upholding statutory prohibition on smoking in the workplace because it did not burden any entity’s ability to engage in business and therefore no “privilege” was involved
How later courts described this case
- upholding statutory prohibition on smoking in the workplace because it did not burden any entity’s ability to engage in business and therefore no “privilege” was involved
- determining smoking inside a place of employment is not a fundamental right of state citizenship, and the legislature may thus enact regulatory laws that in effect benefit certain businesses over others
- “Standing requirements tend to overlap the requirements for justiciability under the UDJA.”
- the goal is to avoid interpreting statutes to create conflicts between different provisions so that we achieve a harmonious statutory scheme
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Madsen, J.
¶72 (concurring) — I agree with the majority opinion and write separately only because I do not want the obvious to be lost: RCW 70.160.030 prohibits smoking “in a public place or in any place of employment.” (Emphasis added.) The dissenters say that “private facilities” are excluded from the law, regardless of whether people are employed within the facility. If they are correct, then, as the majority points out, an office building that is not open to the public, i.e., a “private facility,” will be excluded from the ban, despite the fact that the building may house hundreds of employees. This defies the “common sense,” which the dissenters so liberally call upon, as well as the plain reading of the statute. “Our job,” is not, as Justice Johnson says, “to apply the law as the average informed voter understood the exemption in RCW 70.160.020(2)” — “our job” is to apply the law as it is written, respecting the right of the people to speak through the initiative process, regardless of our personal preferences. Dissent (J.M. Johnson, J.) at 640.