Minnesota Court of Appeals: Fay v. Dept. of Employment & Economic Development
(N.W.2d) (Minn. Ct. App. 2015)
Defining “Good Cause” for Failing to Participate in Reemployment Assistance
Patrick Fay was determined to be eligible for unemployment benefits, but as a requirement to receiving benefits he was to attend a reemployment assistance services appointment. As way of background, in Minnesota, reemployment programs are available to those who require training to be able to become “employable” again. If one is enrolled in a reemployment training program they do not have to accept full time employment and can continue to receive unemployment benefits.
Fay was mailed a notice regarding this reemployment assistance appointment and the notice also included this warning: “failure to attend will result in a delay or denial of your unemployment benefits.” Fay missed the meeting. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (“DEED”) determined that Fay was ineligible for unemployment benefits during the week he missed the meeting. Fay appealed and during a hearing testified that he “put [the meeting] in [his] schedule and…simply missed it.” Fay provided no other facts as to why he missed the meeting. He did, however, attend a subsequent meeting. The unemployment law judge found Fay did not have “good cause” to miss the meeting. Fay appealed to the Court of Appeals pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 268.105, subd. 7(a)(2014).
Fay’s main argument to the Court of Appeals was that he should be eligible for benefits because he was “distracted by other priorities and forgot about the meeting.” In response, DEED argued that good cause must be shown for missing a meeting as stated in Minn. Stat. § 268.085, subd. 1(7). At the time of Fay’s appeal, Section 268.085, subd. 1(7) stated,
An applicant may be eligible to receive unemployment benefits for any week if…the applicant has been participating in reemployment assistance services, such as job search and resume writing classes, if the applicant has been determined in need of reemployment assistance services by the commissioner, unless the applicant has good cause for failing to participate.
(Emphasis added). Unfortunately, the statute as it then existed did not define what is considered “good cause,” which is why this was a case of first impression and therefore a published Minnesota Court of Appeals decision. The legislature has since amended Minn. Stat. § 268.085, subd. 1(7) to write the standard directly into the clause. The statute now provides that an applicant may be eligible for benefits if the applicant has been participating in reemployment assistance services, such as development of, and adherence to, a work search plan, if the applicant has been directed to participate by the commissioner; the clause does not apply if the applicant has good cause for failing to participate, and “good cause” is defined in the clause itself as a reason that would have prevented a reasonable person acting with due diligence from participating. The codified definition reflects the same standard the Court of Appeals adopted in Fay, discussed below, so the in pari materia analysis Fay performed is no longer necessary to reach the definition, though Fay remains good law on how the standard applies.
First, the court found that the statute was ambiguous because what constitutes “good cause” is subject to more than one reasonable interpretation. The examples cited of what “good cause” could mean were “medical emergency, family emergency, or vehicle malfunction.” Finding that the statute was ambiguous, the court then invokes the doctrine of in pari material, which is “a tool of statutory interpretation that allows two statutes with common purposes and subject matter to be construed together to determine the meaning of ambiguous statutory language.”
Using this doctrine, the court turns to the definition of “good cause” in Minn. Stat. § 268.105 (2014), which is “a reason that would have prevented a reasonable person acting with due diligence from participating in the hearing.” The court noted that the shared purpose of the two statutes was the adequate requiring of an applicant to show good cause for missing a required hearing/meeting. The court looks to other times when “good cause” is defined in Chapter 268, however, it dismisses those definitions since the statute sections in which the definition appears do not share the “common purpose” that § 268.105 and § 268.085 share.
In sum, the court adopted the definition of “good cause” found in § 268.105 and under that definition affirmed the unemployment law judge’s ruling that Fay’s reasoning for missing the meeting did not amount to “good cause.”
