Opinion ID: 2253107
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Claim Under Article IV, Sections 22 and 23

Text: The various parties, including appellees and amicus, either implicitly acknowledge or explicitly assert that the statutes at issue do not involve any of the seventeen categories enumerated in section 22. Accordingly, we focus on section 23. A. Constitutional Origins. Fiscal woes attendant to the Wabash-Erie Canal played a central role in the decision to call the Constitutional Convention of 1850, but there were a variety of catalysts for drafting a new state constitution. In his annual message to the General Assembly in January 1848, Governor James Whitcomb outlined the problems requiring attention and made it clear that one of those was the spectacle of a legislature awash in proposals for special and local laws: Occasion has been repeatedly taken in my former messages, to allude to the great amount of our local or special legislation, the danger of injustice by its means to individual interests, its expense to the treasury, and the large portion of time it necessarily occupies to the detriment of that mature and thorough consideration which is due to subjects of a general character. House Journal, 32d sess. 131 (1848). Whitcomb later even went so far as to say that [i]f calling a convention to amend the constitution were productive of no other result than furnishing an effectual remedy for th[is] growing evil [of special and local legislation], it would be abundantly justified. House Journal, 33d sess. 24 (1849). Under the Indiana Constitution of 1816, the legislature regularly adopted statutes on everything from individual divorces [3] to particular streams, roads, streets, and alleys. [4] The practice grew worse throughout the 1840s. [5] By the time of the 1849 and 1850 sessions, over 90% of the laws passed by the legislature were special legislation of this sort. Frank E. Horack & Matthew E. Welsh, Special Legislation: Another Twilight Zone, 12 Ind.L.J. 109, 115-16 (1936); see also Horack & Welsh, 12 Ind.L.J. 183, 192-93 (1937). Debate on the floor of the ensuing convention emphasized the concern over the effects of this flood of local legislation. [6] The resulting provisions in the legislative article are the subject of this litigation. They provide: Article IV, section 22. The General Assembly shall not pass local or special laws: Providing for the punishment of crimes and misdemeanors; Regulating the practice in courts of justice; Providing for changing the venue in civil and criminal cases; Granting divorces; Changing the names of persons; Providing for laying out, opening, and working on, highways, and for the election or appointment of supervisors; Vacating roads, town plats, streets, alleys, and public squares; Summoning and empaneling grand and petit juries, and providing for their compensation; Regulating county and township business; Regulating the election of county and township officers and their compensation; Providing for the assessment and collection of taxes for State, county, township, or road purposes; Providing for the support of common schools, or the preservation of school funds; Relating to fees or salaries, except that the laws may be so made as to grade the compensation of officers in proportion to the population and the necessary services required; Relating to interest on money; Providing for opening and conducting elections of State, county, or township officers, and designating the places of voting; Providing for the sale of real estate belonging to minors or other persons laboring under legal disabilities, by executors, administrators, guardians, or trustees. Article IV, section 23. In all the cases enumerated in the preceding section, and in all other cases where a general law can be made applicable, all laws shall be general, and of uniform operation throughout the State. The drafters thus expressed a preference for general laws, but they also recognized that special laws were sometimes necessary. Acknowledging this preference, however, provides little guidance for distinguishing between special and general legislation. Courts and legislators have struggled since 1851 to articulate a consistent basis for determining when a law is special, and when its subject could be addressed through a general law. B. Case Law. We have always begun by presuming the constitutionality of statutes challenged under sections 22 and 23. As we observed in Stocking v. State (1855), 7 Ind. 326, even if we doubted [whether a law passed section 23 scrutiny], we should be bound to throw the benefit of the doubt in favor of the constitutionality of the law. Id. at 328-29. Stocking and subsequent cases suggest a high degree of deference to the legislature on section 23 questions. For most of the ensuing century and a half, however, this Court has regarded challenges to a law's specific or local character as justiciable questions. Our first such declaration was in Thomas v. Board of Commissioners (1854), 5 Ind. 4, where we said: Whether the legislature have, in the case at bar, acted within the scope of their authority, is ... a proper subject of judicial inquiry. Id. at 7. Our justiciability rule did take a substantial detour beginning with Gentile v. State (1868), 29 Ind. 409, where the Court said there was no role for judicial review and characterized the section 23 inquiry as peculiarly address[ed] ... to the legislative judgment. Id. at 414. This approach, however, fell under periodic criticism [7] and eventually came to be ignored, [8] and then ridiculed. [9] Finally, in 1933, we overruled Gentile outright: [I]f the Legislature may arbitrarily decide that a general law cannot be made applicable, and its decision is final and cannot be questioned, it is not restrained or restricted in any sense, and the constitutional provision is, if not a nullity, at least a mere admonition. ..... ... It is inevitable that there should be differences of opinion as to the constitutionality of enacted legislation, but it was intended by the framers of the Constitution that the decision of this court should determine the law and the limits of legislative power, and not the decision of the Legislature. Heckler v. Conter (1933), 206 Ind. 376, 379, 381, 187 N.E. 878, 879. Lest there be any doubt, Thomas and Heckler represent our view today. C. Is This Act Special Legislation? We turn, then, to the threshold question of whether the subject of the riverboat gambling act is amenable to a general law of uniform operation throughout the state. If the answer is no, our inquiry ends and the act is constitutional under section 23. Cash v. Clark County (1855), 7 Ind. 227, 229 (The subject matter of the law being entirely local, we do not see how a local law applicable to it can infringe any constitutional provision.). If the subject matter does permit general application, however, we must examine whether the law, even if general in form, is special as applied. It is apparent that the legislature's decision to permit casino gambling only on riverboats has the effect of rendering most Indiana counties unable to participate. [10] Like the decisions to authorize a lottery and to permit horse race gambling, however, this decision appears to be a valid selection among forms of gambling and not a subterfuge for evading section 23. Hoosiers hardly invented the notion of putting casinos on boats. Across our border to the west, Illinois licenses floating casinos on its rivers, a move prompted in part in response to Iowa's launching of riverboat gambling along the Mississippi. The Constitution provides no clear guidance to help us identify those cases in which a local law should be allowed. One of the unintended results of Thomas was a tendency for the legislature to bend over backwards to structure every law in general terms, which forced this Court to attempt to gauge the extent to which the categories are natural to the subject matter and truly open. See, e.g., Dortch v. Lugar (1971), 255 Ind. 545, 552-53, 266 N.E.2d 25, 31 (an act is general if it treats all persons alike under the same or similar conditions and circumstances, and the classification is reasonable and naturally inherent in the subject matter). Here the legislature decided to permit a particular form of gambling. It identified the universe of Indiana counties suitable to host riverboat gambling. Limiting the locations of riverboats to the specified counties naturally flows from fact that not every county is home to a suitable body of water. It is inherent in the riverboat decision to permit riverboats. We conclude that riverboat gambling is not subject to a uniform law of general applicability. To their credit, counsel for appellees recognize this, and argue beyond it that all counties selected must still be treated alike. We conclude that the distinctions drawn between Lake County and the others fit this purpose of this local law. In Lake County, the whole of the waterfront is covered by substantial cities, whose residents have the greatest interest in how the shore is used. In all the other counties, however, the shore contains both incorporated and unincorporated territory. It thus seems sensible to stage a vote of all persons in the county.