Opinion ID: 2633581
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: NRS 295.009's single-subject requirement is constitutional

Text: During the 2005 legislative session, the Legislature enacted NRS 295.009, which, among other things, places a single-subject requirement on initiative petitions. Subsection (1)(a) of the statute provides that [e]ach petition for initiative ... must ... [e]mbrace but one subject and matters necessarily connected therewith and pertaining thereto. Subsection 2 further defines what one subject encompasses. The proponents challenge the constitutionality of NRS 295.009, under both the Nevada and United States Constitutions. They contend that the Nevada Constitution does not provide the Legislature with the authority to enact a law restricting ballot initiatives to a single subject and that the single-subject requirement places improper limitations on political speech in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. We conclude that the Legislature properly enacted NRS 295.009 and that since the statute does not place unconstitutional limits on political speech, it does not violate the First Amendment.
Nevada Constitution Article 19, Section 2 provides that the people reserve unto themselves the power to propose and enact statutes, amendments to statutes, and amendments to the Nevada Constitution by initiative petition. Article 19, Section 5, however, provides that the legislature may provide by law for procedures to facilitate the operation of [Article 19's provisions]. Thus, the Nevada Constitution explicitly authorizes the Legislature to enact laws regulating the initiative process, so long as those laws facilitate the provisions of Article 19. The proponents fail to address or acknowledge Article 19, Section 5 and its express grant of authority to the Legislature. By limiting petitions to a single subject, NRS 295.009 facilitates the initiative process by preventing petition drafters from circulating confusing petitions that address multiple subjects. This goal was endorsed by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in evaluating the constitutionality of Colorado's single-subject requirement in Campbell v. Buckley. [6] As the Campbell court noted, single subject ... requirements serve to prevent voter confusion and promote informed decisions by narrowing the initiative to a single matter and providing information on that single matter to the voter. [7] The Campbell court concluded that single-subject requirements for initiative petitions do not impermissibly limit the people's ability to legislate or amend the constitution, noting that a second subject that might have been included in the first petition can be addressed by creating a second petition. [8] And, although the United States Supreme Court has not addressed the constitutionality of single-subject requirements, in an opinion addressing the constitutionality of several Colorado statutes regulating the initiative process, the Court, in dictum, classified Colorado's single-subject requirement as a process measure[] that facilitates efficiency, veracity, or clarity in the initiative process. [9] NRS 295.009's single-subject requirement facilitates the provisions of Article 19. Accordingly, under Article 19, Section 5, the Legislature had the authority to enact this requirement for initiative petitions. [10] The challenge to this statute's constitutionality under the Nevada Constitution therefore necessarily fails. [11]
The proponents also contend that the single-subject requirement places an unconstitutional limitation on core political speech, under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, requiring a strict scrutiny analysis. Instead, however, a more flexible balancing test applies, and under this test, the single-subject requirement does not run afoul of the First Amendment.
In Burdick v. Takushi, [12] the Supreme Court expressly rejected the contention that any law imposing a burden on the right to vote is subject to strict scrutiny. In upholding Hawaii's ban on voting for write-in candidates against arguments that the ban violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Court held that a more flexible standard, rather than strict scrutiny should be applied. [13] Under this flexible standard, a court considering a challenge to a state election law must balance the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the protected right the challenger seeks to vindicate against the precise interests advanced by the state as justifying the burden imposed by its rule, while taking into consideration the extent that those interests require the burdening of the challenger's rights. [14] The rigorousness of the inquiry into the challenged law's propriety depends on the extent to which the law burdens First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. [15] When these rights are severely restricted, the regulation must be narrowly drawn so as to advance a compelling state interest. [16] When a state election law imposes only reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions on these rights, the state's important regulatory interests are generally sufficient to justify the restrictions. [17] We have adopted this flexible standard in reviewing a statute that limited the time for circulating recall petitions. [18] And, in Campbell, the Tenth Circuit determined that the more flexible balancing test applied to a constitutional provision limiting initiatives to a single subject. [19] The Campbell court differentiated between situations in which the overall quantum of speech is reduced, [20] which requires a strict scrutiny analysis, and situations involving nondiscriminatory regulations of the voting process that do not place direct limitations on the quantity of speech available, to which the more flexible balancing test applies. [21] Applying this analysis to Colorado's single-subject requirement, the Campbell court concluded that the requirement was facially neutral and that it did not place a direct limitation on the quantity of speech available. [22] If anything, the court noted, requiring proponents to pursue separate initiatives on separate subjects might encourage more speech on each such subject. [23] Thus, the Campbell court concluded that the flexible balancing test and not strict scrutiny provided the appropriate mechanism for analyzing Colorado's single-subject requirement. [24] Similarly, NRS 295.009's single-subject requirement does not restrict the overall quantum of speech or otherwise inhibit communication with voters about proposed political change. The single-subject requirement is facially neutral and represents a reasonable, nondiscriminatory restriction. [25] Accordingly, this court will apply the balancing test and not strict scrutiny in analyzing the constitutionality of NRS 295.009's single-subject requirement.
In applying the balancing test, the Campbell court noted that the single-subject requirement serve[s] to prevent voter confusion and promote informed decisions by narrowing the initiative to a single matter and providing information on that single matter to the voter. [26] The Campbell court further noted that the single-subject rule prevents petitioners from gaining passage of provisions that would not otherwise become law by attaching them to more popular proposals or concealing them in a long and complex initiative. [27] These interests, the court concluded, were sufficiently important to justify the single-subject requirement. [28] The court further noted that no evidence suggested that the test was being applied in a manner that discriminated against the initiative proponents based on the content of their petition. [29] Thus, the court concluded that the Colorado single-subject limitation was constitutionally valid. Like the provision at issue in Campbell, Nevada's single-subject requirement does not prevent petitioners from addressing multiple subjects and thereby restrict the quantum of speech. It simply requires petitioners to address separate subjects in separate petitions. Moreover, the rule is nondiscriminatory, as it does not limit the subject matter of petitions in general; it merely limits petitioners to addressing one subject per petition. Thus, the application of the single-subject requirement does not discriminate against the proponents based on the content of their initiative. Nevada also has a number of important interests in the single-subject rule. These interests mirror the interests cited in Campbell, including preventing the public from being confronted with confusing or misleading petitions and preventing proposals that would not otherwise become law from being passed solely because they are attached to more popular measures. [30] We agree with the Tenth Circuit that these types of interests are significant and justify a single-subject requirement. Even though circulating more than one petition may increase costs for the proponents, circulating multiple petitions, as noted in Campbell, likely fosters speech. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has explained, in applying Florida's single-subject rule, that the Constitution does not require [a state] to structure its initiative process in the most efficient, user-friendly way possible. [31] The single-subject requirement is designed to assist voters in determining whether to change the laws of Nevada and the structure of government and ultimately protects the sanctity of Nevada's election process. Accordingly, we conclude that NRS 295.009's single-subject requirement does not violate the First Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, and is thus constitutionally valid.