National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. v, State of California

Case Number: S239397

Judge: Liu

Court: The Supreme Court of California

Plaintiff's Attorney: Lance A. Selfridge and Daniel C. Decarlo

Defendant's Attorney: Nelson R. Richards, Samuel P. Siegel and Janill Loreen Richards

Description: Civil Code section 3531 provides that “[t]he law never requires
impossibilities.” In this case, plaintiff National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc.
(NSSF) argues that this provision authorizes a court to declare another statute,
Penal Code section 31910, subdivision (b)(7)(A), unenforceable when a
complainant alleges, and the court finds, that complying with the statute is
impossible. The Court of Appeal agreed. Because such an interpretation of
section 3531 is contrary to established principles of statutory interpretation, we
reverse.
I.
In 1999, the Legislature enacted the Unsafe Handgun Act (the Act) to
establish safety standards for all handguns manufactured, imported, and sold in the
state. (Pen. Code, former §§ 12125–12133, repealed by Stats. 2010, ch. 711, § 4,
eff. Jan. 1, 2012; reenacted as Pen. Code, §§ 31900–32110 without substantive
2
change by Stats. 2010, ch. 711, § 6, eff. Jan. 1, 2012.) Under the Act, the
California Department of Justice is charged with testing new handguns for their
compliance with the safety standards; it is also charged with maintaining a roster
of all handguns that may be manufactured, imported, or sold. (Pen. Code,
§ 32015.) A violation of the Act is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail
for up to one year. (Pen. Code, § 32000, subd. (a).)
In 2007, the Legislature amended the definition of unsafe handguns to
include “all semiautomatic pistols that are not already listed on the roster pursuant
to Section 32015 [if] not designed and equipped with a microscopic array of
characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched or
otherwise imprinted in two or more places on the interior surface or internal
working parts of the pistol, and that are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge
case when the firearm is fired . . . .” (Pen. Code, § 31910, subd. (b)(7)(A)
(hereafter Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A)).) According to the statute, this
safety standard, known as dual placement microstamping, was to take effect on
“January 1, 2010 . . . provided that the Department of Justice certifies that the
technology used to create the imprint is available to more than one manufacturer
unencumbered by any patent restrictions.” (Ibid.) The Department of Justice
issued the certification on May 17, 2013. (Cal. Dept. of Justice, Div. of Law
Enforcement, Information Bull. No. 2013-BOF-03 (May 17, 2013)
03.pdf> [as of June 22, 2018]. All internet citations in this opinion are archived by
year, docket number, and case name at http://www.courts.ca.gov/38324.htm.) At
oral argument, the Attorney General noted that this certification confirms the lack
of any patent restrictions on the imprinting technology, not the availability of the
technology itself.
3
Following the certification, NSSF filed a complaint with a single cause of
action for declaratory and injunctive relief. Alleging that dual placement
microstamping technology is impossible to implement, the complaint challenged
Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) as unenforceable under Civil Code section
3531. The Attorney General moved for judgment on the pleadings, and the trial
court, concluding that separation of powers precluded NSSF’s action, granted the
motion without leave to amend.
On appeal, the Court of Appeal observed that “the courts must defer to the
Legislature’s factual determination unless it is palpably arbitrary and must uphold
the challenged legislation so long as the Legislature could rationally have
determined a set of facts that support it.” (National Shooting Sports Foundation v.
State (2016) 6 Cal.App.5th 298, 306 (National Shooting).) But the court
continued by observing that “[n]evertheless, the judiciary can invalidate legislation
if there is some overriding constitutional, statutory or charter proscription.” (Ibid.)
The court assumed as true the allegation that it is impossible to manufacture a
semiautomatic pistol with dual placement microstamping and concluded that this
impossibility placed Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) in tension with Civil
Code section 3531 as an overriding statutory proscription. The court held that
NSSF may present evidence of impossibility and that the judiciary may invalidate
Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) if compliance is shown to be impossible.
(National Shooting, supra, 6 Cal.App.5th at p. 306.)
We granted review. The sole dispute before us is whether a court can
invalidate Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) on the basis of Civil Code section
3531’s declaration that “[t]he law never requires impossibilities.” We are not
asked to consider a constitutional challenge to Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A)
or an administrative challenge to the Department of Justice’s 2013 certification
(see Code Civ. Proc., §§ 1085, 1094.5).
4
II.
In reviewing an order granting or denying a motion for judgment on the
pleadings, we accept as true all material allegations in the complaint. (Kimmel v.
Goland (1990) 51 Cal.3d 202, 205.) Here we assume that complying with the
requirements of Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) is impossible, and we consider
whether Civil Code section 3531’s declaration that “[t]he law never requires
impossibilities” renders the dual placement microstamping requirement invalid.
Civil Code section 3531 was enacted in 1872 under a part of the Civil Code
titled “Maxims of Jurisprudence,” which are “intended not to qualify any of the
foregoing provisions of th[e] code, but to aid in their just application.” (Civ.
Code, § 3509.) Neither party disputes that section 3531 is a maxim of
jurisprudence; they disagree on its legal effect. The Attorney General argues that
although section 3531 “can help courts ascertain and effectuate the Legislature’s
intent when construing statutes,” it does “not give rise to substantive rights or
causes of action, or empower courts to rewrite or invalidate later-enacted laws.”
NSSF argues that section 3531 has full legal effect like any other legislative
enactment.
We understand Civil Code section 3531 just as Civil Code section 3509
provides: It is an interpretative canon for construing statutes, not a means for
invalidating them. Impossibility can occasionally excuse noncompliance with a
statute, but in such circumstances, the excusal constitutes an interpretation of the
statute in accordance with the Legislature’s intent, not an invalidation of the
statute.
For example, our courts have excused compliance with a statute of
limitations where timely compliance was impossible; in such instances, the
excusal was based on an interpretation of the statute of limitations in accordance
with an underlying legislative intent to avoid unjust application of the statute.
5
(See Lewis v. Superior Court (1985) 175 Cal.App.3d 366, 372 (Lewis) [“Careful
comparison of these statutory exceptions reveals the manifest common legislative
purpose of attempting to avoid unjust application of statutes of limitation where
circumstances effectively render timely commencement of action impossible or
virtually impossible.”].) Where “ ‘[t]he purpose of the statute is plain[, i.e.,] to
prevent avoidable delay for too long a period’ ” (id. at p. 374, quoting Christin v.
Superior Court (1937) 9 Cal.2d 526, 532), we can adopt “a statutory construction
recognizing an implicit . . . exception” in particular circumstances (Lewis, at
p. 376). But impossibility does not authorize a court to go beyond interpreting the
statute and simply invalidate it altogether. Impossibility, as an aid to statutory
interpretation, is akin to the absurdity canon, which counsels courts to “avoid any
[statutory] construction that would produce absurd consequences.” (Flannery v.
Prentice (2001) 26 Cal.4th 572, 578; see Lewis, at p. 377 [“It would be absurd to
attribute to the Legislature an intent to construe the language and underlying
purpose . . . so narrowly.”].)
The Court of Appeal relied on Board of Supervisors v. McMahon (1990)
219 Cal.App.3d 286 (McMahon), but that case does not authorize judicial
invalidation of a statute on the ground that compliance is impossible. In
McMahon, Butte County challenged on various grounds the application of a state
statute requiring counties to contribute to the funding of a welfare program. (Id. at
pp. 291–292.) One of the county’s claims was that “its financial straits [left] it
literally unable to comply with the state mandate.” (Id. at p. 299.) McMahon
rejected this claim on the ground that the evidence did not demonstrate that
compliance was actually impossible. (Id. at pp. 300–302.) Nothing in McMahon
suggests that the court would have invalidated the statute if the evidence had
shown that compliance was in fact impossible. McMahon simply observed that
that “[c]onsistent with th[e] maxim” stated in Civil Code section 3531, “the law
6
recognizes exceptions to statutory requirements for impossibility of performance.”
(McMahon, at p. 300.) Recognizing an implied exception to a statutory
requirement is a far cry from vitiating the requirement altogether.
McMahon is consistent with the approach we took in Sutro Heights Land
Co. v. Merced Irr. Dist. (1931) 211 Cal. 670. In that case, we excused compliance
with a state statute requiring drainage efforts that would have brought “financial
ruin” and “irreparable injury” to an irrigation district and its landowners. (Id. at
p. 703.) Our reasoning made clear that in so holding, we were interpreting, not
invalidating, the statute: “We do not believe that, under this state of facts, it was
ever intended by those responsible for the enactment of the Drainage Act of 1907,
that an irrigation district, situated as is the defendant in this action, should be
compelled to work its own destruction by undertaking to provide drainage
facilities for the district, the expense of which is beyond its financial ability to
meet or pay for.” (Ibid.)
In sum, the case law recognizes that a statute may contain an implied
exception for noncompliance based on impossibility where such an exception
reflects a proper understanding of the legislative intent behind the statute. We are
not aware of any appellate precedent in California that has invoked Civil Code
section 3531 or impossibility of compliance to invalidate a statute itself.
NSSF cites three out-of-state cases to support its expansive reading of Civil
Code section 3531. In Gigliotti v. New York, Chicago & St. Louis R. Co. (Ohio
Ct.App. 1958) 157 N.E.2d 447, 452 (Gigliotti), the court observed that “[i]t is well
settled that the law is not so unreasonable as to require the performance of
impossibilities as a condition to the assertion of acknowledged rights . . . ; and,
when Legislatures use language so broad as to lead to such results, courts may
properly say that the Legislature did not intend to include those cases in which a
literal obedience has become impossible. If a statute apparently requires the
7
performance of something which cannot be performed, a court may hold it
inoperative.” (Id. at p. 452, italics added.) The court in Gigliotti was simply
stating, consistent with California case law, that impossibility of compliance can
render a statutory mandate “inoperative” in a particular instance insofar as it is
apparent that “the Legislature did not intend to include” that instance within the
ambit of the statutory mandate. (Ibid.)
Citing Gigliotti, the court in Ivaran Lines, Inc. v. Waicman
(Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1984) 461 So.2d 123, 126 held that “violation of a statute or
regulation . . . is excused where it appears without dispute that compliance with
the statute is impossible even in the exercise of reasonable diligence.” In excusing
compliance with the statute at issue, the court did not make clear whether it was
reading into the statute an implied exception for impossibility or declaring the
statute altogether invalid when compliance was impossible. (See id. at pp. 125–
126.) To the extent the court was doing the latter, we do not find it persuasive. Its
scant reasoning does not grapple with basic principles of statutory interpretation or
with the limited context in which Gigliotti recognized judicial authority to declare
a statute “inoperative” due to impossibility of compliance. (Gigliotti, supra, 157
N.E.2d at p. 452.)
Finally, in Buck v. Harton (M.D.Tenn. 1940) 33 F.Supp. 1014, a federal
district court invalidated a statute after finding that compliance was impossible,
but the court did so in the context of a constitutional challenge. Claiming that
impossibility of compliance with a statute burdens or violates a constitutional right
is quite different from invoking such impossibility as a challenge under one statute
to invalidate another.
Citing City and County of San Francisco v. Cooper (1975) 13 Cal.3d 898,
915, the Court of Appeal observed that “the judiciary can invalidate legislation if
there is some overriding constitutional, statutory or charter proscription.”
8
(National Shooting, supra, 6 Cal.App.5th at pp. 305–306.) But nothing in Cooper
suggests that Civil Code section 3531 can be read as an “overriding . . . statutory
. . . proscription” (Cooper, at p. 915) that invalidates Penal Code section
31910(b)(7)(A). In Cooper, the plaintiff sought to invalidate a city ordinance and
school district resolution on the ground that “both measures were enacted under
the coercive influence of an ‘illegal’ public employee strike.” (Cooper, at p. 912.)
In rejecting this claim, we explained that the plaintiff’s facial challenge to the
locally enacted measures must be analyzed in relation to any overriding charter,
statute, or constitutional provision. (Id. at p. 918 [“In the absence of controlling
constitutional, statutory or charter limitations, local legislators retain authority to
determine the appropriate legislative response to an allegedly illegal strike.”].)
After determining that “there was no constitutional, statutory or charter provision
which barred either body from enacting legislation in response to, or as a result of,
an ‘illegal’ public employee strike” (id. at p. 913), we concluded that the local
measures could not be invalidated on the basis of public policy or any other
grounds (id. at pp. 913–918). Cooper does not suggest that a statute can be
invalidated by an earlier statute enacted by the same legislative body.
Here, the Legislature enacted the Unsafe Handgun Act to restrict the
manufacture, import, and sale of unsafe handguns, and the Legislature amended
the Act in 2007 so that once the Department of Justice has made the certification
specified in Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A), “all semiautomatic pistols that are
not already listed on the roster pursuant to Section 32015” are designated as
unsafe handguns if they lack dual placement microstamping. Neither the text nor
the purpose of the Act contemplates that a showing of impossibility can excuse
compliance with the statutory requirement once the statute goes into effect. The
Legislature specified that the statute’s requirement takes effect on January 1, 2010
provided that the Department of Justice issues the certification. We express no
9
view on the validity of the Department’s certification or whether it included an
adjudication of impossibility. Our conclusion here is that the statute does not
authorize courts to independently carve out exceptions for impossibility after that
administrative determination has been made.
NSSF has not brought a constitutional challenge to the statute, nor has it
petitioned for a writ of mandate against the Department of Justice for improperly
certifying the availability of dual placement microstamping technology (and we
express no view on the merits of those possibilities). Instead, NSSF has invoked
the impossibility of compliance as a basis for voiding the statute. But Civil Code
section 3531’s maxim that “[t]he law never requires impossibilities” is an
interpretive aid that occasionally authorizes an exception to a statutory mandate in
accordance with the Legislature’s intent behind the mandate. The maxim has
never been recognized, and we do not recognize it today, as a ground for
invalidating a statutory mandate altogether.

Outcome: We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and remand to that court to
affirm the trial court’s judgment granting the Attorney General’s motion for
judgment on the pleadings.

Plaintiff's Experts:

Defendant's Experts:

Comments: