CopyCited 37 times | Published | Supreme Court of Florida | 1987 WL 2367
...Appellant and several other entities opposed the application on grounds of Kelly's lack of citizenship. The Florida Department of Labor and Employment Security, Division of Labor, Employment and Training ("Department") granted Kelly a license, citing section 455.10, Florida Statutes (1985), [2] as grounds for this action. In effect, the Department's final order held that section 455.10 implicitly had repealed section 447.04(1)(a) and the alienage restriction it contains. On appeal, the Second District affirmed, but not on the basis of section 455.10. Instead, the district court concluded that rules of statutory construction prevented the application of section 455.10 to the question at hand because section 447.04(1)(a) clearly governed the licensing of business agents....
...Public Employees Relations Commission v. Dade County Police Benevolent Association,
467 So.2d 987 (Fla. 1985); Daniel v. Florida State Turnpike Authority,
213 So.2d 585 (Fla. 1968). However, this deference is not without limit. In this case the Department specifically found that section
455.10 was in direct conflict with, and had repealed by implication, section 447.04(1)(a): The Legislature is presumed to know what laws it has previously enacted. It must be concluded, therefore, that, if the 1979 Session of the Legislature had desired to retain the citizenship requirement for Business Agents, it would have enacted an exception to Section
455.10 for that class....
...nterpretation that resulted in a statute being voided by administrative fiat. On the merits of this initial question, we also agree with the Second District that section 447.04(1)(a) cannot be construed as implicitly repealed by the revision made to section 455.10 in 1979....
...Davis,
395 So.2d 540, 542 (Fla. 1981); State ex rel. School Board of Martin County v. Department of Education,
317 So.2d 68, 72 (Fla. 1975). Moreover, a statute such as section 447.04(1)(a), covering a specific subject, is controlling over a statute such as section
455.10 that applies to a general class of subjects; in effect, the specific statute operates as an exception to the general....
...McDONALD, C.J., and OVERTON, EHRLICH, SHAW and KOGAN, JJ., concur. NOTES [1] Section 447.04, Florida Statutes (1985), provides: (1) No person shall be granted a license or a permit to act as a business agent in the state: (a) Who is not a citizen of the United States. [2] Section 455.10 provides: No person shall be disqualified from practicing an occupation or profession regulated by the state solely because he is not a United States citizen....
CopyPublished | District Court of Appeal of Florida | 12 Fla. L. Weekly 346, 1987 Fla. App. LEXIS 6419
...Association), the city of Largo and the city of Tallahassee. The District appeals from the order. The Association has filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the position of the District. We affirm. In granting the license the Department relied upon section 455.10, Florida Statutes (1985), which provides: 455.10 Restriction on requirement of citizenship.— No person shall be disqualified from practicing an occupation or profession regulated by the state solely because he is not a United States citizen....
...As the District, the Department, and Kelly agree, the two statutes are facially inconsistent. The initial issue concerns which statute should govern. We agree with the District that, as between the two, section 447.-04(l)(a) governs. We conclude that the Department erred in relying upon section 455.10....
...Our basic reasoning is that two facially conflicting statutes are to be harmonized, if reasonably possible, so as to preserve the effectiveness of each; harmony is achieved here by construing section 447.04(l)(a) as being specifically applicable to the occupation of labor organization business agent and section 455.10 as being applicable to other occupations and professions not covered by a specific statute like section 447.04(l)(a)....
...n. We therefore conclude that the Department was correct in not denying the license on the basis of Kelly’s lack of citizenship. The remainder of this opinion more fully explains our conclusions. As to the Initial Issue, Sections 447.-04(l)(a) and 455.10, Which are Facially Conflicting, Should be Harmonized by Finding Section 447.04(l)(a) Specifically Applicable to the Facts of this Case. The Department acknowledged in its order that in 1977 section 447.04(l)(a) controlled. However, the Department concluded and Kelly argues that post 1977 legislative enactments established that section 455.10 should control primarily because section 455.10, enacted in 1979, represents the last legislative word on the subject. On the other hand, the District argues that section 447.04(l)(a) should continue to control on two principal grounds: first, that section 455.10 does not represent the last substantive legislative word and, second, that section 447.04(l)(a) more specifically applies to the facts of this case....
...In 1977 it was clear that the legislature intended the citizenship requirement of section 447.04(l)(a) to apply to labor organization business agents notwithstanding the general proscription against such a requirement then found in section 455.012(1), the predecessor to section 455.10. (As further explained below, section 455.012, enacted in 1972, contained a prohibition against a citizenship requirement which was similar to the prohibition now contained in 455.10)....
...(section 447.04, enacted in 1943), leaving in 447.04 only a citizenship requirement. We presume that at the time of that 1977 change, the legislature was aware of the general proscription against citizenship requirements found in the predecessor to section 455.10....
...ion 447.04(l)(a) controls. In 1983, section 447.04 was given its present wording by being amended slightly in a manner immaterial to the case at hand and being reenacted in virtually the same language as that which had existed in 1977. *1385 In 1979 section 455.10 was given its present wording which is quoted above. Prior to 1979, as we have said, section 455.10 had been numbered section 455.012....
...(3) Any complaints concerning the violation of this section shall be processed in accordance with the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, chapter 120. The District argues that the change to former section 455.012 made by the 1979 enactment of section 455.10 simply represented an omission of surplus words and did not indicate a substantive change....
...hall be a ground for revocation of the license.” We conclude that section 455.012(1) was therefore internally inconsistent or at best ambiguous and unclear. The elimination of that inconsistency or ambiguity and lack of clarity by the enactment of section 455.10 in 1979 amounted to a declaration of legislative intent which had been missing from the predecessor statute. We agree with the Department that the 1979 enactment of section 455.10 was the last substantive expression of legislative intent on the subject covered by that statute. If the task were simply to choose between two facially conflicting statutes, section 455.10 would be chosen on the basis of its being, as we have explained, the last statute to have been substantively enacted. This choice would represent application of the doctrine of amendment by implication under which section 455.10 would be construed as having amended section 447.-04(l)(a)....
...But, as the District argues and as was also the case in Parker, one of them (here section 447.04(l)(a)) specifically addresses the precise factual setting under consideration (447.04(l)(a) specifically provides for licensing of labor organization business agents). On the other hand, section 455.10 applies generally to licenses for occupations or professions....
...McMillan,
55 Fla. 246 ,
45 So. 882 (1908). These same principles were recently applied by this court in Floyd v. Bentley,
496 So.2d 862 (Fla. 2d DCA 1986).
499 So.2d at 845 . See also State ex rel. Johnson v. Vizzini,
227 So.2d 205 (Fla.1969). That section
455.10 was the last substantively enacted statute is not controlling under circumstances like this....
...The remainder of this opinion concerning that issue addresses the following other arguments and counterarguments made by the parties and dealt with in the Department’s order: (a) Our holding that section 447.04(l)(a) controls could be considered to be supported also by reasoning that the legislature intended for section 455.10 to apply only to professions and occupations regulated by the Department of Professional Regulation under the provisions of chapter 455, none of which, the District argues, have had business agents subject to licensing like those under section 447.04....
...ication of chapter 455 was restricted to administrative boards defined in section
455.01 which did not include any board which regulated labor organization business agents. This rebuttal is an additional argument for the position of Kelly *1387 that section
455.10 was meant to apply to labor organization business agents....
...However, that argument only further illustrates the conflict between the two statutes. It does not detract from our foregoing basis for harmonizing the two statutes which must be the controlling rationale. (b) An argument is made by Kelly that a general statute such as section 455.10, which comprehensively revisits the subject matter of a specific statute, such as section 447.04(l)(a), impliedly repeals the latter. But we do not conclude that the principle underlying that argument controls here. In its 1979 enactment of section 455.10 the legislature did not revisit the subject specifically covered by section 447.04(l)(a) nor did it include words like, “notwithstanding any other laws to the contrary.” Thus, we do not conclude that the 1979 enactment of section 455.10 was intended to be a fully comprehensive revision impliedly repealing any facially conflicting provisions of other statutes....
...(d) We do not agree with Kelly’s further argument that the legislature’s specific provision in another statute, section 943.-13(2),' saying that police officers must be United States citizens “notwithstanding any laws of the state to the contrary” evidences a legislative intent that section
455.10 should apply to all occupations in the state unless the legislature has enacted contrary legislation worded like section
943.13(2). That there is a stronger basis to except police officers from the provisions of section
455.10 does not affect our foregoing reasoning in harmonizing sections 447.04(l)(a) and
455.10....
...s possible” because it also includes within its scope private employee labor organizations. Accordingly, while we conclude that the basis for the Department’s order is erroneous because, as we have explained, the Department erred in finding that section 455.10 is applicable, we affirm the refusal to require United States citizenship as a prerequisite to the issuance of a labor organization business agent’s license under section 447.04....
