Opinion ID: 2755001
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the people’s legislative power

Text: ¶9 Article VI, section 1 of the Utah Constitution vests “[t]he Legislative power of the State” in “the Legislature” and “the people.” Because our government is one of “distinct departments,” neither the Legislature nor the people, exercising legislative power through an initiative or referendum, may “exercise any functions appertaining to either of the” executive or judicial departments of government.7 In essence, the people’s legislative power is constrained to that which is legislative in nature. As a result, executive and administrative actions are not referable.8 ¶10 Some referenda are easy to sustain as legislative in nature because they challenge the actions of a strictly legislative body. For example, in Mouty v. Sandy City Recorder, we held that a referendum on an ordinance properly enacted by a city council in a municipality with a council-mayor form of government is “necessarily legislative” because that form of government specifies that the city council may exercise only the legislative power of the municipality.9 ¶11 Some municipalities, however, employ a form of government with commingled powers.10 Unlike the council-mayor form of government at issue in Mouty, these forms of government vest both executive and legislative powers in one body.11 With municipal powers thus commingled, as is the case here for Draper City,12 we must identify an exercise of municipal power as legislative before the people may seek to overturn it through a referendum. And unfortunately, it is not always possible to make this 7 UTAH CONST . art. V, § 1. 8 Carter v. Lehi City, 2012 UT 2, ¶ 17, 269 P.3d 141. 9 Mouty v. Sandy City Recorder, 2005 UT 41, ¶ 28, 122 P.3d 521. The council-mayor form of local government is set out in Utah Code sections 10-3b-201 to -205. 10 See UTAH CODE §§ 10-3b-301 to -303, -401 to -403. 11 Compare Id. § 10-3b-201 (vesting municipal powers in two “separate, independent, and equal branches”), with id. §§ 10-3b-301, -401 (vesting municipal powers in the council). 12 DRAPER CITY, UTAH , MUNICIPAL CODE §§ 2-1-010 to -030. 4 Cite as: 2014 UT 54 Opinion of the Court identification through application of bright-line rules. In Carter v. Lehi City, we articulated a general framework for determining whether an initiative or referendum is properly identified as an exercise of legislative power.13 ¶12 We recognized two key hallmarks of legislative power: general applicability and policy weighing.14 First, legislative power produces generally applicable laws—laws that “appl[y] to everyone within [a] geographical area . . . or to everyone within a category of persons engaged in a particular activity.”15 While a geographical area or category may be quite large, an action may apply to only a small geographical area or category and still be generally applicable. For example, we held in Carter that a ballot initiative setting a pay cap and residency requirement for only a handful of city employees was nevertheless legislative in nature.16 Similarly, in Mouty, we held that a zoning amendment that affected only a one-hundred-acre parcel of land was legislative.17 In these hard cases where governmental action affects only a small area or a few people, we have noted that general applicability can be evaluated temporally—by asking whether the action “governs all future cases falling under its provisions and not just specified individuals.”18 ¶13 The second hallmark of legislative decision-making is that it involves “weigh[ing] broad policy considerations, not the specific facts of individual cases.”19 In exercising legislative power, therefore, a legislative body must “consider[] the wide range of policy considerations of relevance to all who fall within the scope of a particular law.”20 ¶14 Additionally, because “the people’s legislative power is the same—and is coextensive with the power delegated to the [L]egislature—regardless of whether that power is wielded on a 13 Carter, 2012 UT 2, ¶¶ 32–50. 14 Id. ¶ 34. 15 Id. ¶ 36 (internal quotation marks omitted). 16 Id. ¶¶ 76–80. 17 Mouty, 2005 UT 41, ¶¶ 2–6, 28. 18 Carter, 2012 UT 2, ¶ 52 (footnote omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). 19 Id. ¶ 38. 20 Id. 5 MAWHINNEY v. DRAPER CITY Opinion of the Court statewide or local level,” it is helpful to compare an action in question to those actions undertaken by the Utah Legislature pursuant to the specific powers granted to that body by the Utah Constitution.21 And those powers that have traditionally been the province of the Utah Legislature, though not expressly discussed in the Utah Constitution, are likewise helpful in analyzing whether an action is legislative in nature.