NC Supreme Court agrees CMS must fund school police retirement

The North Carolina Supreme Court has determined that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools must contribute to a state retirement fund for school police.

The high court offered no comment Friday as it unanimously upheld the state Appeals Court’s February 2024 decision favoring school police officers who sued CMS. Meanwhile, the court’s five Republican justices used the case to spell out the court’s approach to dealing with “legislative history.”

A unanimous state Court of Appeals panel ruled last year that the school system must make a 5% contribution for its campus police to a state Supplemental Retirement Income Plan. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school lawyers urged the North Carolina Supreme Court to reverse that decision.

“The plaintiffs are asking this court to step into the shoes of the General Assembly,” said Terry Wallace, the lawyer representing Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, during oral arguments before the state Supreme Court on April 22.

Legislators did not include school-employed law enforcement officers in the state law that set up the 5% contribution plan, Wallace said. The plan was meant for law enforcement officers in cities and counties. Those local governments have sales tax revenue available to fund the extra retirement pay.

“I can’t disagree with the policy rationale” of providing benefits, Wallace said. “Policy is up to the General Assembly. If they want to include these officers in this legislation, they can do it with the stroke of a pen.”

On the other side of the argument, the campus police’s lawyer noted that the law in question applies to officers working for a “political subdivision of the State.” Court precedents have considered school districts to fall within that category.

“I want you to think about what is happening in our schools — school shootings, school knifings, school riots,” argued John Gresham. “Their job as law enforcement officers — that carries the same dangers. It’s our position that to have these police officers getting this benefit is essentially a way of recognizing that they are subject to the same issues as all law enforcement officers.”

The 5% contribution requirement covers all other similar police in North Carolina, Gresham said. “The only law enforcement officers in the state that aren’t are the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers.”

“Why would the legislature want to distinguish or exclude members of the CMS campus police?” Justice Trey Allen asked Wallace.

“I think it’s a matter of did they want to include them,” Wallace responded. “I think if they wanted to include them, they would have specifically written it into the statute.”

“if the statute defines employer to include ‘other political subdivision’ and it defines ‘officer’ as just a law enforcement officer, … why would they need to further amend it to say, ‘And, of course, we mean school boards?’” Justice Anita Earls asked.

“I don’t think they do,” Gresham responded.

The General Assembly approved a state law in 2009 allowing CMS to form its campus police force. Lawmakers did not rewrite the existing law covering the 5% retirement contribution, Wallace said.

Justice Richard Dietz suggested the court might find “ambiguity” in the law. In resolving the case, justices could say “we can’t find a reason why the General Assembly would not want these officers to get the benefits that every other law enforcement officer [gets].”

“If we think it’s ambiguous, why wouldn’t we do that — try to look at what the spirit of the law likely was?” Dietz asked.

Allen focused on the “political subdivision” language lawmakers included in the law. “Don’t we have to assume they know that our decisions say that school districts are political subdivisions of the state?” he asked. “Therefore, if they didn’t want them to be included, … they either would have not included this language, or they would have expressly excluded school districts.”

“If you go to the plain language, employer [includes] ‘other political subdivision of the state.’ [That] sounds like school districts to me,” Chief Justice Paul Newby said.

The argument also turned to practical concerns.

“How would CMS comply?” Allen asked.

“That’s a great question,” Wallace responded. “We’re kind of scratching our heads because we haven’t figured that out yet.”

All seven state Supreme Court justices supported Friday’s unsigned opinion upholding the Appeals Court’s decision favoring the campus police.

The five Republican justices endorsed Newby’s concurring opinion. It was designed “to clarify our longstanding approach to legislative history.”

“I believe this explanation is warranted in light of how the arguments in this case relied heavily on this statutory canon,” Newby wrote.

The chief justice spelled out two different kinds of legislative history that could influence a court’s decision. The first type involves “hearings, committee reports, and floor debates” that precede a vote on a law.

“These factors have no place in a proper statutory analysis, as numerous jurists and legal scholars have explained in great detail,” Newby wrote.

“North Carolina’s courts have an additional, more practical reason to avoid relying on legislative history of this sort: our General Assembly rarely records it,” the chief justice added. “Accordingly, for both philosophical and practical reasons, ‘this Court does not look to the record of the internal deliberations of … the legislature considering proposed legislation.’”

“The second kind of legislative history, also known as statutory history, consists of changes that the legislature has made to the statutory text over time,” Newby added. “We had this type of legislative history in mind when we noted less than two years ago that ‘the legislature’s intent may be revealed from the legislative history of the statute in question, as changes the legislature makes to a statute’s text over time provide evidence of the statute’s intended meaning.’”

“[W]e were referring to legislative enactments, not legislative proceedings,” the chief justice explained. “Courts can examine legislative enactments — to include clarifying or altering amendments — for evidence of legislative intent without resorting to records of committee reports and floor debates.”

Newby’s concurrence also offered a note of caution about relying on a state law’s history.

“Although the textual history of a statute can provide insight into legislative intent, we still disfavor its use and only turn to it in the event we exhaust both the plain text and other statutory canons,” he wrote.

“In other words, this canon should be considered a last resort with limited applicability,” Newby concluded.

“NC Supreme Court agrees CMS must fund school police retirement” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.