Court Opinion

ID: 9541825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:28:52.436324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:57.775913
License: Public Domain

ON DENIAL OF PETITION FOR REHEARING
BISTLINE, Justice.
I.
My vote to grant a rehearing was insufficient, and so the Court does not take advantage of the final opportunity to reconsider its sole basis for holding in favor of the legislature and against the people. It was the people who were by the Court’s opinion disenfranchised of their constitutional right of referendum.
A present review of the opinion for the Court which issued in January of this year yields the sole basis of that opinion where at page 14 the Court gives its holding and its reasoning in two sentences:
Plaintiffs’ ultimate assertion is that the events which precipitated the enactment of H.B. 2 did not rise to the level of an actual emergency. Whether this is true or not, we hold that the legislature’s determination of an emergency in an act is a policy decision exclusively within the ambit of legislative authority, and the judiciary cannot second-guess that decision.
The obvious fallacy is not as the Court wrote it, that there might not have been events which did rise to the level of an actual emergency — But, that there were no events whatever.
The legislature simply declared an emergency based on nothing. The true holding of the Court’s opinion is, then, that this Court, as its membership is presently constituted, will as a matter of judicial policy yield to the legislature’s policy of making an unsupported declaration of an emergency, and not, as the Court cutely expressed it, “the legislature’s determination of an emergency.” As all respectable constitutional authorities have viewed it heretofore, a factual determination that a state of emergency exists is a prerequisite to a declaration of an emergency. It is that factual determination made by the legislature which courts are not inclined to second-guess. Here, however, no such determination was made — a conceded fact. A declaration was made? Yes. A determination, no.
II.
A sorry aspect of this case, in no way attributable to this Court or any member thereof, is that insofar as I have heard, read, or been able to discover, not one newspaper, radio, or television account of this Court’s opinion was accurately, or even reasonably close to correct, given to the reading public of what the case was all about. Every article or broadcast which came to my attention portrayed it as the Court’s decision as to whether right-to-work legislation was constitutionally valid under Idaho law. That, however, was not the issue, or even considered by the Court. Nor were we asked to consider it.
III.
My earlier opinion closed with this statement, which purposefully left the reader ignorant of what was being alluded to: “House Bill No. 482, 48th Legislature, 1986 Session, smacks somewhat of King George III.” P. 1163 n. 11. Even that provocation caused no stir of media interest. That House Bill was presented to the legislature by Representatives Infanger, Crow, Bayer, Slater, Jones, and Allan, while this Court still had our decision under consideration. The declared purpose of the bill was to repeal the second increment of the judicial pay raise granted by the 1985 legislature.