Court Opinion

ID: 9796916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:08:04.051095+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:45.662166
License: Public Domain

Rose, C. J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
An initiative petition should present a straightforward, accurate, succinct and non-argumentative statement of the proposition in its title and the body of the initiative.1 This initiative’s description of a “stand-alone bar” is anything but straightforward and accurate, and for that reason I dissent to that portion of the majority’s opinion holding to the contrary.
The initiative begins by stating in section 1 that the smoking ban will not apply to “stand-alone bars.” In section 2(3)(b), it again reiterates that “stand-alone bars” are excluded from the smoking prohibition. Not until the definitions at the end, section 2(9)(k), does the initiative define “stand-alone” bars as those bars that are not licensed to serve food. This substantially limits the scope of the “stand-alone” bar exception, and the prohibition now includes the vast majority of “stand-alone bars” in the state. The title further perpetuates the initiative’s misleading nature by only referring to “stand-alone bars.”
The breadth of the smoking ban is an essential part of the proposition, and I am sure many signatures were obtained because the signer believed that casinos and “stand-alone bars” would not be included in the prohibition, whether they served food or not — the initiative provided as much in sections 1 and 2(3)(b), and in the title itself. While the majority points out that a signer could read through the entire initiative to find the very limiting definition of “stand-alone bars,” it is primarily the initiative’s sponsors’ responsibility to make the language throughout the initiative straightforward and accurate.2
The initiative espouses the noble purpose of protecting children from secondhand smoke. Unfortunately, this purpose is made far less regal by the misleading representations made in the initiative. *894I would hold the initiative sponsors to the representations they made in most of the initiative and exclude from the smoking prohibition any “stand-alone bar,” whether it can serve food or not; and I would do this because the initiative sponsors failed to meet their burden to give a straightforward, accurate description of a “stand-alone bar” throughout the initiative.
In all other respects, I concur with the majority opinion.

 See Armstrong v. Davidson, 10 P.3d 1278, 1282 (Colo. 2000); In re Title, Ballot Title 1999-2000 # 25, 974 P.2d 458, 469 (Colo. 1999); Nevada Judges Ass’n v. Lau, 112 Nev. 51, 59-60, 910 P.2d 898 , 903-04 (1996); Stumpf v. Lau, 108 Nev. 826, 832, 839 P.2d 120, 124 (1992).

 Nevada Judges Ass’n, 112 Nev. at 59-60, 910 P.2d at 903-04; see In re Title, Ballot Title 1999-2000 # 25, 974 P.2d at 469.