Opinion ID: 2585381
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Text of the State Constitution and its Parallels with the Federal Document

Text: The first two Gunwall factors are: (1) the textual language of the state constitutional provision at issue and (2) differences in the parallel texts of the federal and state constitutions. Amended article I, section 16 of the Washington State Constitution provides: § 16 EMINENT DOMAIN. Private property shall not be taken for private use, except for private ways of necessity, and for drains, flumes, or ditches on or across the lands of others for agricultural, domestic, or sanitary purposes. No private property shall be taken or damaged for public or private use without just compensation having been first made, or paid into court for the owner, and no right-of-way shall be appropriated to the use of any corporation other than municipal until full compensation therefor be first made in money, or ascertained and paid into court for the owner, irrespective of any benefit from any improvement proposed by such corporation, which compensation shall be ascertained by a jury, unless a jury be waived, as in other civil cases in courts of record, in the manner prescribed by law. Whenever an attempt is made to take private property for a use alleged to be public, the question whether the contemplated use be really public shall be a judicial question, and determined as such, without regard to any legislative assertion that the use is public: Provided, That the taking of private property by the state for land reclamation and settlement purposes is hereby declared to be for public use. On the other hand, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment states simply: nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. A striking textual difference between these two constitutions is the sheer detail of article I, section 16. A second significant difference is the addition of the word damaged in the state version and the requirement that compensation must first be made. Neither of these differences, however, are key to this analysis. [8] What is key is article I, section 16's absolute prohibition against taking private property for private use. The Fifth Amendment only provides similar protections by inference. Moreover, unlike the Fifth Amendment, article I, section 16 expressly renders the question of public versus private a judicial question: Whenever an attempt is made to take private property for a use alleged to be public, the question whether the contemplated use be really public shall be a judicial question, and determined as such, without regard to any legislative assertion that the use is public.... Const. art I, § 16 (amend.9). This court has consistently focused on textual differences between related state and federal constitutional provisions. Additional language in the state constitution has led to greater protections of individual liberties in several cases. See, e.g., State v. Brayman, 110 Wash.2d 183, 201, 751 P.2d 294 (1988) (addition of gender in state equal rights amendment provides more protection than federal equal protection clause); State v. Boland, 115 Wash.2d 571, 580, 800 P.2d 1112 (1990) (additional language in state search and seizure clause provides greater protection than federal Fourth Amendment). Hence, as Justice Utter explained, [o]rdinary rules of textual and constitutional interpretation, as well as the logic of federalism, require that meaning be given to the differences in language between the Washington and United States Constitutions . Robert F. Utter, Freedom and Diversity in a Federal System: Perspectives on State Constitutions and the Washington Declaration of Rights, 7 U. Puget Sound L.Rev. 491, 515 (1984) (footnotes omitted). The key differences between the Fifth Amendment and article I, section 16 are significant and support a literal interpretation of private use as employed in the Washington State Constitution.