Opinion ID: 1932230
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Have The People Validly Amended Section 112?

Text: In 1983 and again in 1986, the legislature submitted to the electorate a proposed amendment to Section 112. Each in turn was ratified by the voters. Each amendment is here challenged, the 1983 amendment for lack of power and the 1986 amendment for having been submitted to the electorate in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution. We consider the 1986 amendment first, where our question on the merits is whether that amendment illegally combined into one what in legal reality are two separate and distinct amendments. If the 1986 amendment survives this challenge and is valid โ and if it possesses ratifying power regarding H.B. 388, our assumption that H.B. 388 violates the old Section 112 is of limited consequence. Similarly, Taxpayers' attack upon the 1983 amendment loses much of its sting. The form and procedure for amending our Constitution are themselves matters of constitutional mandate. Taxpayers argue that the form in which the 1986 amendment was submitted to the voters contravened those strictures. Miss. Const., Art. 15, ง 273 (Supp. 1987). Concretely, H.C.R. 41 presented to the voters the nuclear power plant classification here at issue coupled with a general property classification system for ad valorem taxation purposes. This we are told had the legal effect of combining into one submission two separate and distinct amendments, contrary to Section 273. The evolution of Section 273 aids understanding. Prior to 1959, Section 273, in relevant part, provided that ... if more than one amendment shall be submitted at one time, they shall be submitted in such a manner and form that the people may vote for or against such amendment separately... . Miss. Const., Art. 15, ง 273 (1958). In 1959, that portion of Section 273 was validly amended to provide as follows: ... if more than one amendment shall be submitted at one time, they shall be submitted in such manner and form that the people may vote for or against each amendment separately; and, notwithstanding the division of the Constitution into sections, the Legislature may provide in its resolution for one or more amendments pertaining and relating to the same subject or subject matter, and may provide for one or more amendments to an article of the Constitution pertaining and relating to the same subject or subject matter, which may be included in and voted on as one amendment... . Our question is whether H.C.R. 41 runs afoul of post-1959 Section 273. Does H.C.R. 41 submit to the electorate multiple amendments which under a faithful reading of Section 273 is proscribed? If the answer be, No, we need pursue this assignment of error no further. Any infirmity in the 1983 amendment, S.C.R. 519, becomes moot as it was carried forward in relevant part in H.C.R. 41. Moreover, H.C.R. 41 quite apparently empowers the legislature to enact H.B. 388, subject only to the retroactivity and local and private law challenges discussed below. Our Constitution โ any constitution โ is a document presumed capable of ordering human affairs decades beyond the time of its ratification under circumstances beyond the prescience of the draftsmen. Dye v. State ex rel. Hale, 507 So.2d 332, 342 (Miss. 1987); Frazier v. State By and Through Pittman, 504 So.2d 675, 694 (Miss. 1987); Alexander v. State ex rel. Allain, 441 So.2d 1329, 1333 (Miss. 1983). We should read and enforce the Constitution in the manner which best fits its language, is most consistent in principle with the best justification which may be given for that language, and which best serves our state today. See Alexander v. State ex rel. Allain, 441 So.2d 1329, 1334, 1339 (Miss. 1983); Stepp v. State, 202 Miss. 725, 729-30, 735-36, 32 So.2d 447, 447-48, 33 So.2d 307, 309 (1948); Albritton v. City of Winona, 181 Miss. 75, 102-03, 178 So. 799, 806 (1938); Moore v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 155 Miss. 818, 822-23, 125 So. 411, 412 (1930). These principles inform interpretation of Section 273 as well as more substantive constitutional law. Constitutions stabilize society. They insulate us from the passions of the moment's majority. Yet societies grow and, it is to be hoped, mature, and no constitution serves well that unreasonably inhibits that growth. An amendment process is vital if our society be vital. Some such notion in part justifies Section 273, whose interpretation should be consistent with that justification. The reading we give Section 273 should also be that which best fits the words employed and as well the life experience those words have enjoyed. But there is more. Section 273 contemplates separate submission of separate amendments. This is so that persons may vote for or against each amendment separately. This both in theory and practical effect facilitates a true expression of the will of the people in the amendment referendum process. The language is best justified against a backdrop of sensitivity to the discriminating citizen who just might favor one amendment and oppose another. Still any defensible reading of Section 273 must fit the entire text. That text, whatever it means, recognizes the impracticability of submitting for separate vote every matter that would change within the constitution a point of substance. We have had no occasion to read post-1959 Section 273, and in that superficial sense we write on a clean slate. What was added in 1959 was the proviso that two arguably overlapping classes of multiple amendments could be voted on as one amendment. These are: (a) multiple amendments relating to the same subject or subject matter, and (b) multiple amendments to an article of the Constitution pertaining and relating to the same subject or subject matter. Surely, the 1959 amendment changes something of Section 273 as it stood before. Our case law exists as intermediate chapters of the Section 273 chain novel. It is all post-1890 but pre-1959. Those chapters nevertheless inform the meaning of Section 273 today. Some forty-five (45) years ago, we held that, [i]n order to constitute more than one amendment [and thus require separate submission under old Section 273], the proposition submitted must relate to more than one subject and have at least two (2) distinct and separate purposes not dependent upon or connected with each other. State ex rel. Collins v. Jones, 106 Miss. 522, 563, 64 So. 241, 249 (1914). Past that point, our pre-1959 chapters have not been characterized by consistency. Compare State v. Brantley, 113 Miss. 786, 74 So. 662 (1917) (holding that Laws 1916, ch. 159 satisfied ง 273), and Power v. Robertson, 130 Miss. 188, 93 So. 769 (1922) (quite inconsistently holding that Laws 1916, ch. 159 violated ง 273). Nevertheless, we may glean from the cases interpreting the old Section 273 certain principles not without present utility. Certain maxims expressed in those decisions may be found in numerous opinions from other courts construing similar constitutional provisions. If, in the light of common sense, the proposed amendments have to do with different subjects, if they are so essentially unrelated that their association is artificial, they are not one; but if they may be logically viewed as parts or aspects of a single plan, then the constitutional requirement is met in their submission as one amendment. State v. Brantley, 113 Miss. 786, 799, 74 So. 662, 666 (1917); State v. Cook, 44 Ohio App. 501, 185 N.E. 212 (1932); State v. Alderson, 49 Mont. 387, 142 P. 210 (1914). The unity of object is to be looked for in the ultimate end, and not in the details or steps leading to the end. Brantley, 113 Miss. 786, 799, 74 So. 662, 666 (1917); Reid v. Jones, 261 Ark. 550, 551 S.W.2d 191 (1977); Holton v. State, 28 Fla. 303, 9 So. 716 (1891). But we may not merely proceed upon these principles, our history and the justifications enumerated above. Our interpretation is not of multiple amendment referendum clauses generally. Our interpretation must best fit the particular multiple amendment referendum clause numbered Section 273 as it read in 1986. Notwithstanding the principles, justifications and history recited above, multiple amendments relating to the same subject or subject matter may be submitted together so that the voter has but two choices: approve them all or reject them all. It is in light of the teachings of history, the force of principle, and the requirements of justification and fit that we examine the two amendments at issue. [3] H.C.R. 41 as ratified (1) authorized the legislature to deny a county the right to levy taxes on a nuclear-powered electrical generating plant, and (2) altered the classification system for taxation. Taxpayers argue that these two provisions may not logically be viewed as parts or aspects of a single plan, that the goal of one is to shift certain tax revenues from a specific county to the state, while the goal of the other is to classify property and establish the assessment ratio for each class. Again a page of history. [4] In State ex rel. McClurg v. Powell, 77 Miss. 543, 27 So. 927 (1900), this Court was faced with a challenge to a proposed constitutional amendment based upon the multiple amendments portion of old Section 273. The challenged proposition to amend would have made elective the offices of justice/judge of the supreme, circuit and chancery courts. This would, in effect, have repealed five existing sections of the Mississippi Constitution, three of which authorized the Governor to appoint supreme court justices, and two of which required the districting of the state into circuit and chancery court districts, and the appointment by the Governor of such judges. The Court developed a narrow test in reviewing such proposed amendments by stating: Whether amendments are one or many must be solved by their inherent nature, by the consideration of whether they are separate and independent of each of the other so that each can stand alone with the other, leaving the constitutional system symmetrical, harmonious, and independent on the subject. Powell, at 572, 27 So. at 931. In State ex rel. Collins v. Jones, 106 Miss. 522, 64 So. 241 (1914), this Court was again faced with a challenge to a proposed amendment to the Mississippi Constitution that would make circuit and chancery court judges elected officials instead of appointees of the Governor. Again the challenge was based upon a claim that the proposal was in effect two amendments embodied in one, in violation of old Section 273. The Court, in rendering its decision, heavily criticized Powell as far too narrow. Jones, at 564-65, 64 So. at 249. The Court reasoned that under the Powell approach it would be practically impossible to amend the Constitution, for any amendment that may be proposed could surely be divided to produce multiple amendments. Id. Instead, the Court stated, as the proper test, that: In order to constitute more than one amendment, the proposition submitted must relate to more than one subject and have at least two distinct and separate purposes not dependent upon or connected with each other. [Emphasis added] Id. at 545, 64 So. at 243. Upon this basis, and under this more liberal test, the Court found but one purpose and subject in the proposed amendment. Jones is our pre-1959 case most consistent in principle with modern Section 273. Indeed, the 1959 amendment to Section 273 may be read as having incorporated the same subject test applied by this Court in Jones, supra, and adding an additional same subject matter test. The new Section 273 language, however, does not include the two distinct and separate purposes part of the Jones formulation. This is significant in that two amendments may be motivated each by a distinct and separate purpose but may yet pertain to and relate to the same subject or subject matter. Current Section 273 thus requires a broader than Jones reading, a proposition this day of dispositive power. House Concurrent Resolution 41 has as its single subject the revision of constitutional principles regulating Mississippi's ad valorem tax system. In our view the subject of H.C.R. 41 is property classification for ad valorem tax purposes. Nuclear-powered electrical generating plants are one classification of property, along with other utility property, residential property, other real property and the like. There is no natural law of property classification, that being in this state a function of the positive constitutional law. That the light bulb shines as bright, without regard to the power source, imposes no constitutional impediment to separate classification of nuclear and non-nuclear power plants. Without doubt, a rational voter may have favored the nuclear power plant provisions of the amendment and opposed the other classifications, or vice versa. But within the former provision, a rational voter may have favored conferring legislative power to limit county taxation of such nuclear facilities but opposed the denial of such county taxation authority altogether. And vice versa. And within the remainder of the classification scheme, a rational voter may have approved assessing all single family residences at ten percent of true value, while opposing a fifteen percent assessment ratio for all other real property โ because it is too high or not high enough. The insight of State ex rel. Collins v. Jones, 106 Miss. 522, 564-65, 64 So. 241, 249 (1914) remains with us: that any amendment expressing more than a single thought is inevitably divisible, so that rational voters may favor one part and not another. A brief perusal of the amendments adopted since 1890 makes apparent that practically all run afoul of Taxpayers' reading of Section 273. Candor requires recognition of the possibility of two wholly distinct political motivations undergirding H.C.R. 41. The general property classification system may be seen as the latest chapter in the legislative effort at evisceration of the effect of State Tax Commission v. Fondren, 387 So.2d 712 (Miss. 1980). The provisions relating to nuclear power plants may be read unrelatedly, as a greedy grab of Claiborne County's newfound pot of gold โ none of the service area counties showed interest in sharing Claiborne County's one time poverty but all want a share of her new found wealth. None of this is of consequence today, for the distinct and separate purposes part of the Jones formulation was not carried forward into post-1959 Section 273. Careful thought suggests a further blunting of the separate purposes argument. The citizen has some indirect protection against the political ploy of lumping together controversial and attractive amendments, although there is no legal mandate for such. The democratically elected constituent assembly proposes amendments such as H.C.R. 41. That assembly, our legislature, is the citizens' indirect voice. With far greater facility, each legislative house first in committee and then on the floor may haggle and debate the particulars of the multiple amendments. No proposed amendment ever goes on the referendum ballot until it has received a two-thirds majority vote of each house. We do not regard this indirect role of each qualified elector in the shaping of amendments without practical, theoretical or legal significance. Of course, nothing said thus far has suggested any mathematical or scientific formula into which we might feed the data and receive a right answer to Taxpayers' Section 273 challenge. Integrity in judgment is the essence of the judicial function in such cases and requires in the end that we identify and give deference to the principles of judicial review applicable in today's special context. Without doubt, our constitutional scheme contemplates the power of judicial review of legislative enactments. Alexander v. State ex rel. Allain, 441 So.2d 1329, 1333 (Miss. 1983). That power may be exercised affirmatively, however, only where the legislation under review be found in palpable conflict with some plain provision of the... constitution. Hart v. State, 87 Miss. 171, 176, 39 So. 523, 524 (1905). On like principles we review concurrent resolutions submitting to the electorate proposed constitutional amendments. The unconstitutionality of a statute or concurrent resolution must be made to appear clearly before this Court has authority to hold the statute or resolution, in whole or in part, of no force or effect. See, e.g., Mississippi Power Co. v. Goudy, 459 So.2d 257, 263, 274 (Miss. 1984); Anderson v. Fred Wagner & Roy Anderson, Jr., Inc., 402 So.2d 320, 321 (Miss. 1981); Clark v. State ex rel. Mississippi State Medical Association, 381 So.2d 1046, 1048 (Miss. 1980); Russell Investment Corp. v. Russell, 182 Miss. 385, 419, 182 So. 102, 107 (1938); Miller v. State, 130 Miss. 564, 585, 94 So. 706, 709 (1923). To state that there is reasonable doubt regarding the constitutionality of an act such as H.C.R. 41 brings one close to conceding it constitutionally valid. Ivy v. Robertson, 220 Miss. 364, 370, 70 So.2d 862, 865 (1954); Russell Investment Corp. v. Russell, 182 Miss. 385, 419, 182 So. 102, 107 (1938); State ex rel. Greaves v. Henry, 87 Miss. 125, 143, 40 So. 152, 154 (1906). The point is put otherwise. We have dozens of cases stating, often without citation of authority because the point is so clear, that legislative actions are presumed constitutional, albeit rebuttably so, see, e.g., Mississippi Power Co. v. Goudy, 459 So.2d 257, 263 (Miss. 1984); Hart v. State, 87 Miss. 171, 176-77, 39 So. 523, 524 (1905), and this is as true of concurrent resolutions as of statutes. This presumption is not idly accorded. It is based in the fact that a resolution such as H.C.R. 41 comes before this Court sustained and authenticated by the sanction and approval of one of the three great departments of state government. Russell Investment Corp. v. Russell, 182 Miss. 385, 419, 182 So. 102, 107 (1938). See also Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 473, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 2772, 65 L.Ed.2d 902, 920-21 (1980). The legislators who โ by a two thirds majority vote โ have passed the concurrent resolution here under review have taken the same oath as have we to uphold and support the Constitution. See Alexander v. State ex rel. Allain, 441 So.2d 1329, 1347 (Miss. 1983); see also Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 64, 101 S.Ct. 2646, 2651, 69 L.Ed.2d 478, 486 (1981). It has long been settled in this state that, when the constitutionality of a statute is drawn into question, a construction will be placed upon it, if reasonably possible, to enable it to withstand the constitutional attack and to carry out the purpose embedded in the legislative language. Chassanoil v. City of Greenwood, 166 Miss. 848, 860, 148 So. 781, 783 (1933); see also State ex rel. Greaves v. Henry, 87 Miss. 125, 143-44, 40 So. 152, 154 (1906); Hart v. State, 87 Miss. 171, 176-77, 39 So. 523, 524 (1905); Burnham v. Sumner, 50 Miss. 517, 520-21 (1874). The same rule of construction applies when the challenge is leveled at a concurrent resolution under which an amendment to the Constitution has been submitted to the electorate. A like approach applies to the construction of the open-textured language of constitutional provisions such as Section 273; that is, out of deference to the authority and prerogative of the legislature, we will ordinarily afford the gray areas of the Constitution any reasonable construction that will avoid unconstitutionality of the statute. Miller v. State, 130 Miss. 564, 585, 94 So. 706, 709 (1923). This is for the obvious reason that the propriety, wisdom and expediency of a proposed constitutional amendment are questions for the people โ indirectly through their legislature and directly through referendums โ and not this Court. Anderson v. Fred Wagner & Roy Anderson, Jr., Inc., 402 So.2d 320, 321 (Miss. 1981); Russell Investment Corp. v. Russell, 182 Miss. 385, 419, 182 So. 102, 107 (1938). In the final analysis we have been asked to review judicially not just an enactment of the legislature but a constitutional amendment affirmatively ratified by the people. More so than in ordinary cases of judicial review, we exercise an authority requiring the utmost delicacy. Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U.S. 142, 148, 48 S.Ct. 105, 107, 72 L.Ed. 206, 210 (1927) (Holmes, J.). We should proceed with caution, Russell Investment Corp. v. Russell, 182 Miss. 385, 419, 182 So. 102, 107 (1938); State ex rel. Greaves v. Henry, 87 Miss. 125, 144, 40 So. 152, 154 (1906). These thoughts in mind, we return to the form and substance of H.C.R. 41, scrutinized under the force of modern Section 273, best and most legitimately read. H.C.R. 41 may fairly be read as relating to a single subject or subject matter: classification of property for ad valorem taxation purposes. [5] Because it may be so read, nothing in Section 273 invalidates H.C.R. 41 nor its ratification and incorporation into Section 112. The assignment of error is denied.