Opinion ID: 2077353
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 22

Heading: Impossibility of Resolving Issue Without Disregarding Legislature's Exclusive Authority

Text: The fourth Baker test is the impossibility of a court's deciding an issue without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government. [75] The State correctly points out that we have stated: `[T]he control of the purse strings of government is a legislative function.' [76] Fiscal policy issues are the very decisions that have been left to the Legislature by the Nebraska Constitution. [77] We could not hold that the Legislature's expenditures were inadequate without invading the legislative branch's exclusive realm of authority. In effect, we would be deciding what spending issues have priority. The Florida Supreme Court came to the same conclusion: To decide such an abstract question of `adequate' funding, the courts would necessarily be required to subjectively evaluate the Legislature's value judgments as to the spending priorities to be assigned to the state's many needs, education being one among them. In short, the Court would have to usurp and oversee the appropriations power, either directly or indirectly, in order to grant the relief sought by Plaintiffs. While Plaintiffs assert that they do not ask the Court to compel the Legislature to appropriate any specific sum, but merely to declare that the present funding level is constitutionally inadequate, what they seek would nevertheless require the Court to pass upon those legislative value judgments which translate into appropriations decisions. [78]