Court Opinion

ID: 9712994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:04:38.164843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:15.678501
License: Public Domain

DUNN, Justice
(dissenting).
I would respectfully dissent.
Article III, § 21 of the South Dakota Constitution reads as follows: “No law shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.”
On the one hand, both the petitioner and the attorney general are in agreement that the real intent and purpose of SB 256 is to permit bank holding companies to own and operate insurance companies. On the other hand, the title reads: “An act to revise the provisions for ownership, powers, operations and taxation of certain banks and *746their subsidiaries and to declare an emergency.”
The question becomes whether this title gives any notice to anyone of a change in policy which would permit banks or bank holding companies to own and operate an insurance company. I submit that any fair reading of the title would not alert anyone that this was the intent and purpose of the act. In fact, it appears to be a careful orchestration to avoid giving notice of the true intent of the act.
The attorney general argues that the subject of the title is the “ownership, powers, operation, and taxation of certain banks,” which broad title satisfies the constitutional requirements of Art. Ill, § 21 of the South Dakota Constitution; and that the title need not include the “object” of the act — that is, to give bank holding companies the right to own and operate insurance companies.
This argument just does not stand muster in construing the constitutional requirement by the courts of this state. In South Dakota Ass’n, Etc. v. State, Etc., 280 N.W.2d 662, 665 (S.D.1979), this court stated:
The provision of the South Dakota Constitution which is claimed to have been violated here is Article III, § 21, the purpose of which, as discussed at length in State v. Morgan, supra, is essentially threefold: 1) To prevent the combining into one bill of several diverse measures which have no common basis except, perhaps, their separate inability to receive a favorable vote on their own merits; 2) to prevent the unintentional and unknowing passage of provisions inserted in a bill of which the title gives no intimation; and 3) to fairly apprise the public of matters which are contained in the various bills and to prevent fraud or deception of the public as to matters being considered by the legislature.
Later on this same page we define the “subject” of an act as the “public or private concern for which the law is enacted.” And in McMacken v. State, 320 N.W.2d 131, 139 (S.D.1982), in formulating the test to be used to determine whether a bill's title adequately expresses its subject, this court stated: “The central question is: Does the title put a person on notice of a germane subject in the body of the statute?”
It is true, as stated in Clem v. City of Yankton, 83 S.D. 386, 160 N.W.2d 125 (1968), that all of the details of an act need not be delineated in the title; but that does not mean that the true intent and purpose (the public or private concern for which the law is enacted) can be omitted from the title. This is the very mischief that the constitution and our ease law seeks to prevent. This title fails completely in providing information that would prevent “the unintentional and unknowing passage of provisions inserted in a bill of which the title gives no intimation”; and in fairly apprising “the public of matters which are contained in the bill and to prevent fraud or deception of the public as to matters being considered by the legislature.” South Dakota Ass’n, Etc., supra.
As stated in State v. Morgan, 2 S.D. 32, 44, 48 N.W. 314, 318 (1891), “[sjound policy and legislative convenience dictate a liberal construction of title and subject matter.” Broad titles have been upheld under this theory, but never where the act fails to give notice of the only real intent and purpose of the act. Since the only real purpose of the act is to permit banks and bank holding companies to own insurance companies, and since a fair reading of the title does not alert anyone of this purpose, I would hold that the title to SB 256 fails to meet the requirements of Art. Ill, § 21 of the South Dakota Constitution, and should be declared void.