Opinion ID: 3181538
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Is the legislation a permissible special law?

Text: ¶31The third prong of the Reynolds inquiry requires this Court to determine if the special legislation is reasonably and substantially related to a valid legislative objective. Reynolds , 1988 OK 88, ¶ 16, 760 P.2d at 822. In Reynolds , the Court scrutinized each of the legislation's aims with the classification to determine if there was a degree of correlation between them. Id. ¶ 23, 760 P.2d at 825. The legislation at issue was a three-year limitation on the amount of recoverable damages in a medical malpractice action even though a claim's existence was not discoverable during the three years. Id. ¶ 1, 760 P.2d at 818. One aim the Legislature put forth was to control the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Id. ¶ 22, 760 P.2d at 825. The Court rejected any correlation between the legislative aim and the class as no documented legislative findings existed to show that the class, actionable medical malpractice cases not discovered until after three years, created an excessively high incidence of losses that it calls for special statutory treatment. Id. ¶32 Here, the Legislative objectives advanced by the State are two fold: 1) to protect women from dangerous off-label use of abortion inducing drugs; and 2) to require physicians to follow the Mifeprex FPL regime. H.B. 2684, ch. 121, 2014 Okla. Sess. Laws 376, § 1-729a(A)(15). These objectives must be reasonably and substantially related to H.B. 2684's underinclusive class, Mifeprex, misoprostol, and methotrexate when used as abortion-inducing drugs. For the first objective, the Legislature has taken great pains to incorporate 16 legislative findings documenting the danger off-label use of these medications have for women when used as abortion-inducing drugs. The documented cases of death and injury are not disputed by the Plaintiffs, but we must acknowledge the Plaintiffs' evidence which identifies the dangers of pregnancy and wide-variety of much more dangerous practices not regulated by the statute. However, it is not the place of this Court to question legislative wisdom. EOG Res. Mktg., Inc. v. Okla. State Bd. of Equalization , 2008 OK 95, ¶ 20, 196 P.3d 511, 521 (It is not the role of this Court to question the desirability, wisdom, or logic of a valid statutory classification.). ¶33 Here, the State's evidence shows that the class restricted by H.B. 2684 is reasonably and substantially connected to protecting women, and so too to for the State's second objective, to require physicians to follow the Mifeprex FPL. Because the evidence is mixed, we must defer to the Legislature, when examining the evidence under Oklahoma's special law provision, and the Legislature's function as a policy-making body when it has support for its acts. While H.B. 2684 is a special law, it is a permissible special law as the legislative aims are reasonably and substantially related to the class H.B. 2684 seeks to protect.