Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-15-03400/USCOURTS-ca8-15-03400-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 15-3400

___________________________

Mike MacMann; Betty Wilson

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiffs - Appellants

v.

Mike Matthes; City of Columbia, Missouri

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendants - Appellees

Opus Development Company, L.L.C.; HSRE ODC II MIZZOU, LLC

lllllllllllllllllllllIntervenors

____________

Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Western District of Missouri - Jefferson City

____________

 Submitted: September 21, 2016

 Filed: December 9, 2016

____________

Before WOLLMAN, ARNOLD, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

____________

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Mike MacMann and Betty Wilson (collectively, the residents) sued the City of

Columbia, Missouri, and City Manager Mike Matthes (collectively, the City),

Appellate Case: 15-3400 Page: 1 Date Filed: 12/09/2016 Entry ID: 4477931 
alleging that the City violated their rights under the Columbia City Charter, the

Missouri Constitution, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S.

Constitution by interfering with their participation in a municipalreferendumprocess

to repeal two ordinances passed by the City Council in connection with a studenthousing development project proposed by Opus Development Company. The district

court rejected the residents’ arguments and granted summary judgment to the City. 1 2

The residents appeal, and we affirm.

On March 19, 2014, the City Council approved an ordinance authorizing the

City Manager to enter into a development agreement with Opus to construct a

student-housing project in downtownColumbia (Ordinance A). The agreement noted

that existing public-utility infrastructure was inadequate to serve the Opus project as

proposed; that Opus would contribute $450,000 for infrastructure improvements in

the area; and that the City would approve construction of the project, assuming “all

requisite permits have been issued by the City.” Within a week after the development

agreement was signed, opponents of the project, including the residents, initiated the

referendum process under the City Charter and began to obtain signatures on a

referendum petition to repeal Ordinance A (Referendum A). On March 31, while the

ReferendumA process was ongoing, the City Manager signed the Opus development

agreement authorized by Ordinance A. As required under the City Charter,

The Honorable Nanette K. Laughrey, United States District Judge for the

1

Western District of Missouri. 

The district court granted Opus Development Company, LLC, the project

2

developer, and HSRE ODC II MIZZOU, LLC, the owner of the subject real property,

permission to intervene for the limited purpose of opposing the residents’ request to

extend a temporary restraining order (TRO) entered by a state-court judge before the

City removed the case to federal court. The district court treated the residents’

request to extend the TRO as a motion for a preliminary injunction, denied the

motion, and thereby dissolved the TRO. 

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Referendum A was submitted to the City Clerk on April 8 for certification that the

required number of valid signatures had been obtained in support of the referendum.

On May 19, after Referendum A had been filed with the City Clerk, but before

it had been certified, the City Council approved Ordinance B, which the district court

found “was in all material ways the same as Ordinance A, the subject of the ongoing

referendum process,” except that Ordinance B contained a contingency, which stated

that if no referendum petition was filed to repeal Ordinance B, then Ordinance A

would be automatically repealed. When Ordinance B was approved by the City

Council, Ordinance A was still in effect. Opponents of the Opus project, including

the residents, immediately began gathering signatures on a second referendum

petition to repeal Ordinance B (Referendum B). 

The City Clerk certified the signatures on Referendum A on May 29. Pursuant

to the City Charter, “further action []under” Ordinance A was “suspended” after

certification of Referendum A. The Charter required the City Council to reconsider

Ordinance A within thirty days and determine whether it should be repealed. Only

if the City Council declined to repeal Ordinance A after reconsideration was the

Council required under the Charter to submit the matter to City voters for a

determination whether to repeal Ordinance A. On June 16, within the designated

thirty-day period, the City Council reconsidered and repealed Ordinance A. At that

time, Ordinance B was in effect, although Referendum B had been submitted to the

City Clerk on June 9 for certification. 

On July 7, while certification of the ReferendumB signatures wasstill pending

with the City Clerk, the City Council adopted a resolution authorizing temporary

sidewalk and parking-lane closures around the Opus development site. TheCity also 3

Unlike ordinances, neither resolutions adopted bytheCityCouncil nor permits

3

issued by the City administrative departments are subject to the citizen-referendum

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began to issue permits for the Opus project under its administrative authority,

including land-disturbance, demolition, footings-and-foundation, and building

permits. According to the City, the various municipal departments issued these

permits because updated building specifics submitted by Opus and infrastructureimprovement plans devised by the City established that the affected infrastructure

could now accommodate the Opus project. 

In the meantime, the City Clerk certified the signatures on Referendum B on

July 31. As it did with Ordinance A, the City Council reconsidered Ordinance B and

on August 18, repealed the ordinance without submitting the matter to City voters. 

The City never signed the development agreement with Opus that had been

authorized by Ordinance B. 

On August 12, the residents filed suit in Missouri state court, alleging that the

City had engaged in a “plan and scheme to deny [the residents] their rights under the

City Charter and [had] thus violated their rights to free speech, to petition the

government, all as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” They

contended that once they initiated the referendum process under the City Charter to

challenge Ordinance A, the City could not constitutionally interfere with that ongoing

process, either by introducing Ordinance B—an ordinance that was materially

identical to the ordinance they were seeking to repeal—or by authorizing permits for

the Opus development project—the subject of the ongoing referendum process. The

residents also argued that Ordinance B was an unconstitutional effort by the City

Council to coerce the residents into giving up their right to participate in the

referendum process by conditioning the repeal of Ordinance A on the residents’

capitulation to the adoption of Ordinance B. The City removed the case to federal

provisions set forth in the City Charter. 

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court on August 21, asserting federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331,

and the residents did not seek to remand the case to state court. 

4

The district court eventually granted the City’s motion for summary judgment. 

It concluded that the residents’ rights to participate in the referendum process were

not unlimited but were defined and circumscribed by the City Charter, that the City

complied with all the provisions set forth in the City Charter, that the residents

received all the process they were due under Missouri law and the City Charter, that

the residents had not identified a First Amendment violation, and that the challenged

contingency set forth in Ordinance B was not an unconstitutional condition because

it did not extract a quid pro quo for citizen participation in the referendum process. 

The residents challenge each of these conclusions on appeal.

5

“We review the grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing the evidence in

the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and drawing all justifiable

inferences” in that party’s favor. Putman v. Unity Health Sys., 348 F.3d 732, 733 (8th

Cir. 2003). Summary judgment is proper “if the pleadings, depositions, answers to

interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that

there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled

In September 2014, after this case was removed, the residents filed a separate

4

action in state court, seeking a declaration that the City’s issuance of permits for the

Opus development project was arbitrary and capricious because the referendum

process was ongoing and because the relevant utility infrastructure was insufficient. 

After the state-court judge dismissed some of the residents’ claims, they voluntarily

dismissed their remaining claims.

The City argues that the residentslack standing because they have not alleged

5

a particularized injury in fact or that any such injury could be redressed by the court. 

We disagree, because the residents have twice initiated and participated in the

municipal referendum process and have asserted claims for relief that could be

redressed by this court. 

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to a judgment as a matter of law.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986)

(quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)). 

The residents first argue that the City’s interference with their right to

participate in the referendum process violated both the City Charter itself and the

Missouri Constitution. They argue that the municipal referendum rights set forth in

the Charter must be considered in light of the rights conferred upon Missouri

residents under the state constitution. We agree that the City Charter must be

consistent with the Missouri Constitution and state law, State ex rel. Petti v.

Goodwin-Raftery, 190 S.W.3d 501, 505 (Mo. Ct. App. 2006), but the residents do not

argue that the Charter itself is inconsistent with the Missouri Constitution or state

law. Rather, they argue that under the Missouri Constitution, their Charter-granted

referendumrights are entitled to “expansive treatment” and are “not limited,” and that

the district court improperly circumscribed the scope of those rights. We disagree. 

It istrue that the Missouri Constitution confers upon Missouri citizens the right

to challenge by referendum laws enacted by the state legislature. See Mo. Const. art.

III § 49 (stating that “[t]he people reserve power to propose and enact . . . laws and

amendments to the constitution by the initiative, independent of the general

assembly”). But the Missouri Constitution also providesthat, for a city with a charter

form of government, the city charter confers the right, if any, to challenge by

referendum laws enacted by a city council. Id. art. VI § 19(a) (noting that a city with

a charter form of government “shall have all powers” that the Missouri general

assembly “has authority to confer . . . , provided such powers are consistent with the

constitution of this state and are not limited or denied either by the charter . . . or by

statute”). Municipal charters are adopted by a vote of the citizens of a municipality,

id., and thus, “[t]he authority granted to municipalities by the Missouri Constitution

to adopt and amend a charter reflects a city’s ‘broad authority to tailor a form of

government that its citizens believe will best serve their interest[s],’” Petti, 190

S.W.3d at 505 (quoting City of Springfield v. Goff, 918 S.W.2d 786, 789 (Mo.

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1996)). The Missouri courts have recognized that when a city is governed by a

charter, the charter defines and limits city residents’ rights to challenge by referendum

municipal ordinances adopted by the city. See State ex rel. Chastain v. City of

Kansas City, Mo., 289 S.W.3d 759, 764 (Mo. Ct. App. 2009) (“Municipal charters are

a charter city’s organic law, its constitution.”); see also Petti, 190 S.W.3d at 505

(noting that although the Missouri Constitution “sets forth the power reserved to the

people of Missouri to . . . approve or reject by referendum acts of the general

assembly, the powersreserved to the people of [the city of] Florissant with respect to

use of the initiative and referendum processes are defined and limited by the city

charter”); Murray v. City of St. Louis, 947 S.W.2d 74, 80 (Mo. Ct. App. 1997)

(“[T]he power of referendum reserved to the people of the City with respect to

ordinances is that which is contained in the City Charter. It is not subject to or

restricted by the state constitutional power of referendum which applies to state

statutes.”). 

In State ex rel. Powers v. Donohue, the county residents argued that the

Missouri Constitution created an initiative right to submit county zoning ordinances

to a vote of the people and that the denial of such right would “deprive them of any

political-action remedy against outright confiscation.” 368 S.W.2d 432, 437 (Mo.

1963). The Missouri Supreme Court rejected the argument, noting first that the

Missouri Constitution conferred upon state residentsthe power “to propose and enact

or reject laws and amendments to the constitution by initiative and to approve or

reject by referendum acts of the general assembly.” Id. at 434. The Court then

distinguished these rights from the initiative rights granted to the county residents to

challenge county ordinances, concluding that “[t]he powersreserved to the people of

[the county] with respect to use of the initiative and referendum are defined and

limited by [the county] charter.” Id.; see also State ex rel. Harry L. Hussman

Refrigerator & Supply Co. v. City of St. Louis, 5 S.W.2d 1080, 1087 (Mo. 1928)

(holding that the Missouri Constitution reservesthe power of referendumonly to acts

of the state legislative assembly and not to acts of a municipality). Because the

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county charter did not permitresidentsto propose by initiative petition an amendment

to a zoning ordinance, the court rejected the argument. Id. at 438-39. This reasoning

was followed more recently by the Missouri Court of Appeals in Petti, which

involved the city council’s approval of a zoning ordinance to allow a shopping-center

development project, followed by the citizens’ initiation of a referendum process to

have the ordinance repealed. 190 S.W.3d at 504-05. The city clerk rejected the

referendum petition because the city charter excluded zoning ordinances from the

referendum process. Citing Powers, the court noted that the rights reserved to city

residents to challenge municipal ordinances by initiative and referendum processes

are not granted by the Missouri Constitution, but by the city charter, which excluded

zoning ordinances from the referendum process. Because the exclusion was not

unlawful, the city clerk could not be compelled to accept and process the referendum. 

Id. at 505-06. 

As they did before the district court, the residentssuggest that Powers and Petti

are inapposite because they involved zoning ordinances. They point instead to the

Missouri Supreme Court’s decision in Earth Island Institute v. Union Electric Co.,

456 S.W.3d 27 (Mo. 2015), in which the court considered whether the Missouri state

legislature could enact a statute effectively preempting a statute proposed by an

initiative petition that had been approved for, but not yet submitted to, a vote of the

people. Id. at 29-30. The court held that if the legislature’s statute were “permitted

to preemptively modify the initiative . . . , it would allow the legislature to undercut

or undo a law initiated by the people before it could ever be voted on,” effectively

negating in advance the will of the people. Id. at 34; see also State ex rel. Drain v.

Becker, 240 S.W. 229, 232 (Mo. 1922) (noting that once a statute is adopted by

initiative or referendum, the legislature is free to amend or repeal it as it would any

other statute, but it may not preempt the effect of a later-adopted referendum or

initiative while it isstill pending before the voters by enacting legislation inconsistent

with the measure during that interim period). 

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Earth Island is of no aid to the residents, however, because it specifically

addresses referendumrights granted to Missouri citizens by the Missouri Constitution

with respect to laws enacted by the state legislature, and does not analyze referendum

rights granted to city residents by a city charter with respect to municipal ordinances

enacted by a city council. Although Powers and Petti involved zoning ordinances,

the underlying reasoning of those cases, along with Goff, Chastain, and Murray is

persuasive since each of those cases involved action under a city or county charter. 

We thus conclude that the district court properly analyzed the residents’ referendum

rights asthey are defined under the City Charter. See Chastain, 289 S.W.3d at 764-65

(“While . . . the Missouri Constitution sets forth the power reserved to the people of

Missouri to propose and enact state laws by initiative, the powers reserved to a

municipality with respect to enacting municipal ordinances by initiative are defined

and limited by the charter.”); see also Murray, 947 S.W.2d at 78 (“Voters of a

municipality have no inherent right to referendumon municipal legislation; they have

only such right to referendum as conferred by statute or charter.”). 

We turn then to the referendum rights granted to the residents under the City

Charter and whether the City violated those rights. The residents argue that once the

referendum process had been initiated in response to Ordinance A, the City Council

was prohibited by the City Charter from taking any further action with respect to the

subject matter ofthat ordinance, i.e., the Opus development project. TheCity Charter

grants voters the “power to approve or reject at the polls any ordinance passed by the

council, . . . such power being known as the referendum.” It further states:

When a referendum petition has been certified as sufficient, the

ordinance specified in the petition shall not become effective, or, if it

shall have gone into effect, further action thereunder shall be suspended

until the ordinance referred has been approved by the voters as

hereinafter provided. The council shall proceed forthwith to reconsider

the referred ordinance, and its final vote upon such reconsideration shall

be taken within thirty (30) days after certification and shall be upon the

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question: “Shall the ordinance specified in the referendum petition be

repealed?”

If the council shall fail to repeal an ordinance specified in any

referendum petition, such repeal ordinance shall be submitted without

alteration to the voters of the city at the next election . . . .

These sections establish and restrict the residents’ referendum rights—as well as the

alternatives available to the City Council in responding to a certified referendum

petition. The Charter requires suspension of “further action []under” an ordinance

subject to a referendum petition only after the referendum petition has been certified

by the City Clerk. When the City Council adopted Ordinance B, Referendum A had

not yet been certified, and the City Charter did not require that further action under

Ordinance A be suspended until Referendum A had been certified. Thus, to the

extent that Ordinance B could be considered “further action []under” Ordinance A,

the City Council did not violate the City Charter or interfere with the residents’

referendum rights thereunder by adopting Ordinance B. Once Referendum A was

certified, the City Council was authorized to, and did in fact, repeal Ordinance A

rather than submitting it to a vote of the people. And once Referendum B was

certified, the City Council also reconsidered and repealed Ordinance B. In other

words, the residents exercised the referendumrights they were granted under the City

Charter, and they achieved the results they sought by initiating the process:

Ordinance A and Ordinance B were both repealed. The City did not violate the

residents’ rights by enacting Ordinance B while Referendum A was pending. 

The residents also argue that the City interfered with their referendum rights

by issuing construction-related permits for the Opus project while the referendum

process was ongoing. This argument fails, however, because the City Charter does

not grant the residents any right to challenge the issuance of permits by City

administrative departments. Indeed, as noted by the district court, “[t]here is nothing

in the City Charter that permits a referendum to repeal a building permit granted by

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the City.” The City Charter grants voters the power to approve or reject by

referendum “any ordinance passed by the council,” and permits, including the

construction-related permits that the residents seek to challenge here, are not issued

by ordinance. Moreover, although the City Charter dictates that “further action

[]under” a referred ordinance must be suspended once a referendum petition is

certified, the issuance of permits for the Opus project was not “further action []under”

either Ordinance A or Ordinance B. Instead, the issuance of permits was a

“ministerial act” that the City was obligated to perform once Opus submitted valid

permit applications. A city official “may not legally refuse to perform” a ministerial

act that the “law directs the official to perform upon a given set of facts . . . if the

requirements of the governing city ordinances are met.” State ex rel. Kessler v. Shay,

820 S.W.2d 311, 314 (Mo. Ct. App. 1991). There is nothing in the record indicating

that the City issued permits for the Opus project for any reason other than as part of

its ministerial duties once Opus submitted valid permit applications. The issuance

6

of permits for the Opus project did not violate the residents’ Charter-granted

referendum rights, and they have identified no independent right to challenge the

issuance of those permits. Accordingly, the district court did not err in granting

summary judgment to the City on the residents’ claims involving the issuance of the

Opus project permits. 

The residents also contend that the City’s interference with the referendum

process violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S.

Constitution. In Dobrovolny v. Moore, 126 F.3d 1111, 1112-13 (8th Cir. 1997), we

rejected similar First and Fourteenth Amendment challenges to the initiative process

authorized by the Nebraska Constitution, under which the requisite number of

As recognized by the district court, because residents of Columbia cannot

6

challenge by referendum the ministerial actions taken by the City or its various

administrative departments, including the issuance of construction-related permits,

the adequacy of the City’s downtown infrastructure to support the Opus project is

irrelevant to the residents’ claims. 

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signatures needed to place an initiative measure on the ballot could not be calculated

with certainty until the date on which the initiative petition was submitted to the

secretary of state for certification. With respect to the First Amendment claim, we

held that the reasoning in Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 420-22 (1988), in which the

Court invalidated on First Amendment grounds a Colorado statute criminalizing the

payment of initiative-petition circulators, did not control, because Nebraska’s

initiative process, unlike the Colorado process at issue in Meyer, did not interfere

with the message communicated by proponents in the initiative petition, did not

restrict proponents’ ability to circulate the petition, did not affect proponents’ ability

to communicate with other voters, and did not regulate the content of proponents’

speech. Dobrovolny, 126 F.3d at 1112-13. We determined that in the absence of

some showing that the challenged initiative process substantially restricted political

discourse, the Supreme Court’s holding in Meyer did not control. Id. 

In Missouri Roundtable for Life v. Carnahan, we relied on Dobrovolny to

conclude that a Missouri law requiring state officials to prepare summaries of

proposed ballot initiatives did not violate a political organization’s First Amendment

rights, because the law did not limit the number of circulators permitted to solicit

signatures on the initiative petition, nor did it restrict the circulators’ or the

organization’s speech, regulate how circulators gathered signatures on the initiative

petition, or prevent the organization frompreparing its own ballot-initiative summary.

676 F.3d 665, 675-77 (8th Cir. 2012); see also Initiative & Referendum Inst. v.

Walker, 450 F.3d 1082, 1101 (10th Cir. 2006) (rejecting a First Amendment

challenge by animal-advocacy groups to a Utah constitutional provision requiring a

supermajority for wildlife-related initiatives and noting that “[t]he First Amendment

ensures that all points of view may be heard; it does not ensure that all points of view

are equally likely to prevail”); Biddulph v. Mortham, 89 F.3d 1491, 1500 (11th Cir.

1996) (“Most restrictions a state might impose on its initiative process would not

implicate First Amendment concerns.”). 

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The residents have not shown any restriction on their ability to participate in

the referendum process or otherwise engage in political speech, nor have they shown

any burden on their ability to publicize their views. Neither the referendum process

itself nor the City’s conduct in responding to the referendumprocess interfered in any

way with the message the residents sought to communicate, restricted their ability to

circulate either referendumpetition,regulated the content oftheir speech, orinfringed

on their ability to communicate with other voters or the manner by which they could

so communicate. We thus affirm the district court’s conclusion that the residents

have not established a violation of their First Amendment rights. 

We also reject the residents’ claim that the City violated their rights under the

Fourteenth Amendment by depriving them of protected liberty and property interests

without due process of law. See Mo. Roundtable, 676 F.3d at 677. They assert that

they had “legitimate, protectable property and liberty interests in the referendum

petitions that they delivered to the City of Columbia” and that the City infringed upon

those rights. The existence of a “protected . . . interest is a condition precedent to the

government’s obligation to provide due process of law, and where no such interest

exists, there can be no due process violation.” Dobrovolny, 126 F.3d at 1113. In

Dobrovolny, the plaintiffs raised similar due-process arguments, contending that they

had a property interest in the initiative process in light of their investment of time,

money, and effort in that process and that they had a liberty interest in the initiative

process that encompassed the right to know in advance the specific number of

signatures needed for certification of an initiative petition. Id. We rejected these

arguments, concluding that “[c]learly, the right to a state initiative process is not

guaranteed by the U.S. constitution but is instead created by state law,” as were the

procedures surrounding the initiative process. Id. (noting that “[t]he state retains the

authority to interpret [the] scope and availability of any state-conferred right or

interest” and any “interest created by state law is by definition circumscribed by the

law creating it” (citations omitted)). We reasoned that if any right to the initiative

process itself or to a particular procedure thereunder existed, it was “dependent upon

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a finding that state law . . . created . . . an interest substantial enough to rise to the

level of a ‘legitimate claim of entitlement’ protected by the Due Process Clause.” Id.

(quoting Bd. of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577 (1972)). Just as the appellants

in Dobrovolny had no constitutionally protected right to place issues before the

Nebraska voters, the residents here have no constitutionally protected right in the

referendum process. Any opportunity to participate in the municipal referendum

process issubject to the proceduresset forth in the City Charter, “the [C]ity’s organic

law, its constitution.” Chastain, 289 S.W.3d at 764. 

Even assuming that those interests were guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,

the residents received all the process they were due. The City complied with the

provisions set forth in the Charter, including the requirement that the Council

reconsider the referred ordinances. The residents were able to successfully pursue the

referendum process to achieve their goals to repeal both Ordinance A and Ordinance

B. The district court thus did not err in granting summary judgment to the City on

this issue. 

Finally, the residents argue that Ordinance B included an unconstitutional

condition, i.e., a provision that conditioned a benefit—the repeal of Ordinance

A—upon the abandonment of constitutionally protected conduct—the initiation of

a referendum petition to repeal Ordinance B—in violation of the First Amendment. 

Section 3 of Ordinance B provided that “[i]n the event a referendum petition is not

filed” under the City Charter “requesting a repeal of this ordinance . . . , [Ordinance

A] shall be repealed in its entirety.” As previously discussed, there is no

constitutional right at stake in the referendum process, and thus conditioning the

repeal of Ordinance A on abstaining from the referendum process cannot be

unconstitutional. 

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 The City complied with all relevant provisions set forth in the City Charter. 

The residents fully engaged in the referendum process to repeal Ordinances A and B,

both of which were, in fact, repealed by the City Council. The residents’ participation

in the referendum process was thus successful and was not inhibited in any way by

the City. The judgment is affirmed. 

______________________________

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