Opinion ID: 1125394
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Analysis of the Facts

Text: ¶ 19 At the very outset our task here is to determine whether the November 14, 1994 letterthe sole publication complained of in the plaintiffs' first amended petition below (as well as in their brief in this original cause) which is attributable to CALAis protected by the State's fundamental law. ¶ 20 Promoters of an initiative petition drive at its circulation stage clearly act as political advocates for lawmaking through the initiative process. Their activities stand protected by legislative immunity through Oklahoma jurisprudence which teaches that (when circulating and signing initiative or referendum petitions) the people act in their legislative capacity. [40] The promoters' circulation-related activities as well as their advocacy of a petition by advertisements, distribution of leaflets or soap-box utterances urging the people to sign the petition and by similar conduct all are to be viewed as the functional equivalent of a floor speech or committee argument. The constitutional legislative privilege from liability extends to all germane activities of the initiative process. [41] ¶ 21 CALA's November 14 letter was disseminated at the promotional stage that antedates a petition's pre-circulation filing. It occurred during a campaign to test the waters for public support of an initiative measure that would change the law and to raise contributions toward that endeavor. We need not decide here with precision when an initiative promoter becomes a lawmaker eligible for protection of the legislative privilege. [42] Suffice it to say that in this case, assuming the promoters had not yet become legislators in the privilege sense, they were nonetheless protected from civil liability by state fundamental-law guarantees that safeguard direct lawmaking by the people, the people's access to government for pressing a political change and last, but not least, the freedom of expression that constitutes political speech. ¶ 22 Promoting legal change by any form of publicity in advance of the petition's pre-circulation filing is critical to the initiative process because the promoters must be able to ventilate the issues before those who are expected to join in the effort by signing the petition. Advocacy that is an essential step to launching an initiative drive is part of the process for petitioning the electorate and for ultimately impacting the government. If there is a rational connection between the communication or utterance complained of as defamatory and the author's quest for a political change, the communication should be viewed as protected both as political speech and a means of securing a change in the government's conduct of its business. While the so-called offending conduct may be injurious or offensive to plaintiffs' interests, it nonetheless constitutes protected political speech which must be more jealously and intensely guarded than any other form of permissible expression. [43] [T]he public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers. [44] The law's protection of free expression recognizes no such thing as a false idea.  [45] ¶ 23 CALA's letter clearly advocates for a change in the law then in effect, which was said to lack adequate restraints either upon the quantum of punitive-damage awards or on the allowable rate for legal fees. [46] While we do not pass today on the outer reach of the promoters' legislative immunity defense, the sum of the other constitutional safeguards, viewed in conjunction, operates to render the pled conduct of CALA impervious to civil liability. ¶ 24 Under our system of government, no one can be made responsible civilly or to the government for robustly pressing political views that others oppose with equal vigor.