the kinds of "who has what power" issues and what happens when someone else tries to do something that often comes up. Congress uses its power to create groups A and B who are taxed different (or whatever). The groups are never perfectly well drawn. A state comes along, and takes some folks in the "grey area", and says "yeah we're just gonna say that these folks are in group B" (I use congress and the states because they are easy to think about, but feel free to substitute any two groups that have explicit separation of powers) In that case, and in your first case, the answer is "you probably can't do that". To start with, again, the normal resolution would be for the court to simply say "you can say what you want but you can't affect who gets worker's comp by what you say - period. It's not your power". The court is literally disallowed from doing this in this case But to dive into it: "I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category." It only does to the degree necessary to effectuate the scheme and normally would only apply to the scheme (unless said otherwise). Again, the normal path would be to interpret the provision in a way that does not cause constitutional issues, or to sever it. But prop 22 doesn't allow this. So normally, the court would say "to whatever degree this provision attempts to control who has workers comp, it fails at that. No matter what exists now or in the future, only the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp. To the degree the provision has any other effect, it still does". But again, it can't here. So it appears weird in that it appears to grant one group more power. But it's not, really. It's really saying "you won't let us sever or reinterpret this, so we aren't" FWIW - You can make arbitrarily close calls here that rub people either way. For example - imagine the statute said "once in your lifetime, you enter your name into a computer and 1 in a trillion times it says no. If it says no, you are in group B. Otherwise, nothing happens". This has no effect 99.9999999999% percent of the time. It still would be struck down (and my experience is it also feels "wronger" to people than your version). To both your hypotheticals, for starters you are taking them farther than they normally would go in most states/etc. California is a little weird here. In the first one, in federal court, and most states, if it had no effect, you wouldn't have standing to challenge it at all, and in most places, standing is a jurisdictional bar (IE without standing, the court literally does not have the power to hear your case). California does not consider standing a jurisdictional bar, so it may hear it anyway. So you could end up in a case in california about something that has no effect, but it would not really happen elsewhere. The next thing that would happen is to determine who has the power to regulate this area, and have they regulated. If it's not you, and they have regulated, you generally can't do much of anything (this is not perfectly true, but we'll dive very far into esoterics too quickly) This is where your first hypothetical will likely get knocked out. If it's not your power to exercise, you don't get to say anything about it. The court will try to ensure it interprets things in a way to cause the least "destruction of statutes" as possible, but you don't get to say anything about it. It may do that by determining you have had no effect, etc. But it will often do it by removing the section that says anything, even consistent. This is because it avoids issues later on when the group with the power to define the scheme changes it. Otherwise, everyone will be back in court saying "well, this other things says this", and the court will have to decide again "yeah, again, they don't have the power to change that". In the second hypothetical you give, that body actually would have the power to define who is an independent contractor for the purposes of worker comp. It will in fact, get to define everything it wants to define for the purposes of workers comp. None of those will have any effect outside of workers comp. and nobody could affect their definitions as-applied to workers comp. So to the degree the legislature's definition of something affected workers comp, it would be held to not affect workers comp :) Or it would be held entirely unconstitutional if they had an explicit no-savings clause. It's not infrequent to see definitions that change depending on agency context and use and power because of this happening. For example, defining "spouse" for the purposes of federal railroad benefits vs "spouse" for the purposes of "family medical leave" vs "spouse" for the purposes of immigration law vs ....