Court Opinion

ID: 9685291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:29:14.740335+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:04.229922
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Concurring.
I agree with the majority that Proposition 8 (Gen. Elec. (Nov. 4, 2008)) is a valid amendment to the California Constitution rather than a procedurally defective revision.1 I reject, however, much of the majority’s analysis. The majority purports to find in this court’s prior decisions a definition of the term “revision”—one focused on governmental structure and organization—that categorically excludes Proposition 8 and thus avoids the daunting task of reconciling with our constitutional tradition a voter initiative clearly motivated at least in part by group bias. In fact our prior decisions do not establish the majority’s definition, nor does it find support in the text or history of the Constitution. The drafters of our Constitution never imagined, nor would they have approved, a rule that gives the foundational principles of social organization in free societies, such as equal protection, less protection from hasty, unconsidered change than principles of governmental organization.
I
The majority’s lengthy review of our prior cases on the subject (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 418-440) culminates in this conclusion; “[T]he numerous past decisions of this court that have addressed this issue all have indicated that the type of measure that may constitute a revision of the California Constitution is one that makes ‘far reaching changes in the nature of our basic governmental plan’ [citation], or, stated in slightly different terms, that ‘substantially alter[s] the basic governmental framework set forth in our Constitution.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 441, quoting Amador Valley Joint Union High Sch. Dist. v. State Bd. of Equalization (1978) 22 Cal.3d 208, 223 [149 Cal.Rptr. 239, 583 P.2d 1281], and Legislature v. Eu (1991) 54 Cal.3d 492, 510 *478[286 Cal.Rptr. 283, 816 P.2d 1309], italics added in maj. opn.) This is wrong. In fact, until today the court has gone only so far as to say that “a qualitative revision includes one that involves a change in the basic plan of California government, i.e., a change in its fundamental structure or the foundational powers of its branches.” (Legislature v. Eu, supra, at p. 509, italics added.) Today, the majority changes “includes” to “is,” thus foreclosing other possibilities.
Until today, the court has never held that a constitutional initiative was an amendment rather than a revision because it affected only individual rights rather than governmental organization. One reads in the opinion that “a number of our past amendment/revision decisions have involved initiative measures that made very important substantive changes in fundamental state constitutional principles such as the right not to be subjected to cruel or unusual punishment ([People v.] Frierson [(1979)] 25 Cal.3d 142 [158 Cal.Rptr. 281, 599 P.2d 587]) and the right to be protected against unlawful searches and seizures ([In re] Lance W. [(1985)] 37 Cal.3d 873 [210 Cal.Rptr. 631, 694 P.2d 744])—initiative measures that, like the current Proposition 8, cut back on the greater level of protection afforded by preceding court decisions and were challenged as constitutional revisions on the ground that the constitutional changes they effected deprived individuals of important state constitutional protections they previously enjoyed and left courts unable to fully protect such rights.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 442, italics added.) Certainly the initiatives at issue in Frierson and Lance W. made “important substantive changes” in the rights of criminal defendants. Contrary to the italicized portion of the statement, however, the challengers in those cases contended the initiatives amounted to revisions not because of their effect on those rights, but instead because of their effect on the power of the judicial branch. The defendant in Frierson argued that a 1977 initiative reinstating the death penalty was a constitutional revision because it impaired the judiciary’s power to review statutes for constitutionality.2 Amici curiae, who raised the issue in Lance W., argued that a 1982 initiative limiting the exclusionary rule in criminal proceedings was a revision because it impaired the judicial function of fashioning appropriate remedies for violations of constitutional rights.3 Those are the arguments we *479addressed.4 We did not in these cases hold, nor have we before today ever held, that constitutional amendments affecting only individual liberties are categorically exempt from the procedural requirements for constitutional revision.
The history of our California Constitution belies any suggestion that the drafters envisioned or would have approved a rule, such as that announced today, that affords governmental structure and organization more protection from casual amendment than civil liberties. The delegates to the 1849 constitutional convention recognized that “government was instituted for the protection of minorities,” and that “[t]he majority of any community is the party to be governed; the restrictions of law are interposed between them and the weaker party; they are to be restrained from infringing upon the rights of the minority.” (Browne, Rep. of the Debates in Convention of Cal. on Formation of State Const. (1850) p. 22 [remarks of delegate William Gwin].)5 Similarly, the delegates to the second constitutional convention in 1878-1879 *480well understood the charter they were drafting would provide the only effective protection for civil liberties. The initial draft of the 1879 Constitution, in a provision ultimately rejected, would expressly have looked to the federal Constitution for this purpose by declaring “that the U.S. Constitution was ‘the great charter of our liberties.’ Not so, cried delegate [Horace] Rolfe, for ‘we had State charters before there was any Constitution of the United States.’ . . . Even the conservative delegates conceded that reliance on the federal Constitution as the principal author of liberties was ‘a mistake historically, a mistake in law, and it is a blunder all around.’ Thus, the convention’s refusal to label the federal Constitution ‘the great charter of our liberties’ provided a clear indicator ‘that the idea of rights rooted in the state’s own constitution was a robust one (Grodin et al., The Cal. State Constitution: A Reference Guide (1993) p. 15, fns. omitted, quoting Willis & Stockton, Debates and Proceedings, Cal. Const. Convention 1878-1879, pp. 237-243, 1182.) The delegates, moreover, were suspicious of government to a degree that scholars have described as “[generalized [d]istrust.” (Grodin et al., supra, at pp. 14-15.) The task on which these delegates embarked was to create a legal structure for a society, not just for a government. To conclude they intended to protect individual liberties less jealously, and to give them less permanence, than the forms of governmental organization and structure is unsupportable.
The Constitution does not define the terms “revision” and “amendment” (Cal. Const., art. XVIII, §§ 1, 4), but we found these plain English words clear enough when we first considered them in 1894, within the memory of living delegates to the 1878-1879 constitutional convention. (Livermore v. Waite (1894) 102 Cal. 113 [36 P. 424].) We wrote then that “[t]he very term ‘constitution’ implies an instrument of a permanent and abiding nature, and the provisions contained therein for its revision indicate the will of the people that the underlying principles upon which it rests, as well as the substantial entirety of the instrument, shall be of a like permanent and abiding nature. On the other hand, the significance of the term ‘amendment’ implies such an addition or change within the lines of the original instrument as will effect an improvement, or better carry out the purpose for which it was framed.” (Id., at pp. 118-119.) In other words, a revision is a more substantial or extensive change, an amendment a less substantial or extensive one. In the years following Livermore v. Waite, experience with the initiative process led us to recognize that a single, concise change proposed as an amendment could have an extensive, revisional effect on the Constitution. (McFadden v. Jordan (1948) 32 Cal.2d 330, 345-346 [196 P.2d 787].) Thus we speak today of both “qualitative” and “quantitative” revisions. (Amador Valley Joint Union High Sch. Dist. v. State Bd. of Equalization, supra, 22 Cal.3d 208, 223.) Yet it remains true that the scope of the change, and not its subject matter, is the point of distinction.
*481The majority seems to agree that scope, not subject matter, is the determinative point. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 446-447.) Noting that the California Constitution, unlike those of some other states, places no express subject matter limitations on amendments, the majority writes that “[tjhis court would radically depart from the well-established limits of the judicial function were it to engraft such a restriction onto the Constitution in the absence of an explicit constitutional provision limiting the amendment power.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 391.) Ironically, without the support of an explicit limiting provision, the majority in effect engrafts just such a subject matter restriction onto the Constitution with its limiting definition of what constitutes a revision. Rejecting petitioners’ arguments that the voters may not use the amendment process to restrict individual liberties and must proceed by way of revision, the majority concludes that compliance with the revision procedures is mandatory only for changes affecting governmental organization and structure.
The majority opinion also reflects confusion about the meaning of “scope” in this context. A revision can inhere in a change of sufficient scope, not just to the whole Constitution, but also to one of its foundational principles. The procedural requirements for constitutional revisions were intended to preserve both “the substantial entirety of the instrumenf’ and “the underlying principles upon which it rests . . . .” (Livermore v. Waite, supra, 102 Cal. 113, 118, italics added.) Our decisions embody this understanding. The provision of Proposition 115 (Primary Elec. (June 5, 1990)) that we struck down as a qualitative revision in Raven v. Deukmejian (1990) 52 Cal.3d 336 [276 Cal.Rptr. 326, 801 P.2d 1077] affected not the whole Constitution but only a single principle—judicial independence. But the scope of the measure’s “attack on state court authority” was “broad.” (Raven v. Deukmejian, supra, at p. 355.) In contrast, we upheld amendments that impacted judicial power less extensively in In re Lance W., supra, 37 Cal.3d 873, 891, and People v. Frierson, supra, 25 Cal.3d 142, 186-187. Accordingly, scope is the important point. But just as an amendment of sufficient scope to a single principle as important as judicial power can be a revision, even though it leaves the remainder of the Constitution untouched, so too, in my view, can be an amendment of sufficient scope to a foundational principle of individual liberty in our free society, such as equal protection.6
*482n
The question before us then, as I would pose it, is whether Proposition 8 accomplishes a change of sufficient scope in a foundational principle of individual liberty to amount to a constitutional revision. Certainly Proposition 8 affects the principle of equal protection. The initiative, just like the identically worded statute (Fam. Code, § 308.5) we confronted in the Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, “imping[es] upon the right of [same-sex] couples to have their family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that accorded the family relationship of opposite-sex couples.” (Id., at p. 845.) Proposition 8 has not, however, in my view, by this impingement brought about such a broad change in the principle of equal protection as to amount to a constitutional revision.
In the Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, this court determined that the California Constitution requires full equality for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Proposition 8, as construed by this court, reflects the voters’ rejection of one aspect of the Marriage Cases—our conclusion that the principle of equal protection requires the state to apply the term “marriage” to legally recognized same-sex unions. (43 Cal.4th at pp. 855-856.) Historically, this conclusion was new. The right of same-sex couples to have the nomenclature of marriage applied to their unions had been only recently and rarely recognized in American constitutional law, and it ran counter to a common understanding of the term. Even today this conclusion is disputed, both here and throughout the United States.
Disagreement over a single, newly recognized, contested application of a general principle does not mean the principle is dead. Equal protection’s continuing vitality in the present context is shown by this court’s unanimous reaffirmation of its conclusions in the Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, that laws discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation are subject to strict scrutiny, and that—excepting the name—same-sex couples are entitled to enjoy all of the rights of marriage. Accordingly, all three branches of state government continue to have the duty, within their respective spheres of operation, today as before the passage of Proposition 8, to eliminate the remaining important differences between marriage and domestic partnership, both in substance7 and *483perception.8 The measure puts one solution beyond reach by prohibiting the state from naming future same-sex unions “marriages,” but it does not otherwise affect the state’s obligation to enforce the equal protection clause by protecting the “fundamental right ... of same-sex couples to have their official family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect, and stature as that accorded to all other officially recognized family relationships.” (Marriage Cases, supra, at p. 830.) For the state to meet its obligations under the equal protection clause will now be more difficult, but the obligation remains. For this reason I concur.

 I also agree with the majority that Proposition 8 affects only nomenclature and not the other rights associated with marriage, does not invalidate same-sex marriages already in existence when the initiative took effect, and does not change the rule that laws discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation—a suspect classification—must survive the highest level of scrutiny under the state equal protection clause. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 7, subd. (a); see In re Marriage Cases (2008) 43 Cal.4th 757, 840-841 [76 Cal.Rptr.3d 683, 183 P.3d 384] (Marriage Cases).)

 Specifically, the defendant in People v. Frierson, supra, 25 Cal.3d 142, argued in his opening brief that “[t]he second sentence of Proposition 17 [Gen. Elec. (Nov. 7, 1977)] prohibits the judiciary from testing the death penalty against any state constitutional provision. Removal of judicial review is a significant change in a principle underlying our system of democratic government and can only be accomplished by constitutional revision.” (Italics added.)

 The State Public Defender, as amicus curiae in In re Lance W., supra, 37 Cal.3d 873, argued in its brief that Proposition 8 (Primary Elec. (June 8, 1982)), “constitutefd] an improper revision of the California Constitution because it abrogates the fundamental judicial function of providing appropriate remedies for violations of constitutional rights.” (Italics added.) *479Similarly, amicus curiae California Attorneys for Criminal Justice argued that to interpret the initiative “as nullifying judicial power to exclude unconstitutionally seized evidence [was] an invitation to eviscerate the inherent power of a coequal branch of government.” (Italics added.)

 In People v. Frierson, supra, 25 Cal.3d 142, we noted the defendant’s argument that the initiative reinstating the death penalty “contemplates ‘removal of judicial review’ of the death penalty from a carefully built state constitutional structure, thereby resulting in ‘a significant change in a principle underlying our system of democratic government and can only be accomplished by constitutional revision.’ ” (Id., at p. 186, italics added.) Rejecting the argument, we concluded that the initiative “accomplishes no such sweeping result. . . . [W]e retain broad powers of judicial review of death sentences to assure that each sentence has been properly and legally imposed and to safeguard against arbitrary or disproportionate treatment. In addition, we possess unrestricted authority to measure and appraise the constitutionality of the death penalty under the federal Constitution . . . .” (Id., at p. 187, italics added.)
Similarly, we concluded in In re Lance W., supra, 37 Cal.3d 873, that “[t]he restriction on judicial authority to fashion nonstatutory rules of evidence or procedure governing admission of unlawfully seized evidence does not, either qualitatively or quantitatively, ‘accomplish such far reaching changes in the nature of [judicial authority] as to amount to a revision’ of the Constitution.” (Id., at p. 891, second brackets in original, italics added.) Likewise, “[t]he adoption of section [28, subdivision (d), of article I] which affects only one incident of that guarantee of freedom from unlawful search and seizure, a judicially created remedy for violation of the guarantee, cannot be considered such a sweeping change either in the distribution of powers made in the organic document or in the powers which it vests in the judicial branch as to constitute a revision of the Constitution within the contemplation of article XVIII.” (In re Lance W., supra, at p. 892, italics added.)

 The occasion for Owin’s remarks was to persuade the minority, native-Califomian, Spanish-speaking delegates to join the majority, recently immigrated, English-speaking delegates in the effort to draft a state constitution. “Never in the history of the world did a similar convention come together. They were there to form a state out of unorganized territory; out of territory only lately wrested from a subjugated people, who were elected to assist in framing a constitution in conformity with the political view of the conquerors. These native delegates were averse to the change about to be made.” (23 Bancroft’s Works, History of California, vol. VI, 1848-1859 (1888) p. 284.)

 The majority opinion contends I have simply “embracefd] petitioners’ proposed interpretation of the relevant California precedent.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 442.) To the extent the majority opinion means that I agree with petitioners that the relevant precedent is of limited effect and adopts no categorical “governmental structure” requirement for constitutional revisions, it is correct. To the extent it implies more than that, it is incorrect. Petitioners have argued that changes to certain fundamental rights categorically may be made only through the revision process. Unlike petitioners—and the majority as well—I think it clear we have no license to engraft onto the definition of a revision or amendment any categorical limitation the drafters did not see fit to include.

 For example, the requirements that domestic partners be of the same sex (Fam. Code, § 297, subd. (b)(5)(A)), unless one is over the age of 62 (id., subd. (b)(5)(B)), and the requirement that both persons have a common residence (id., subd. (b)(1)). These are important differences. The first requirement contributes to the perception that domestic partnerships enjoy a lower status than marriages (see Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, 830-831), and the second requirement can cause both serious inconvenience and the automatic termination of a domestic partnership (Fam. Code, § 299.3, subd. (a); Velez v. Smith (2006) 142 Cal.App.4th 1154, 1167-1168 [48 Cal.Rptr.3d 642]; Holguin v. Flores (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 428, 434 [18 Cal.Rptr.3d 749]).

 In the Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, 845-847, we explained how the assignment of a name other than “marriage” to same-sex unions creates the perception of second-class status, perpetuates disparagement based on sexual orientation, poses practical difficulties for same-sex couples and their children, and threatens privacy.