Court Opinion

ID: 9644912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:08:28.808536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:20.014183
License: Public Domain

*179WELLIVER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I cannot join in the linguistic legal gymnastics which result in holding that the “plain meaning,” 742 S.W.2d at 173, of the words “a Missouri state lottery” is “a Missouri state lottery and/or a multi-state lottery.”
The principal opinion reaches this result by ignoring the only word used by the people to give meaning to the words “Missouri state lottery,” that is the word “a”. Mo. Const, art. Ill, § 39(b)1 states that there is excepted from the general prohibition against lotteries authority for the legislature to establish “a Missouri state lottery.” Instead of saying “a Missouri state lottery,” they could have said “lotteries,” or “Missouri State lotteries,” or any number of other words having a broader meaning.
I do not believe that the drafters of the lottery amendment chose the words which they used in a vacuum. I believe they were aware that some states authorized multi-state lotteries while some did not. True, the words used by other states do not bind us, but the prior existence of such words should be given some consideration in determining the meaning of the words selected to be used by the drafters of our amendment.
It is true that the unpassed attempted legislative enactments of 1987 have no binding effect on us, but where this constitutional amendment specifically authorized the legislature to establish “a Missouri state lottery” the actions of the legislature on the subject, both positive and negative, are matters to be given some degree of consideration by the court.
I am unable to perceive the wisdom of refusing to follow the long accepted rule of construction that exceptions to general prohibitions must be strictly construed. Tichenor, 742 S.W.2d 173. “[Exceptions to general constitution provisions must be narrowly and strictly construed.” 16 C.J.S. Constitutional Law § 18 (1984) (footnote omitted); accord Antieau, Adjudicating Constitutional Issues 52 (1985).
We previously noted the history of lotteries in Barnes v. Bailey, 706 S.W.2d 25, 30-31 (Mo. banc 1986).
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, lotteries were commonplace. “Lotteries, from which the state treasury often took a cut, were commonly authorized by state legislatures to support ‘private’ institutions. Benjamin Franklin,” for example, “once printed eight thousand tickets for a lottery authorized by New Jersey to benefit Princeton.”: D. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience 161 (1965). Governments often relied upon lotteries “to raise money for new courthouses, internal improvements, and the like.” L. Friedman, A History of American Law 586 (2nd Ed.1985). See also M. Keller, Affairs of State 509 (1977). It might be noted that an important United States Supreme Court case involved a congressional authorization for a lottery to raise revenue for Washington, D.C. Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821).
Widespread evangelicism, however, led states to embark upon what became a national outcry against lotteries. Lotteries and gift enterprises became regarded as a particular form of gambling that merited special prohibition. By the turn of the century, almost all of the states and Congress had anti-lottery laws. L. Friedman, supra, at 586; M. Keller, supra, at 509-10, 233. Many states, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi and Missouri, included the prohibition directly in their state constitution. When discussing the constitutionality of such anti-lottery laws, the United States Supreme Court observed:
If lotteries are to be tolerated at all, it is no doubt better that they should be regulated by law, so that the people may be protected as far as possible *180against the inherent vices of the system; but that they are demoralizing in their effects, no matter how carefully regulated, cannot admit of a doubt. When the government is untrammelled by any claim of vested rights or chartered privileges, no one has ever supposed that lotteries could not lawfully be suppressed, and those who manage them punished severely as violators of the rules of social morality. From 1822 to 1867, without any constitutional requirements, they were prohibited by law in Mississippi, and those who conducted them [punished] as a kind of gamblers. During the provisional government of that State, in 1867, at the close of the late civil war, the present act of incorporation, with more of like character was passed. The next year, 1868, the people, in adopting a new constitution with a view to the resumption of their political rights as one of the United States, provided that “the legislature shall never authorize any lottery, nor shall the sale of lottery-tickets be allowed, nor shall any lottery heretofore authorized be permitted to be drawn, or tickets therein to be sold.”: Art. 12, sect. 15. There is now scarcely a State in the Union where lotteries are tolerated ...
Stone v. Mississippi, 101 U.S. [11 Otto] 814, 818-19, 25 L.Ed. 1079 (1879). In Stone, and earlier in Boyd v. Alabama, 94 U.S. [4 Otto] 645, 24 L.Ed. 302 (1876), the Supreme Court upheld antilottery laws against constitutional challenges. See also Douglas v. Kentucky, 168 U.S. 488, 18 S.Ct. 199, 42 L.Ed. 553 (1897); New Orleans v. Houston, 119 U.S. 265, 7 S.Ct. 198, 30 L.Ed. 411 (1886). And in 1903, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law prohibiting the interstate transport of lottery tickets, often referring to the evil of lotteries as “a species of interstate commerce which, although in general use and somewhat favored in both national and state legislation in the early history of the country, has grown into disrepute and has become offensive to the entire people of the Nation.” Champion v. Ames, 188 U.S. 321, 358, 23 S.Ct. 321, 328, 47 L.Ed. 492 (1903). See also In Rapier, 143 U.S. 110, 12 S.Ct. 374, 36 L.Ed. 93 (1892) (lottery matter excluded from the mails). However, other forms of gambling, such as horse-racing, did not capture the public’s attention. The Supreme Court offered the explanation that:
[experience has shown that the common forms of gambling are comparatively innocuous when placed in contrast with the widespread pestilence of lotteries. The former are confined to a few persons and places, but the latter infects the whole community: it enters every dwelling; it reaches every class; it preys upon the hard earnings of the poor; it plunders the ignorant and simple.
Phalen v. Virginia, 49 U.S. (8 How.) 163, 168, 12 L.Ed. 1030 (1850).
Since 1836, Missouri prohibited all forms of lotteries. Section 1 Lotteries, RSMo 1835. In 1865, the prohibition against lotteries became part of the Missouri Constitution. In State ex Inf. McKittrick v. Globe-Democrat Publishing Co., 341 Mo. 862, 110 S.W.2d 705, 713 (Mo. banc 1937) (citations omitted), this Court also observed:
Lotteries are judicially denounced as especially vicious, in comparison with other forms of gambling, because by their very nature they are public and pestilentially infect the whole community. They prey upon the credulity of the unwary and widely arouse and appeal to the gambling instinct.
The constitution still prohibits lotteries in Mo. Const, art. Ill, § 39(9). The general assembly shall not have the power:
Except as otherwise provided in section 39(b) or section 39(c) of this article, to authorize lotteries or gift enterprises for any purpose, and shall enact laws to prohibit the sale of lottery or gift enterprise tickets, or tickets in any scheme in the nature of a lottery....
*181In 1984, the people of the State of Missouri approved a constitutional amendment authorizing a state lottery. The amendment in Section 39(b) provides: “1. The general assembly shall have authority to authorize a Missouri state lottery.” (Emphasis added.) The amendment establishes a State Lottery Commission, provides for the distribution of funds from ticket sales, retail sales agents and limits the use of advertising.
At issue in this case is whether the 1984 amendment permitting “a Missouri state lottery” also permits participation in a multistate lottery.
Rules applicable to constitutional construction are the same as those applied to statutory construction, except that the former are given a broader construction, due to their more permanent character. State at the Information of Martin v. City of Independence, 518 S.W.2d 63, 65 (Mo.1974). In determining the meaning of a constitutional provision the court must first undertake to ascribe to the words the meaning which the people understood them to have when the provision was adopted. State at the Information of Danforth v. Cason, 507 S.W.2d 405, 408 (Mo. banc 1973). The meaning conveyed to the voters is presumptively equated with the ordinary and usual meaning given thereto. Id. at 409. The ordinary, usual and commonly understood meaning is, in turn, derived from the dictionary. Id. Accord, Concerned Parents v. Caruthersville School District, 548 S.W.2d 554 (Mo. banc 1977); State ex rel. Curators of the University of Missouri v. Neill, 397 S.W.2d 666 (Mo. banc 1966); Rathjen v. Reorganized School District R-II of Shelby County, 365 Mo. 518, 284 S.W.2d 516 (1955) ... Finally, due regard is given to the primary objectives of the provision in issue as viewed in harmony with all related provisions, considered as a whole. State at the Information of Martin v. City of Independence, 518 S.W.2d at 65. By following these rules, the fundamental purpose of constitutional construction is accomplished, to give effect to the intent of the voters who adopted the amendment. Rathjen v. Reorganized School District R-II of Shelby County, supra.
Boone County Court v. State, 631 S.W.2d 321, 324 (Mo. banc 1982).
“State” is defined in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2228 (1976) as “a body of people permanently occupying a definite territory and politically organized under a sovereign government almost entirely free from external control and possessing coercive power to maintain order within the community.” “Lottery” is defined as “a scheme for the distribution of prizes by lot or chance; esp: a scheme by which prizes are distributed to the winners among those persons who have paid for a chance to win them usu. as determined by the numbers on tickets as drawn at random.” Id. at 1338.
The plain dictionary meaning of the words can lead to no other conclusion than that the plain and ordinary meaning at the time the people voted on the amendment is that “a Missouri state lottery” means a lottery operated within this state.
While I am aware that one hundred fifty years after the states abolished lotteries as a vehicle for taxation, politicians might reinvent the right of the people to periodically repeat the mistakes of the past. I am not prepared to see this Court either abandon strict construction of our constitution or to see it affirmatively participate in making the mistakes of the past.
The trial court should be reversed.

. Tichenor v. Missouri State Lottery Comm’n, 742 S.W.2d 170, 173 (Mo. banc 1988).