Opinion ID: 1783554
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prohibited Local or Special Laws

Text: La. Const. art. III, § 12 prohibits the Legislature from enacting local or special laws in certain circumstances. Local or special laws [f]or the holding and conducting of elections, or fixing or changing the place of voting and for [r]egulating labor, trade, manufacturing, or agriculture are specifically prohibited. [5] The term local or special is used in contradistinction to the term general. The prohibition is intended to reflect a policy decision that legislative resources and attention should be concentrated upon matters of general interest, and that purely local matters should be left to local governments. H. Alston Johnson III, Legislative Process, 36 La.L.Rev. 549 (1976). The initial question in determining whether a law is local or special is whether its operation is limited solely by its designation of certain parishes. State v. LaBauve, 359 So.2d 181, 183 (La.1978). The fact that La.Rev.Stat. 4:537 and 537.1 clearly limit their application to Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes initially indicates that they are local or special laws. Nevertheless, a law is not necessarily local or special simply because it is directed at specific localities. In Polk v. Edwards, 626 So.2d 1128, 1134 (La.1993), this court stated that a statute is not a local or special law within the meaning of the constitutional provision if persons throughout the state are affected, or if it operates on a subject in which the people at large are interested, even though its application and immediate effect is restricted to a particular locality. The court noted that [t]he real distinction between public or general laws and local or special laws is that the former affect the community as a whole, whether throughout the State or one of its subdivisions; and the latter affect private persons, private property, private or local interests. Id. at 1135. In Polk, this court considered whether the statutes authorizing gaming were general laws or local or special laws. We concluded that the gaming laws were general laws because they were adopted for the benefit of the entire state and addressed matters of state-wide concern which the Legislature has the authority to regulate pursuant to its police power. We noted that the gaming laws were not local laws because their purpose was not to create an advantage for, or an advancement of, private or local interests or a particular political subdivision of the state. In contrast, the entire thrust of Sections 537 and 537.1 is to create an election scheme that treats only Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes in a special manner. The statutes advance the interests of two particular parishes and give them far greater autonomy and control with regard to riverboat gaming than is afforded to the remaining parishes of the state. The election process provided in Section 537 effectively prohibits riverboat gaming in Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes unless a majority of the voters approve the specific applicant. Even before March 15, 1992, no election concerning riverboat gaming could be held at all in the remaining parishes unless twenty-five percent of the registered voters petitioned for a referendum and then the vote would be to prohibit the operation of any riverboat in the parish. Additionally, that limited right in the remaining parishes expired eight months after the adoption of the Act. Section 537.1 also grants the voters in Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes an ongoing right to control riverboat gaming in their area, a right which is not afforded to the voters in the remaining parishes. Pursuant to Section 537.1, the voters in Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes have the right to oversee gaming operations in their communities in that fifteen percent of the voters can petition for an election in which the voters can decide whether current riverboat gaming operations should continue. If the voters disapprove of a specific riverboat operator, the statute mandates that the Riverboat Gaming Enforcement Division shall revoke the operator's license. If the voters in these two parishes wish to bar all riverboat gaming operations in their area, they can preclude all gaming operations by denying approval to all applicants. Sections 537 and 537.1 afford special treatment to a particular locality by granting greater rights to the voters in Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes than the Legislature has afforded to the voters in the remainder of the state. Although a number of parishes and municipalities throughout the state are directly affected by riverboat gaming on their waterways, only Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes have been afforded the opportunity to exercise extensive and ongoing control over gaming activities in their localities. We therefore conclude that the statutes create a classification with a significant difference between the class created and the class excluded, and there is no reasonable basis for designation of the favored class for separate treatment. The statutes therefore constitute local or special laws. Nevertheless, the determination that a law is local or special does not end the inquiry because the constitution does not prohibit all local or special laws, but only those that concern certain enumerated topics. The goal of the statutes at issue in this case is to provide for referendum elections concerning riverboat gaming operations (in the absence of which riverboat gaming is prohibited) and to set forth specific parameters for the holding of such elections (fixing the date for the referendum election, specifying detailed requirements for public notice, providing the exact language of the proposition, requiring compliance with the Election Code, providing for the percentage of voters who must petition under Section 537.1 to hold an election to revoke a licensee's license, and limiting elections concerning revocation to one election during a three-year period). La.Rev.Stat. 4:537 and 4:537.1 therefore undoubtedly address the holding and conducting of elections and fall within the constitutional constraints of La. Const. art. III, § 12(A)(1) which prohibits local and special laws for the holding and conducting of elections.