Opinion ID: 835999
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: ELLIS v. ROBERTS

Text: Ellis was a challenge under ORS 246.910(1) by registered voters to the Secretary of State's certification on July 16, 1986, of Ballot Measure 11 (1986) for the November 1986, ballot. The plaintiffs commenced their appeal under ORS 246.910(1) on July 31, 1986, and argued that the Secretary of State's certification was unauthorized because Measure 11 contained more than one subject. Measure 11 purported to create a homestead exemption from property taxes and also prohibited the legislature from referring a sales tax to the people for a vote. The trial court dismissed the action on a theory of laches. Ellis, 302 Or. at 10-11, 725 P.2d 886. On review, this court determined that the plaintiffs satisfied the requirement in ORS 246.910(1) that they be adversely affected because they were registered voters and the statute permitted any registered voter to file an action. Id. at 11, 725 P.2d 886. The court also determined that the doctrine of laches had no application to an action under ORS 246.910(1). Id. at 12, 725 P.2d 886. The court distinguished the plaintiffs' statutory action from an earlier case, Fidanque, a mandamus proceeding in which laches was a pertinent defense. Neither of those determinations in Ellis is in controversy in this case. The Ellis opinion then did an odd thing. The court asked itself the following question: Should actions like the present one be subject to some kind of `reasonable time' limitation on filing, in the absence of statutes imposing such restraints? Id. at 13, 725 P.2d 886. The court acknowledged what it described as a legislative vacuum regarding a time limit on filing appeals under ORS 246.910(1), because the legislature had not enacted a time limit for the filing of an appeal under that statute. Responding to that legislative vacuum, the court asserted that we are required to provide some judicial framework until the legislature provides a statutory one. Id. The court never explained the source of such a requirement. Turning to Fidanque, the mandamus case, the court acknowledged that the submission process required the Secretary of State to make a series of decisions, that each decision was susceptible to challenge, and that the first exercise of the Secretary of State's authority occurred when she approved the proposed initiative for circulation. Id. at 15-16, 725 P.2d 886. The court noted that eleventh hour challenges might cause initiative proponents to waste their resources in collecting signatures and might force courts to steamroll through the delicate legal issues to meet the deadline for measures to be placed on the ballot. Id. at 16, 725 P.2d 886 (quoting Fidanque, 297 Or. at 718, 688 P.2d 1303). Proceeding from the foregoing reasoning, the court announced that a reasonable time filing deadline should apply to appeals under ORS 246.910(1). The court continued by announcing that [t]here is a season for each kind of challenge to the Secretary of State's administration of the election laws   . Id. at 17, 725 P.2d 886. The court then announced that, by looking at the statutory appeal period allowed under the APA, the court could determine that 60 days after approval of the ballot title was a reasonable time period for filing a one-subject challenge under ORS 246.910(1). The court held that, because the Secretary of State had approved the proposed initiative for circulation on August 16, 1985, the deadline that the court created had expired nine months before the plaintiffs had filed their action. The court then applied its newly announced deadline retroactively to the plaintiffs' appeal and dismissed it. Id. at 19, 725 P.2d 886. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Ellis opinion is that, due to the court's perception that the legislature had failed to append a filing deadline to ORS 246.910, the court believed that it was authorized by something inherent in the court's judicial powera source of authority that the Ellis opinion never made clearto manufacture a filing deadline for a statutory appeal and to dismiss any appeal that a party had filed after that deadline. That reasoning reflects serious legal error. For a very long time, Oregon law has condemned any arrogation of the legislature's lawmaking power by a court, including under the guise of statutory interpretation, as action in excess of lawful judicial power. In State ex rel Everding v. Simon, 20 Or. 365, 26 P. 170 (1891), this court addressed the meaning of an 1889 statute that amended an 1885 law that had provided for the election and the term of office of the office of Portland Police Commissioner. The court observed that the 1889 statute had repealed the existing statutory provisions for an election and the term of office. The incumbent police commissioner urged the court to recognize that the 1889 deletions were unintentional and to fill in the absent election procedures by interpretation. This court stated: This is a case, it would seem, where the legislature has omitted by mistake or otherwise to make the necessary provisions to carry out its intention, but we cannot by construction supply these omissions. As was said by Davies, J., `It is always competent for the legislature to speak clearly and without equivocation, and it is safer for the judicial department to follow the plain and obvious meaning of an act, rather than to speculate upon what might have been the views of the legislature in the emergency which may have arisen. It is wiser and safer to leave to the legislative department to supply a supposed or actual casus omissus than to attempt to do so by judicial construction.' ( People v. Woodruff, 32 N.Y. 364.) Courts cannot supply omissions in legislation, nor afford relief because they are supposed to exist. To adopt the language of Mr. Justice Woods, in Hobbs v. McLean, 117 U.S. 579, 6 S.Ct. 870, 29 L.Ed. 940, `when a provision is left out of a statute, either by design or mistake of the legislature, the courts have no power to supply it. To do so would be to legislate and not to construe.' Id. at 373-74, 26 P. 170. That passage in State ex rel Everding reflects current Oregon law. It is clear that the court in Ellis acted beyond the scope of its legitimate judicial authority in fabricating a filing deadline for an appeal under ORS 246.910(1). The Ellis court ignored the most fundamental precept of judicial review of a statute: That the responsibility for deciding matters of policysuch as whether a particular filing deadline (reasonable or otherwise) shall govern a statutory remedyrests exclusively with the legislature, not the court. That is, whether there is or should be a season for challenges permitted by ORS 246.910(1) is solely a question for the legislature. [2] It might be possible to distinguish Ellis from the present appeal, which challenges in part conduct by the Secretary of State that occurred after the election. Ellis stated that it was placing a timeline requirement on pre-election challenges of this kind, and, as a consequence, the court declined to address whether a post election challenge of the kind that occurred in Anthony v. Veatch, 189 Or. 462, 220 P.2d 493[,] reh den [,] 189 Or. 462, 221 P.2d 575 (1950), still would be possible. But see State ex rel Fidanque v. Paulus, supra, 297 Or. at 719, 688 P.2d 1303. Ellis, 302 Or. at 19 n. 5, 725 P.2d 886. The passage of Fidanque that Ellis cited purported to justify the application of laches in Fidanque in part on the potential availability of post-election challenge under [Oregon Constitution] Article IV, section 20, should Ballot Measure 8 ultimately be approved   . Fidanque, 297 Or. at 719, 688 P.2d 1303. The majority, however, has chosen to answer the question that Ellis did not decide and has extended the Ellis deadline to apply to challenges under ORS 246.910(1) to official acts occurring both before and after an election. The question, therefore, is whether the court should treat Ellis as a case law precedent and extend the Ellis deadline to challenges to post-election official actions. In determining whether this court should adhere to Ellis as a precedent, we must look to the standards that this court has established for determining whether a particular case deserves that status. Some of this court's decisions have repeated what has come to be known as the rule of prior interpretation. For example, in State v. King, 316 Or. 437, 445-46, 852 P.2d 190 (1993), this court stated: When this court interprets a statute, the interpretation becomes a part of the statute, subject only to a revision by the legislature. Having once construed the same provisions of this statute, albeit in a slightly different context, to have a particular meaning, we will not now consider a contrary interpretation. (Citations omitted.) I have discussed elsewhere my concern that that statement does not reflect Oregon law and is an unnecessarily rigid deviation from the correct rule that governs this court's adherence to case law precedent: The rule of stare decisis. State ex rel Huddleston v. Sawyer, 324 Or. 597, 638-44, 932 P.2d 1145 (1997) (Durham, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). However, even the purported rule of prior interpretation applies only when an earlier case has interpreted the statute that the court is reviewing. Ellis did not purport to interpret ORS 246.910 or any other statute in creating the 60-day filing deadline. [3] The court fabricated the 60-day deadline because the legislature supposedly had failed to establish any time limit for filing appeals under ORS 246.910. [4] In that context, the so-called rule of prior interpretation is inapplicable, because no prior interpretation of a statute exists. Neither is the Ellis deadline entitled to deference under the principle of stare decisis. The court's unilateral announcement of a time limit on a statutory appeal, and the absence of support for the deadline in the text of ORS 246.910 or any other contextual statute, undermine the legitimacy of Ellis as a precedent. If, indeed, the legislature chose, as the Ellis court asserted, to impose no deadline on the opportunity of registered voters under ORS 246.910 to challenge official acts or failures to act under election laws, that policy choice deserves respect and deference by this court, not a judicial veto. Other aspects of the Ellis court's rationale indicate that the act of manufacturing a deadline was not a valid exercise of judicial power and that that act does not merit deference under the doctrine of stare decisis. For example, the Ellis court's announced concern for the resources of petition circulators is beside the point. The court must assume instead that the legislature took that concern into account in enacting ORS 246.910(1). It is obvious that the legislature was even more concerned that Oregon registered voters should have a prompt and effective method of challenging every unauthorized official act or failure to act under Oregon election laws whenever such a default might occur. The Ellis court's concern regarding the deleterious effect of eleventh-hour appeals on the court's ability to analyze sensitive questions before an approaching election similarly is unfounded. Nothing in ORS 246.910 requires any court to decide an appeal under that statute before an election or any other election-related event. ORS 246.910(3) authorizes the circuit courts and Court of Appeals, in their discretion, to give such precedence on their dockets to appeals under this section as the circumstances may require. I agree that that subsection anticipates prompt judicial consideration and determination of appeals under ORS 246.910(1). However, the Ellis court's notion that the courts are under pressure to decide appeals under ORS 246.910(1) before elections goes well beyond anything that the statute implies. And, pressure of that sort applied by the parties to an appeal, although understandable in the context of pre-election appellate advocacy, in no way justifies the judicial adoption of a nonstatutory deadline to defeat all but the earliest challenges to assertedly unauthorized official conduct. The purported pressure of an impending election is absent, in any event, in this case, because plaintiffs filed their appeal after the election. The Ellis court's concern that eleventh-hour appeals might place pressure on the courts to decide important legal questions in haste is irrelevant when, as here, the appeal asserts that the Secretary of State's allegedly unauthorized conduct occurred or continued after the election. Finally, Ellis failed to analyze this court's previous determinations in other cases discussed above that, under ORS 246.910, each of the Secretary of State's multiple actions and decisions in the initiative process becomes subject to challenge as it occurs. Those earlier determinations contradict the Ellis court's conclusion that, as a result of the court's creation of a deadline, only the first exercise of the Secretary of State's official power is subject to review under ORS 246.910. Those earlier statements from this court give full effect to the wording of ORS 246.910 that any act or failure to act is subject to appeal. Ellis failed to analyze either those previous statements from this court or the inconsistency between the court's deadline and the statute's promise that any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State under an election law is subject to appeal. The rule of stare decisis does not require the court to adhere to the Ellis deadline as a case law precedent. The foregoing concerns about the legal efficacy of the Ellis deadline and the court's expressed reasoning in support of that deadline lead me to conclude that the court should reconsider Ellis, not broaden its application to govern all appeals under ORS 246.910. My review of the text of ORS 246.910, including the statutory context and pertinent case law, indicates that each of the Secretary of State's multiple actions in the initiative process is subject to an appeal as it occurs, not only the first act. The trial court did not err in asserting jurisdiction over the challenges of the individual plaintiffs to the Secretary of State's actions regarding Measure 7. I would affirm the trial court's action in that regard.