Opinion ID: 2745633
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the right to initiative

Text: ¶9 Article VI, section 1 of the Utah Constitution establishes the right of voters to legislate via local initiatives: The legal voters of any county, city, or town, in the numbers, under the conditions, in the manner, and within the time provided by statute, may . . . initiate any desired legislation and cause it to be submitted to the people of the county, city, or town for adoption upon a 3 COOK v. BELL Opinion of the Court majority vote of those voting on the legislation, as provided by statute . . . . UTAH CONST . art. VI, § 1(2)(b). While we recognize that the “reserved right and power of initiative is a fundamental right,” Gallivan v. Walker, 2002 UT 89, ¶ 24, 54 P.3d 1069, it “is not unfettered, but comes with a built-in limitation,” Utah Safe to Learn-Safe to Worship Coal., Inc. v. State, 2004 UT 32, ¶ 28, 94 P.3d 217. The constitutional provision establishing the right to initiative also qualifies that right by granting the legislature power to regulate “the numbers, . . . the conditions, . . . the manner, and . . . the time” by which initiatives may be placed on the ballot. UTAH CONST . art. VI, § 1(2)(b). ¶10 Thus, although the legislature is precluded from passing laws that “unduly burden or diminish the people’s right to initiate legislation,” Gallivan, 2002 UT 89, ¶ 28, “[t]his does not mean . . . that the legislature may never pass regulations that have the effect of making it more difficult to enact legislation by initiative,” Safe to Learn, 2004 UT 32, ¶ 29. Statutory regulations of the right to initiative are unconstitutional only if they are unduly burdensome. Id. 34–5. ¶11 The initiative proponents point to the language in the district court’s opinion that recognizes “there is a point at which the ratcheting up of required signatures and ratcheting down of time in which to gather those signatures reaches a point where few or no citizen’s group could meet the criteria.” In connection with this language, the initiative proponents argue for an interpretation of “unduly burdensome” that triggers a constitutional violation whenever a law has the effect of actually preventing a party from reaching the ballot with a specific initiative. They further note that while the lower court has found each provision of the 2011 amendments to be constitutional, individually permissible restrictions can become unduly burdensome when considering their combined effect. ¶12 As noted above, the right to initiative in Utah is a qualified right, subject to legislative regulation. Thus, while residents of Utah may not be statutorily deprived of the right to initiative, the legislature does possess the power to define the boundaries surrounding its practice, which may have the effect of rendering the ballot-initiative process more difficult. However, increasingly stringent requirements may, individually or in the aggregate, rise to an unconstitutional level if they unduly burden the right of Utah’s citizens to initiate legislation. See Gallivan, 2002 UT 89, ¶ 27. To avoid this danger, courts weigh the burdens placed on initiative proponents against the legislature’s purpose in enacting the 4 Cite as: 2014 UT 46 Opinion of the Court regulations to determine whether an enactment unduly burdens the right to initiative. As we stated in Safe to Learn: In making this determination, a court should assess whether the enactment is reasonable, whether it has a legitimate legislative purpose, and whether the enactment reasonably tends to further that legislative purpose. In evaluating the reasonableness of the challenged enactment and its relation to the legislative purpose, courts should weigh the extent to which the right of initiative is burdened against the importance of the legislative purpose. 2004 UT 32, ¶ 35.
¶13 When considering the reasonableness of a statutory provision, we assess both the type and the magnitude of the restriction in burdening the right to initiative. The Utah Constitution explicitly permits the legislature to impose four types of regulations on the right to initiative, namely, regulations that determine “the numbers, . . . the conditions, . . . the manner, and . . . the time” whereby legislation may be initiated by direct vote of the people. UTAH CONST . art. VI, § 1(2)(b). Reasonable regulations falling within the above four categories have generally been upheld as constitutional. ¶14 For example, a statute defining the number of signatures required was upheld by this court where sponsors were required to gather ten percent of the number of votes cast in twenty-six of Utah’s senatorial districts in the most recent gubernatorial election. Safe to Learn, 2004 UT 32, ¶ 43. ¶15 Similarly, provisions regulating the manner of obtaining signatures have been upheld as reasonable where petition sponsors were limited to utilizing state residents to collect signatures, Initiative & Referendum Inst. v. Jaeger, 241 F.3d 614, 617 (8th Cir. 2001), where sponsors were prohibited from paying circulators a commission for each signature obtained, id. at 618, where circulators were required to be of legal voting age, Am. Constitutional Law Found., Inc. v. Meyer, 120 F.3d 1092, 1101 (10th Cir. 1997), and where circulators were required to sign affidavits of compliance prior to circulating, id. at 1106. ¶16 Statutory conditions found to permissibly regulate the right to initiative include requiring a quantity of signatures from an established number of elective regions within a state, Safe to Learn, 5 COOK v. BELL Opinion of the Court 2004 UT 32, ¶ 43, establishing a process whereby initiative signers may remove their name and support from the initiative, id. ¶¶ 44, 49, limiting each initiative to a single subject, PEST Comm. v. Miller, 626 F.3d 1097, 1107–08 (9th Cir. 2010), requiring a description of the effect of the initiative to appear on the initiative, id., and requiring the subject of the initiative to appear in its title, Campbell v. Buckley, 203 F.3d 738, 746–747 (10th Cir. 2000). ¶17 This court has upheld a statute providing a one-year allotment of time within which signatures must be gathered, noting that prior initiative sponsors have qualified for the ballot within six weeks to five months. Safe to Learn, 2004 UT 32, ¶¶ 51–52. ¶18 Much of the jurisprudence in this area has proceeded on a case-by-case categorical analysis of whether a specific type of restriction is unduly burdensome. But any restriction may on its own, or in connection with other requirements, rise to the level of being an undue burden if legislative requirements vis-à-vis the number, manner, condition, or time are unreasonably restrictive. In contemplating the quantitative level at which restrictions cross the threshold from constitutional regulation to an unconstitutional abrogation of the fundamental right to initiative, courts consider the qualitative net effect of all the relevant statutory restrictions. Whereas in isolation a provision may not rise to the level of being unduly burdensome, the combined effect of multiple, otherwise permissible, provisions may cross that threshold. ¶19 This case presents a series of statutes that require local initiative proponents to collect signatures equal to ten percent of the votes cast in the most recent presidential election by April 15 of the election year or within 316 days, whichever occurs first. These provisions establish the number of signatures required and the time frame within which they must be gathered, both of which are within the enumerated restrictions the state legislature may impose upon the right to initiative. UTAH CONST . art. VI, § 1(2)(b). ¶20 As to the numbers requirement of the amended local initiative statute, it retained the ten-percent-of-votes-cast threshold but changed the referenced office from the previous gubernatorial election to the previous presidential election. In order to assess whether the amended statute unreasonably increases the number of signatures required, we therefore would need to evaluate historical evidence of the number of votes cast for each of these offices in previous elections. But the initiative proponents do not cite any record evidence of the number of votes cast in prior elections, nor have we uncovered such evidence from our independent review of 6 Cite as: 2014 UT 46 Opinion of the Court the record. In its ruling on the cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court noted that the initiative proponents claimed that the amended statute increased the number of signatures required from approximately twenty-three thousand to approximately thirtynine thousand. Absent any record evidence, however, we cannot evaluate this claim. Nor can we determine whether any variance in the number of signatures required was entirely due to the fact that Utah had recently held its first special gubernatorial election outside of the presidential election cycle, which might have led to an artificially low number of votes cast in the previous gubernatorial race. ¶21 Without any evidence of the practical effect of the amendment, we are left with only the language of the statute. And on its face, we cannot say that requiring signatures equal to ten percent of the votes cast in the previous presidential election rather than ten percent of the votes cast in the prior gubernatorial election amounts to a per se unreasonable restriction on the right to initiative. ¶22 We next examine whether the shortened time requirement imposed by the amended statute unreasonably burdens citizens seeking to place an initiative on the ballot. Although the amended provisions require circulators to collect the required signatures in forty-nine fewer days than we found to be appropriate in Safe to Learn, there is no evidence that the time restriction amounts to an undue burden. The Tenth Circuit, in ruling on a restriction limiting the duration of initiative petition drives to six months, held that while “some measures might fare better under a longer or indeterminate period, the current deadline [of six months] is not a significant burden on the ability of organized proponents to place a measure on the ballot.” Am. Constitutional Law Found., 120 F.3d at 1099. Further, there is no evidence that the initiative proponents’ failure to acquire sufficient signatures via an unsponsored and volunteer-driven petition circulation signifies that no unsponsored and volunteer-driven petition would be able to succeed. Rather, it is possible that the Legal Employment Ordinance simply did not enjoy much popular support. Again, the record contains no evidence on this subject. ¶23 The initiative proponents further argue that the statute has the effect of forcing initiative circulators to gather most of their signatures during the oppressive winter months, especially at the end of the drive where the momentum should be the greatest. However, a careful reading of the statute demonstrates that initiative 7 COOK v. BELL Opinion of the Court sponsors may select any 316-day period within the two years prior to the April 15 preceding the election. See UTAH CODE § 20A-7- 506(1)(a). Thus, an initiative sponsor may file an application on January 1, receive the approval and packets in February, and have the warm weather of April through October to collect signatures and gather momentum. ¶24 We hold, therefore, that the burdens imposed by the amendments to Utah’s initiative process—either individually or in the aggregate—are not unreasonable restrictions under article VI, section 1 of the Utah Constitution.
¶25 We now consider whether an improper legislative purpose in passing the 2011 amendments may void the challenged provisions. Generally, “[t]he authority of the legislature . . . . is limited . . . to the role of providing for the orderly and reasonable use of the initiative power.” Sevier Power Co. v. Bd. of Sevier Cnty. Comm’rs, 2008 UT 72, ¶ 10, 196 P.3d 583. Legitimate legislative purposes include “deterring fraud, ensuring the efficiency of the process, [and] ensuring a modicum of numerical support for an initiative.” Gallivan, 2002 UT 89, ¶ 53. “The legislature may not, however, impose discriminatory restrictions on the initiative right . . . simply for the sake of making it harder to [place an initiative on the ballot] and restricting the initiative power.” Id. ¶26 No showing of such an illegitimate legislative purpose has been made here. As the State notes in its briefing, Utah had held a special interim election to replace Governor Huntsman, who had recently been appointed as United States Ambassador to China. The State claims that as a result of this irregular occurrence, and under the prior iteration of section 20A of the Utah Code, a significantly reduced number of signatures would have been required in 2011 for an initiative to reach the ballot than in prior years. It is reasonable to conclude that the legislature, interested in providing for the orderly and reasonable use of the initiative power, acted to maintain a comparable standard of numerical support by which initiatives might reach the ballot during this period. This is a legitimate legislative purpose. ¶27 In weighing the reasonableness of the burdens placed upon the initiative right against the legislative purpose for the restrictions, we conclude that the challenged provisions are reasonable, both individually and in the aggregate, and are supported by a legitimate legislative purpose. These provisions reasonably serve to maintain a consistent threshold of minimal support required before legislation 8 Cite as: 2014 UT 46 Opinion of the Court may be placed on the ballot via initiative, promoting an efficient and orderly initiative process. We therefore hold that the challenged provisions do not unduly burden the right to initiative.