Colleges’ faculty group challenges officeholder suit

Monday, May 10, 2004 | 9:27 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- An organization that represents 600 members of the faculty of the University and Community College System of Nevada says Attorney General Brian Sandoval used "unsubstantiated logic" in holding that public employees could not serve in the Legislature.

The Nevada Faculty Alliance today filed an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief in the Nevada Supreme Court challenging the lawsuit filed by Sandoval on behalf of Secretary of State Dean Heller. The lawsuit seeks to ban state and university employees from being members of the Legislature and asks for clarification as to whether city and county government employees also should be banned from serving as elected state lawmakers.

The faculty alliance is just the latest entity to notify the court that it opposes the lawsuit. The Legislature, Nevada Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and other public employee organizations have already filed their opposition.

Attorneys James Richardson and Matthew Francis, representing the alliance, said faculty members are under contract with the various universities or colleges they work at. The system is governed by the autonomous board of regents and the employees have no ministerial duties and cannot exercise "sovereign functions in state government."

The faculty members do not fit into the category of "public officers", the two lawyers said. "Faculty members teach, conduct research, and perform service under national standards, which affirm their independence and their academic freedom," the document filed by Richardson and Francis noted.

"They are superintended, supervised, evaluated, reviewed, promoted and compensated as employees," the brief said.

The suit by Heller says state and university employees are prohibited from serving in the Legislature because of the separation of powers doctrine in the Nevada Constitution.

The faculty alliance's brief said the court should avoid "establishing the bright line rule urged by the attorney general." Instead the attorneys said the court "should adopt a case-by-case analysis to determine whether an individual exercises the requisite power to be deemed a 'public officer' and therefore be excluded from serving in the Nevada Legislature."

They said it "is undisputed that an individual who is a 'public officer' of the executive branch of government cannot serve in the Legislature." But a public officer is distinguishable from an employee because he or she is able to perform "sovereign functions of government."

The court has not indicated whether it will call for oral arguments in the case.

Five legislators work for the state or university system: Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas who is employed at UNLV; Assembly members Chris Giunchigliani and Mark Manendo, Las Vegas Democrats who are employed at the Community College of Southern Nevada; Assemblyman Jason Geddes, R-Reno, who works at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Assemblyman Ron Knecht, R-Carson City who is employed by the state Public Utilities Commission.