Court Opinion

ID: 9535055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:45:02.572676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:09.813213
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
dissenting.
The Court holds, and I agree, that the first time to challenge the Secretary of State’s decision that a proposed initiative petition in legally proper form is when she submits the proposal to the Attorney General for preparation of a callot title, assuming that the Secretary of State may reject a egally improper petition at all. This first occasion, however, is rot also the secretary’s last occasion to decide whether a proposed initiative measure should be placed in the ballot. I therefore dissent from the holding that the present challenge :ame too late.
*720I.
The challenge to the legal form of the initiative petition in this case is based on Article IV, section 1(2) (d) of the Oregon Constitution, which requires that a “proposed law * * * shall embrace one subject only and matters properly connected therewith.” Subsection (4)(b) of the same section provides that initiative measures shall be submitted to the people “as provided in this section and by law not inconsistent therewith.” The issue therefore arises whether a “proposed law” may be submitted to the people if it is found to contain more than one subject and “properly connected” matters contrary to Article IV, section 1(2) (d).
This is a new issue on which this court’s prior decisions are not conclusive. It arises because Article IV, section 1 was changed in 1968. The background may be briefly summarized as follows.
Before 1968, the constitutional provision for initiative petitions did not contain a one-subject rule. It has been assumed that once a measure was enacted by the people, it would be tested under the one-subject rule applicable to all statutes under Article IV, section 20, which provides that “[e]very Act shall embrace but one subject, and matters properly connected therewith * * although that has not squarely been decided. See Johnson v. City of Astoria, 227 Or 585, 591, 363 P2d 571 (1961); State Ex Rel v. Richardson, 48 Or 309, 319, 85 P 225 (1906), applying Art IV, § 20 to an initiative.
In 1962, the Commission on Constitutional Revision made two recommendations concerning the one-subject rule. The commission proposed that Article IV, section 20, quoted immediately above, be changed so as to read that each bill would be limited to one subject and matters connected therewith. Revised Constitution, Art IV, § 22 (1962) (emphasis added). At the same time, the commission proposed that the one-subject limitation apply to a “proposed law or amendment to the Constitution” when “proposed” by initiative petition Revised Constitution, Art II, § 1.
A “bill” is a proposed law, not a law. An initiative petition also is a “proposed” law by the words of the constitution itself. The purpose of the changes recommended in the Revised Constitution is apparent from the substitution o: “bill” for “act” and the insertion of “proposed law” in the *721article dealing with initiative petitions. This apparent purpose is to move the time for scrutinizing the validity of proposed legislation forward into the legislative process, not leave it to be scrutinized after that process is over.
The rule limiting proposed laws to one subject is not concerned with constitutional limitations on the substance of public policies, such as tax limitations or the guarantees of individual rights. It is concerned with the lawmaking process itself. It aims to enhance the likelihood that distinct policies will be judged rationally on their individual merits rather than being packaged to attract support from legislators or constituencies with special interest in one provision and no worse than indifference toward other unrelated ones.
Once the legislative process is completed, however, it is at least debatable whether an otherwise valid provision of law should be vulnerable to challenge years after enactment, by someone whose personal interest is not in the political process but in escaping the effect of the law. That is the effect of present Article IV, section 20, and it is reasonable to believe that this effect is what the proposals in the Revised Constitution were designed to change.
The Revised Constitution was not enacted. But in 1967, the Legislative Assembly submitted, and the voters in 1968 adopted, a new text for the initiative provisions of Article IV, including the one-subject limitation on a “proposed law.” Although little was said about it in the legislative history, there is no doubt that this change originated in the Revised Constitution, which the legislature studied and considered during the 1963 and 1965 sessions. As to completed enactments, however, the one-subject limitation on “Acts” stated in Article IV, section 20, was not involved in the change and has been left intact.
I conclude, therefore, that under Article IV, section 1, an initiative petition is not eligible to be submitted “as provided in this section” if it is a “proposed law” that embraces more than one subject and matters properly connected therewith.
II.
I agree with petitioners and with intervenors that the ;ourt should not postpone deciding that issue until a possible *722later challenge. I disagree with respondent that a decision at this stage would be an interference with the public’s right to initiate legislation. This measure may satisfy the one-subject rule, although no one besides Justice Lent reaches that issue today. But if a proposal does violate the constitutional rule, it is no advantage to the public to learn this after all the time and effort to obtain its enactment rather than earlier. The one is no more an interference with the right to submit valid initiative measures than the other, and the earlier decision may even come in time to correct a fatal flaw.
Because a proposed law that contains more than one subject is not a legally proper initiative petition, the responsible officials must determine whether or not it is eligible to go through the initiative process. The statutes do not assign the courts a direct role in that determination, as they do in reviewing ballot titles or explanatory statements for the voter pamphlet. See ORS 250.085 (ballot titles); ORS 251.235 (explanatory statements). Nor is review of an initiative petition a lawsuit between proponents and opponents of the proposed measure. Teledyne v. Paulus, 297 Or 665, 687 P2d 1077 (1984). It is imprecise to speak of “preenactment review” by the courts. Rather, a court enters a case such as this only in a form of judicial review of the action or inaction of a responsible official, in this case the Secretary of State.
Under the statutes, the chief elections officer is the Secretary of State, respondent in this case. ORS 246.110. The Court notes that prospective initiative petitions must be filed with the secretary. ORS 250.045(1). The secretary is directed to send two copies of an “approved” prospective petition to the Attorney General for preparation of a ballot title. ORS 250.065(2). The statute presupposes that the Secretary of State has a function to “approve” the prospective petition as to eligibility — of course not as to policy — at this stage. According to the Court, that is when petitioners should have sought judicial review of her action. But the Secretary of State again has an official duty to decide whether a petition is eligible to be placed on the ballot when the actual petition is filed with her for that purpose. ORS 250.105, ORS 254.085.
Normally the manner and timing of judicial review is itself prescribed by statute. ORS 246.910(1) provides:
*723“A person adversely affected by any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State or a county clerk under any election law, or by any order, rule, directive or instruction made by the Secretary of State or a county clerk under any election law, may appeal therefrom to the circuit court for the county in which the act or failure to act occurred or in which the order, rule, directive or instruction was made.”
The statute does not prescribe a time or procedure for such an “appeal,” although the provision of subsection (3) that the courts may give precedence to such appeals suggests that they should be expeditious. I do not disagree with the Court that the secretary’s initial decision to approve or not to approve a prospective initiative petition for transmission to the attorney general may be an occasion for judicial review.1 Thereafter, however, ORS 254.085 directs the Secretary of State to “furnish to each county clerk a certified statement of * * * the state measures to be voted on,” and to do so no later than 61 days before the date of the election. Certainly this is a “directive or instruction made by the Secretary of State” from which ORS 246.910 allows an “appeal” to a circuit court. It therefore is no answer to a challenge at this stage that someone might have brought a challenge at an earlier stage.
The present proceeding, of course, was not brought under ORS 246.910; it is upon an alternative writ of mandamus from this court. This may be a questionable avenue for seeking review, in light of the availability of other legal remedies. See State ex rel Sajo v. Paulus, 297 Or 646, 688 P2d 367 (1984). Because it is a mandamus proceeding, the Court holds that it is barred by laches. I strongly disagree that a court should turn away a challenge to an impending unlawful official action as untimely, in the absence of statutory time limits, unless the subject concerns transactions with private persons whose rights may have been irremediably prejudiced by the delay. See DeFazio v. Washington Public Power Supply System, 296 Or 550, 599, 679 P2d 1316 (1984) (Lent, J., concurring). To hold otherwise in effect means that officials are free to go forward contrary to law and perhaps contrary to the public interest once no litigant has come forward in the time that the court deems reasonable.
*724The Court might well have denied the petition for the discretionary writ and left the issue for later resolution if the proposed measure passes. But having issued the alternative writ, in my opinion it should reach the merits. For that reason, I dissent.
Roberts, J., joins in this dissent.

Possibly another occasion might arise when the Attorney General prepares or declines to prepare a ballot title.