Opinion ID: 2621965
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Guarantee of the people's right of direct legislation

Text: The Legislature argues that it is constitutionally permitted to enact any submission deadline because Article 19, Section 5 states in part that the legislature may provide by law for procedures to facilitate the initiative process. Yet, Article 19, Section 5 also clearly states that [t]he provisions of [Article 19] are self-executing. This court has consistently held that the initiative powers granted to Nevada's electorate are broad. [37] And this court has [made] every effort to sustain and preserve the people's constitutional right to amend their constitution through the initiative process, [38] when interpreting and applying laws that seek to facilitate the initiative process's operation. Thus, although Section 5 generally states that the Legislature may enact laws to facilitate the initiative process, Article 19, Section 2(1) also provides that the people of Nevada have reserved to themselves the power to create laws or amendments and to pass or reject them. We have interpreted these two clausesthe Legislature's power to regulate the facilitation of the initiative process and the powers reserved to Nevada's electorateas explicitly authoriz[ing] the Legislature to enact laws regulating the initiative process, so long as those laws facilitate the provisions of Article 19. [39] In other words, the procedural laws enacted by the Legislature may not unreasonably inhibit the powers reserved to the people in Article 19. [40] Here, Section 3(2)'s language  no more than 65 days earlier than is otherwise required by this Articlepresumes that a fixed deadline has been established. The intentional reference to Article 19 in Section 3(2) indicates that Article 19, Section 2(4)'s language establishes a fixed filing deadline. Accordingly, one may reasonably infer that Sections 2(4) and 3(2) were intended to be self-executing, rather than left to a statutory enactment, particularly one that inhibits the initiative power by shortening the time to circulate a petition for signatures. [41] Thus, the Legislature's argument that it is constitutionally permitted to enact any submission deadline because Article 19, Section 5 allows the Legislature to enact procedural laws without restriction is unpersuasive.