Court Opinion

ID: 9641877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:42:09.040379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:40.478852
License: Public Domain

STEPHENS, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. While I share many of my brother Vance’s thoughts in his dissent, I do not share them all.
The cases in this Court interpreting Section 51 of the Kentucky Constitution have, over the years, limited the scope of that section and have placed a less onerous burden on the General Assembly as it writes title to legislative acts. In a very recent pronouncement, Armstrong v. Collins, Ky., 709 S.W.2d 437 (1986), we held that the title to an act is sufficient under the test of Section 51 if it contains a general notification of the general subject matter of the content. If the title furnishes a “clue” to the act’s contents, that is all that is required.
The purpose of Section 51 is “to prevent surprise and fraud upon the Members of the General Assembly and other interested parties.” Id. at 443 (citing Commonwealth v. Johnson, Ky., 166 S.W.2d 409, 411 (1942)).
I am amazed that a majority of this Court would declare that the title challenged in this case perpetrated a fraud, or was deceitful, surreptitious, selfish or baleful. See Id. at 444. My only conclusion is that the majority has, in effect, changed the test set forth in Armstrong, and its progeny, without specifically overruling that line of authority.
For this reason, I dissent.