Opinion ID: 2621328
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The California authority

Text: In 1911, California amended its constitution to reserve the power of initiative and referendum to county and city electors, and to authorize the Legislature to establish procedures facilitating the electorate's exercise of its right. The California Legislature subsequently enacted statutes providing for the circulation of petitions, calling elections and other procedures required to enact initiative and referendum measures. [23] In 1927, the California Supreme Court first applied the 1911 amendment to zoning matters in Dwyer v. City Council of Berkeley, [24] and directed the Berkeley City Council to submit a zoning ordinance it had enacted to referendum. The Dwyer court reasoned that since the city council had the authority to enact legislative zoning ordinances, the people also had the power to enact or pass upon zoning ordinances by initiative or referendum. [25] The court rejected an argument that the referendum denied affected persons the right, granted by municipal ordinance, to appear before the city council and be heard. The court explained that all persons interested in the measure had to the moment of its adoption [by the city council] an opportunity to appear and oppose or advocate the passage of the proposed ordinance. So far as the adoption of the ordinance was concerned, no right was denied them. By the petition for a referendum the matter has been removed from the forum of the council to the forum of the electorate. The proponents and opponents are given all the privileges and rights to express themselves in an open election that a democracy or republican form of government can afford to its citizens.... It is clear that the constitutional right reserved by the people to submit legislative questions to a direct vote cannot be abridged by any procedural requirements.... [26] Two years later, in Hurst v. City of Burlingame, [27] the California Supreme Court invalidated a zoning ordinance adopted by city electors under their constitutional initiative power. An affected property owner, contending that he had been denied the right to a public hearing established by the state's Zoning Act of 1917, had successfully sued to enjoin enforcement of the ordinance. [28] On appeal, the Hurst court began with the proposition that an ordinance proposed by electors must constitute legislation that the legislative body has the power to enact, and decided that since the City's board of trustees could not lawfully enact a zoning ordinance without complying with the state law's notice and hearing requirements, the voters could not adopt such an ordinance by initiative. [29] To reach this result, the Hurst court presumed a conflict between the state's initiative procedural law and its zoning law, and resolved it by deeming the zoning act, which was a special statute dealing with a particular subject, as controlling over the initiative procedural law, which was general in scope. [30] The court distinguished Dwyer in part on the ground that it upheld a referendum, and thus persons had already been given notice and a hearing when the ordinance was originally enacted, and ignored Dwyer 's observation that the right to initiate legislation exists if the right of referendum can be invoked. [31] And, although the court held that the Burlingame initiative was invalid for noncompliance with the state zoning law, the court added as dictum a comment that later overshadowed its statutory holding: When the [state zoning] statute requires notice and hearing as to the possible effect of a zoning law upon property rights[,] the action of the legislative body becomes quasi judicial in character, and the statutory notice and hearing then becomes necessary in order to satisfy the requirements of due process and may not be dispensed with. [32] In 1974, a year after Forman was decided, the California Supreme Court decided San Diego Building Contractors Ass'n v. City Council of San Diego, [33] and expressly disapproved Hurst 's constitutional dictum. In deciding that a San Diego City Charter provision that required the planning commission to provide for notice and hearing did not impinge on the electorate's right to initiate zoning legislation, the court rejected an argument that affected property owners had a constitutional due process right to notice and hearing before any zoning law could be enacted. The court explained that the entire due process argument was founded on an erroneous premise, since our nation's legal system permits the enactment of statutes of general application without affording each potentially affected person notice and hearing; due process requires notice and hearing only in quasi-judicial or adjudicatory settings, and not with respect to the adoption of general legislation. [34] The court further rejected an argument that Hurst and later cases relying upon Hurst establish the constitutional principle that notice and hearing are required before zoning legislation may be enacted. The court explained that Hurst rested exclusively on statutory interpretation, not on constitutional principles, and that later cases misconstruing Hurst 's notice and hearing language did so in pure dictum. [35] The court concluded that San Diego's electors could validly enact the zoning ordinance at issue, which established a uniform maximum height for buildings erected along the city's coast in the future, through the initiative process. [36] Two years later, in Associated Home Builders v. City of Livermore, [37] the California Supreme Court expressly overruled Hurst 's holding that the state zoning act's notice and hearing requirements applied to zoning ordinances enacted by initiative. The court began its analysis by observing: At first glance it becomes apparent that something must be wrong with the reasoning in Hurst. Starting from a premise of equalitythat the voters possess only the same legislative authority as does the city council Hurst arrived at the conclusion that only the council and not the voters had the authority to enact zoning measures. Thus in the name of equality Hurst decrees inequality. The errors which lead to this non-sequitur appear after further analysis. [38] The court then explained how Hurst went wrong. First, Hurst erroneously contrived a conflict between state zoning statutes and initiative statutes, when none existed, since the Legislature plainly drafted the notice and hearing requirements with a view toward ordinances adopted by city council vote and never intended that they apply to the enactment of zoning initiatives. [39] Second, Hurst erroneously treated the case as involving a conflict between two statutes of equal statusone governing zoning and one governing initiative proceduresand overlooked a crucial distinction: the right of initiative is guaranteed by the state's constitution, and the initiative statute simply spells out procedures for its exercise. Thus, interpreting the state zoning law's hearing and notice requirements to bar initiative land use ordinances would be of doubtful constitutionality, while all such doubt would dissolve by interpreting the zoning law to limit the notice and hearing requirements to ordinances enacted by city councils. In addition, the zoning law's status as a special statute would not support Hurst, since special legislation is still subject to constitutional limitations. [40] Third, Hurst erred in distinguishing Dwyer on the ground that Dwyer involved a referendum on a zoning ordinance, since Dwyer itself pointed out that `if the right of referendum can be invoked, the corollary right to initiate legislation must be conceded to exist.' [41] Resting upon the well-established precepts that apparently conflicting statutes should be reconciled if possible, that a statute should be construed to eliminate doubts about its constitutionality, and that the initiative power should be broadly construed with all doubts resolved in its favor, the court concluded that Hurst was incorrectly decided and overruled it. [42]