Court Opinion

ID: 9594068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:26:55.027805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:58:13.395367
License: Public Domain

KAUGER, Justice,
concurring in result:
I concur with the result reached by the majority. However, I write separately to emphasize that the majority opinion should not be read to signal a return to the teaching of Threadgill v. Cross, 26 Okla. 403, 109 P. 558 (1910). Threadgill prohibited the consideration of even a patently unconstitutional measure before it was submitted to the vote of the people. After In re Initiative Petition
*788No. 349, 838 P.2d 1, 11 (Okla.1992), In re Supreme Court Adjudication of Initiative Petition in Norman, Oklahoma No. 74-1 & 74-2, 534 P.2d 3, 8 (Okla.1975) and Oklahomans for Modern Alcoholic Beverage Control v. Shelton, 501 P.2d 1089 (Okla.1972), Threadgill is viable only to the extent that: a proposed provision is not severable; the constitutional challenge is “nothing more than an abstract opinion on a hypothetical question”; 1 or there is no apparent properly preserved constitutional issue.
We advised parties of the dangers of relying on the narrow teachings of Threadgill in In re Initiative Petition No. 349, 838 P.2d 1, 11 (Okla.1992). We said:
“Even though the proponents continue to cling to Threadgill v. Cross, 26 Okla. 403, 109 P. 558, 562 (1910), this Court implicitly recognized in 1975, that the Threadgill doctrine was frequently nothing more than a rationalization for deferring obvious issues of constitutionality. The effect of this doctrine, especially when it involves transparently unconstitutional proposals, is subject to the perception by the citizens of our state that their votes, so eagerly solicited, are ultimately meaningless acts in an elaborate charade. The danger of Threadgill is that, in effect, citizens may be led to believe that their votes on matters of intense public concern count, when this Court is already fully aware that the proposed measure is subject to being struck down as unconstitutional within months should the voters approve it. Conversely, the vote on an indisputably unconstitutional measure will almost certainly be distorted by wide-spread citizen awareness of the invalidity of the measure. In any event, a truly meaningful vote on the initiative becomes impossible.
The underlying sense of our cases dating back to 1975 is that Threadgill trumpets a triumph of form over substance which calls into question the very legitimacy of the initiative process itself by merely postponing the inevitable. For seventeen years, the majority of this Court has understood that the Threadgill doctrine has been modified to the extent that it no longer operates as a bar to the pre-submission review of constitutional defects in initiative proposals.”
The public should be advised that this Court will not refrain from addressing viable constitutional challenges to a measure in order to prevent a costly and meaningless election. Likewise, the inclusion of abstract constitutional challenges to possible defects will not result in a judicial activism intended to circumvent the right of the people to cast their votes in the initiative process.

. In re Initiative Petition No. 247, State Question No. 639, 813 P.2d 1019, 1031 (Okla.1991).