Opinion ID: 201653
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Communicative Value of the Initiative Process

Text: 8 The first step in our free speech analysis must be to determine whether citizens' use of the initiative process constitutes expressive conduct, permitting appellants to invoke the First Amendment to challenge the Massachusetts initiative exclusions. See, e.g., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 403, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989) (citing Spence v. Washington, 418 U.S. 405, 409-11, 94 S.Ct. 2727, 41 L.Ed.2d 842 (1974)). We do not find that there is any serious debate as to this point. A state initiative process provides a uniquely provocative and effective method of spurring public debate on an issue of importance to the proponents of the proposed initiative. The Supreme Court has made clear that the process involved in proposing legislation by means of initiative involves core political speech. See Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 108 S.Ct. 1886, 100 L.Ed.2d 425 (1988) (overturning state's prohibition on using paid petition circulators); Buckley v. Am. Constitutional Law Found., Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 119 S.Ct. 636, 142 L.Ed.2d 599 (1999) (overturning various registration requirements for petition circulators). In Meyer, the Supreme Court recognized that the solicitation of signatures for a petition involves protected speech. 486 U.S. at 422, n. 5, 108 S.Ct. 1886. Furthermore, the mere fact that plaintiffs remain free to employ other means to disseminate their ideas does not take their [preferred means of] speech through [the initiative process] outside the bounds of First Amendment protection. Id. at 424, 108 S.Ct. 1886. Clearly, plaintiffs have been prevented from engaging in the sort of activity that implicates the First Amendment. This conclusion, however, in no way ends our analysis; it only opens the door for us to apply constitutional freedom of speech principles to the limitations Massachusetts places on its initiative process. 9 We have recognized that a fine line separates permissible regulation of state election processes from impermissible abridgement of First Amendment rights, Pérez-Guzmán v. Gracia, 346 F.3d 229, 239 (1st Cir.2003), and the same is true of regulation of state initiative procedures. In Pérez-Guzmán, 346 F.3d at 239-47, we invalidated Puerto Rico's requirement that petition signatures needed for registering a new political party to appear on the general election ballot be notarized, holding that it violated the First Amendment of the federal Constitution. In so doing, we stated that we afford exacting scrutiny to severe restrictions on ballot access. Id. at 239. We began our analysis with an assessment of the severity of the restriction, id., and having found it to be severe, we applied strict scrutiny, id. at 243-44. 10 Plaintiffs argue that we should apply a similar two-step analysis here. However, plaintiffs' suggested analysis makes an end-run around the most difficult part of their case. The district court in this case found that speech was only incidentally affected by the Massachusetts subject matter exclusions. Boyette v. Galvin, 311 F.Supp.2d 237, 240 (D.Mass.2004). Although the district court recognized that speech was involved, it concluded that the primary goal of the exclusion was to prevent certain types of laws from being passed by means of the popular initiative process, and not to limit what people could say or how they could say it. Id. at 240-41. By contrast, the common denominator in Pérez-Guzmán and other cases cited by plaintiffs is a direct restriction on the communicative aspect of the political process. In Pérez-Guzmán, like in Meyer, the state regulated how people could promulgate their political views, in their respective attempts to put a new party on the ballot, Pérez-Guzmán, 346 F.3d at 230-31, and to circulate petitions for a proposed initiative, Meyer, 486 U.S. at 414, 108 S.Ct. 1886. Strict scrutiny applied in these cases precisely because they involved direct regulation of the petition process itself. 11 We believe that the present case calls for a lower level of scrutiny. We know of no general principle that, in addition to constitutional amendment or lawmaking via a process instituted by the state legislature, a state must provide an opportunity for its residents to propose constitutional amendments or laws on all subjects by means of an initiative process. While we accept that use of the initiative process can facilitate dissemination of initiative proponents' views, the next step in a free speech analysis is to determine whether or not the regulation in question aims at regulating speech, or whether it has some other primary end, such that any effect on speech is purely incidental. As we alluded to at the outset of this analysis, the First Amendment generally provides greater protection against laws that are aimed at communicative impact of the conduct they regulate than from laws aimed at non-communicative impact, but nonetheless having adverse effects on communicative opportunity. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 12-2, at 790. The primary goal of state initiative procedures is to create an avenue of direct democracy whereby citizens can participate in the generation of legislation—that is, the act of creating law. Laws such as those considered in Meyer and its progeny were aimed at directly regulating the means that initiative proponents could use to reach their audience of potential petition signers. In contrast, we find that subject matter exclusions like those regulating the Massachusetts initiative process aim at preventing the act of generating laws and constitutional amendments about certain subjects by initiative. While they eliminate a valuable avenue of expression about those subjects, the speech restriction is no more than an unintended side-effect of the exclusions. It is because of this sometimes overlooked, but nevertheless fundamental principle in constitutional free speech doctrine that we must reject appellants' proposed analysis. We turn now to Massachusetts' proposed alternative analysis. 12