Thayer v. Washington County School District, 2012 UT 31 (May 25, 2012)
This opinion is notable for the majority’s reliance on a relatively obscure canon of statutory construction, noscitur a sociis, to support its conclusion that informal authorization by school officials to bring a gun to school for a dramatic production was not the kind of authorization contemplated by the “Licensing Exception” to the statutory waiver of governmental immunity contained in UTAH CODE § 63G-7-201(1). Under the “Licensing
Exception,” the school district retained immunity if the injury at issue “ar[ose] out of, in connection with, or result[ed] from … the issuance, denial, suspension, or revocation of … any permit, license, certificate, approval, order, or similar authorization.” Quoting United States v.
Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 294 (2008), and citing Salt Lake City v. Salt Lake Cnty., 568 P.2d 738, 741
(Utah 1977), in support of its use of noscitur a sociis, the majority pointed out that “a word is given more precise content by the neighboring words with which it is associated;” and that “the terms surrounding ‘approval’ and ‘authorization’ have a common feature from which we may extrapolate meaning.” ¶ 15. The surrounding words, said the Court, “describe formal, official action,” and on that basis “we conclude that the term “approval” shares the same attribute”. ¶
16. Thus, the Court reasoned, the legislature required formal, official “authorization”— meaning ‘to give legal authority; to empower” … and “the school district has failed to identify any enactments .. [empowering it] to issue formal, official authorizations in that arena [ie., to allow guns in school].” Justice Lee dissented.