voted to amend the constitution passing by more than seventy percent of vote both times imposing a two thirds vote requirement on their state legislature whenever it sought to raise taxes last february governor goodwin proposed nearly one billion dollars in new taxes by may it was pretty clear that there was not two thirds of pork for such a massive tax increase according to the state financial officer the state had roughly four billion dollars in revenues that it could proportion increase it past first a general appropriation bill of nearly three point three billion dollars a whopping thirty five percent larger than the prior budget more than double the rate of population growth and inflation gro combined and they did this on the very last day of the session that left roughly seven hundred million dollars remaining for the entire education budget of the state and predictions were that that was going to be in the neighborhood of one point six billion dollars  then they closed action and they are statutes are constitutionally limited to one hundred twenty day legislative session and then went out of session without funding a single guy named for education the governor then called them back into special session but by perfectly within his power to open up the special session to consider the entirety of the budget rather than accepting a thirty five percent increase and then say hey we don't have enough money left to fund education i think that's a ruse he said several times the legislature one of the claims we had which was the due process for raising taxes without complying this was on behalf of the property owners that the anticipatory claim that you raise taxes without due process of law never ripened because none of these votes ever ever ever gave rise to that harm but there are other harms to the d c circuit in mitchell versus anderson recognize there's a harm both for the legislators and for their constituents when the vote itself was altered when they changed the dynamic when they changed the number of votes necessary to pass a bill and they didn't take the next inquiry and whether you know the bill actually ended up getting signed and becoming law the fact that illusion that occurred at the vote itself was sufficient to raise the constitutional hard the legislative dynamic the testimony by sen maher by sam lehman marvel that he felt pressured in order to avoid the constitutional crisis to cast a vote he would not otherwise cast the harm that the d c circuit talked about in mitchell is precisely that harm the altering of the legislative dynamic that occurs with a vote dilution so you know i think it's it's minor but i'm not willing to give it up entirely because i think that goes to the issue both of what happened already and what's likely to happen starting next year on  haven't gotten that here that's right right but you never did get anything under the bad system you cannot get a majority vote in both houses in contravention of this constitution we had a two thirds vote in the senate we had a simple majority was within that paradox well i'm not i'm not so sure that it doesn't you know the hammer was a t r o issued by the district court and stayed there for a week to hammer was the public opposition to what they were doing that you know it was lifted in the first thing the assembly did was pass out another bil actually to the legislature acting in the twenty a special session but the ruling in that case is that any time there's a conflict with your ability to fund education and the need to raise taxes the two thirds tax provision has to give way that holding i know there have been a few instances where the federal courts including the u s supreme court have refused to accept state court interpretation of state law i cite bush versus gore in my brief another one that's also relevant although older it goes back to things by the state courts right and i think the same i don't see that here but i think the same holds true here i mean if you cannot go through the litany of what transpired here and i think there's bad faith from number of the players the decision to zero fund vote and to diminish the weight of that vote is to violate federal federally guaranteed voting rights it is also and bring it up here it is also the violate their most basic precept of the republican guarantee of government now you know justice o'connor that of this structural constitution that's exactly what went on here they took they took a very clear mandate of the people you don't raise taxes without a two thirds vote and they said they think educational funding provision is just  education that was enacted eight hundred eighty nine prevails over this most recently enacted structural requirement as an impediment to the state legislature you know to to end run the will of the people that way with impact of a duly enacted constitutional provision they didn't just interpret it as an emergency exception and they didn't just find it unconstitutional under some federal  constitutional provision even though they say it's still on the books i don't know what it means if it can't be enforced in precisely the instance when it was designed to be enforced when the auctioneer's we've got too much that we want to stand for what the existing revenues are state of nevada and defendant charles should know executive director of the department of taxation of the state of nevada initially i just want to say in light of what's gone on immediately before ok in the words of a movie i just i recently saw was a little man said one of the characters who was called to work on his days off and every time something happened he was a he was a convenience store clerk every time something bad happened he said we're not even supposed to be here members of the court we're not even supposed to be here this case is in the open on july twenty first two thousand just means that's correct and that would be the best way to address that claim was addressed in codependents brief with regard to rightness and the court said the assembly passing s b six in this case never affected anyone no one paid anything it had no legal effect any kind of damages even if to obtain nominal damages something would have had been passed you know suspect and then perhaps stopped so that there was a wrong here there was no rains case analogy or the rains case test was you have to have enough people to have passed the law or resisted the law and the law had to actually pass and that same analogy applies to every one of their a way that we think is unconstitutional for right or wrong and seek injunctive relief at the time the assembly acted without basics i think i've got the drift of this argument but there's one thing that gets them to sort of having trouble with to have a legally kaga cognitive cognisable wrong at least and this doesn't get to that point there's no legally cognizable wrong that could cause damages but didn't and and in which case normal damages would be your i've already told you don't get to that point because as not you know never passed that's correct the law s b six never affected anyone the hypothetical that you're talking about were nominal damages might be a differently i suppose but i thought that well that's an understatement i thought one what a piece of paper got a name on it instead of senate bill or simply bill that it doesn't get to the other go further we don't even think the future effect of the judgement is in question by virtue of the supreme court's decision on rehearing it to put supreme court said  applied only in the twenty s so and if taxes were to be raised in the future that would be subject to review at clear does anyone know what my time  final arbiter of the laws of the state of nevada until it overturned and that is binding on federal courts as well thank you ok thank you defining as you wished are you from there was much going to work best for you to express my thanks to stanford law school for opening up its facilities here and allowing the the arguments to be held fun of bright bright very bright future lawyers here assembly and passed by a simple majority vote voluntary sessions of session arguing and judge fletcher doesn't apply in this case there was one no one constitutional or illegal conduct at the time and even after the case was dismissed s b five was passed by simple majority vote thus this this conduct wasn't stopped because of the instant litigation it went on in spite of it but fundamental to this case judge is the is the interplay the respect that the federal courts must have for the interpretation of the nevada constitution by the highest co and indeed as the legislature we could do nothing but follow the constitution as interpreted by our state's highest court in fact if we were to follow appellants arguments we would live in some by some measure would have been forced to ignore a specific supreme court interpretation of the nevada constitution directed at the legislature to conduct its business pursuant to the state's constitution and we had no other alternative but to follow this to state supreme court in this regard there was i have to make one comment your honor the charge that the governor of the state of nevada acted in bad things or if there's some would reject it outright nothing further for the score thank you very much questions ok and you think some time back to the nominal damages claim we certainly raised one let me give a hypothetical law professors like to do that what if instead of just ruling by majority vote  passed they have barred a certain proportion of the legislators from voting at all and as we five in s b six never make it all the way to the statute books there's no tax imposed down the road my taxpayer business is plain just don't have any claim because that never ripened but there is anything at all that comes out of the other right and there's no sausage there that i'm having a hard time seeing the injury well we describe the process the both of these bills were first introduced in the senate they passed by two thirds vote in the senate and they were enact taxes for the state of nevada justice o'connor tells us those things may well raise a republican guarantee clause claim the people here are asking that this special court step in as a structural referee that's before circus language and the structural referee to protect the people in there are structural decisions against the officers of the state government that would undermine those structural decisions of the people whether we call it republican guarantee clause or we call it vote dilution claims those are all federal rights general questions about oral argument and various things if you want to ask questions that you fear might be treading a little bit like an improper question don't worry we can take care of ourselves and not answer the question