Opinion ID: 2548863
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Senate District Requirement

Text: ¶ 38 A person seeking to place an initiative on the ballot for a vote of the people must obtain legal signatures equal to 10% of the cumulative total of all votes cast for all candidates for governor at the last regular general election at which a governor was elected, both on a statewide level and in each of at least twenty-six of Utah's twenty-nine senate districts. Utah Code Ann. § 20A-7-201(2)(a) (2003). Safe Havens does not contest the statewide 10 percent requirement, but challenges only the requirement that it must meet the 10 percent threshold in at least twenty-six senate districts. ¶ 39 Safe Havens argues that the Senate District Requirement unduly burdens the right to initiative because the requirement makes it harder to pass law by initiative than it is to pass law by legislation. Safe Havens complains that because it takes only fifteen senators to pass legislation, but an initiative sponsor must meet the 10 percent threshold in twenty-six of twenty-nine senate districts, the Senate District Requirement does not honor the principle that [t]he power of the legislature and the power of the people to legislate through initiative and referenda are coequal, coextensive, and concurrent and share equal dignity. Gallivan, 2002 UT 89 at ¶ 23, 54 P.3d 1069 (internal quotations omitted). In addition, Safe Havens contends that the legislative record indicates that this provision was passed merely to ensure that any issue that qualifies for the ballot has support in areas of Utah outside the Wasatch Front and that, according to Gallivan, [c]ountering the possibility of localized legislation is not a legitimate legislative purpose. Id. at ¶ 57. Safe Havens reasons that this requirement, like the one struck down in Gallivan, gives the minority control of the initiative power and is likewise unconstitutional. Id. at ¶ 61. ¶ 40 In its brief, the State explains the legislative purposes underlying the Senate District Requirement as follows: [The legislature] sought to exercise its constitutional authority to set forth the numbers of signatures for an initiative to get on to the ballot, to do so in a manner that ensured that there was a modicum of support before the matter would appear on the ballot, and, since it is a statewide issue, to ensure that that support was throughout the statewide population, and finally to do so in a manner that was non-discriminatory and constitutional. These purposes have support in the text of the legislative debates regarding the passage of S.B. 28. ¶ 41 The Senate District Requirement does not run afoul of Gallivan, where the challenged legislative enactment actually worked to counter localized legislation by giving disproportionate weight to rural votes as compared to urban votes. See id. at ¶ 45. Because the multi-county signature requirement addressed in Gallivan was based on geographically-drawn counties, rather than on numerical population, it discriminated against urban voters by diluting the voting power of the four urban counties, where more than three-fourths of Utah's population resides, in favor of the twenty-five rural counties containing less than one-fourth of the statewide population. Id. at ¶¶ 45-46, 49. Therefore, we found the provision to be unconstitutional because it created a discriminatory classification that could not withstand heightened scrutiny. Id. at ¶¶ 46-64. ¶ 42 The Senate District Requirement does not prompt the same constitutional concerns that we addressed in Gallivan. By basing the signature requirement on evenly divided, population-based senate districts, the legislature has not created a discriminatory classification or caused a disparate impact among classes or subclasses. Thus, whereas in Gallivan the legislature intended that the rural minority would act as a check and a balance on the urban majority, the Senate District Requirement does not assign disproportionate power to any particular group of voters. Rather, it ensures that there is support for a particular initiative spread, more or less, evenly throughout the state. We hold this to be a legitimate legislative purpose. ¶ 43 Further, the principle that [t]he power of the legislature and the power of the people to legislate through initiative and referenda are coequal, coextensive, and concurrent and share equal dignity, id. at ¶ 23 (internal quotation omitted), is not offended by the requirement that an initiative sponsor meet the 10 percent threshold in at least twenty-six senate districts. Affording equal dignity to the power of the people and of the legislature to initiate legislation does not necessarily mean that the same procedures will be followed in each instance. Rather, the right of the people to initiate legislation is afforded due consideration as long as the procedures enacted to enable the right are reasonable and reasonably tend to further a legitimate legislative purpose. We conclude that the Senate District Requirement does not unduly burden the initiative right, but is a reasonable means of achieving the legitimate legislative purpose of ensuring a modicum of support for an initiative throughout the statewide population.