Opinion ID: 1250784
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: application of article iv, section 20, to petitioners' challenge

Text: As noted earlier in this opinion, the legislature has given this court original and exclusive jurisdiction to resolve all kinds of constitutional challenges to sections 1 to 17 of the Act. We also noted above that, in resolving constitutional challenges to those sections, we may consider petitioners' arguments under Article IV, section 20, even though consideration of such arguments requires 857/> us to examine the entire body of the Act, as well as its titlenot merely sections 1 to 17to assess the validity of those arguments. Petitioners have summarized the contents of SB 1156 as follows: SB 1156    (1) provides state funding [and land use procedures] for light rail, (2) expands the availability of card-lock service stations, (3) promotes `regional problem solving' in land use matters, (4) regulates confined animal feeding, (5) preempts local pesticide regulation, (6) adopts new timber harvesting rules, (7) grants immunity to shooting ranges for `noise pollution,' and (8) protects salmon from cormorants. Our review of SB 1156 confirms that the foregoing summary is accurate, and the other parties to the case do not suggest otherwise. We are unable to discern a principle unifying those eight topics. Neither are we able to perceive among the parts of the Act some logical connection relating each to the others. That being so, we move to the next step. We consider whether the legislature nonetheless has identified a unifying principle, logically connecting all provisions in the Act, that we do not yet perceive. If it has, and if the title discloses that unifying principle, then the Act, in fact, embraces but one subject. In approaching this question, we focus on the title's relating clause (Relating to the activities regulated by state government), because that is what serves the constitutional function of the title. It is, for example, the relating clause that informs the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House what amendments to a bill are germane. See Oregon Legislative Assembly, Form and Style Manual for Legislative Measures, 12 (1994) (the manual describes the role of titles and the rules relating to amendments). The relating clause in the title in this casethe statement that the Act is one [r]elating to the activities regulated by state governmentfails to identify and express a unifying principle logically connecting all provisions in the Act. It fails to perform that function, becausein this extreme casethe relating clause is so global that it does little more than define the universe with respect to which the legislature is empowered to act. Respondents argue, however, that the relating clause is not global. They suggest that the activities regulated should be read to mean activities already regulated and that state government means that activities regulated by local governments are not included. The limits suggested by respondents are illusory. The relating clause for SB 1156, even thus limited, is still so broad and general that it logically connects all provisions in the Act only in the meaningless sense that it announces a connection among nearly all things in the legislative universe. The title does not, in the constitutional sense, express a unifying principle. The phrase [r]elating to the activities regulated by state government is too broad and general to unify the disparate topics embraced by SB 1156. [15]