Court Opinion

ID: 9533981
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:36:02.237432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:14.917837
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE FREEMAN, specially concurring: Although I fully concur in the majority’s opinion, I write separately in order to bring needed clarification to the single subject rule analysis that this court has endeavored to employ. Such guidance is necessary, in my view, in light of the dissent’s characterization of this court’s recent decisions in Reedy and Johnson. Initially, the dissent determines that Public Act 89—21 simply fails to address a single subject as mandated by the Illinois Constitution. 187 Ill. 2d at 366 (Heiple, J., dissenting, joined by Harrison, J.). This conclusion is reached, however, not by any reasoned analysis, but by a mere listing of the abbreviated titles of the various acts amended by Public Act 89—21 and a characterization of the Act as encompassing an “overwhelming breadth of subjects.” This approach fails in that it makes the quantity and facial diversity of provisions the deciding factors in whether an act meets single subject rule scrutiny. On the contrary, an inveterate principle that has guided single subject rule analysis is that the courts are to give wide latitude to the legislature in its choice of acts’ subjects. Reedy, 186 Ill. 2d at 8-9; Johnson, 176 Ill. 2d at 515; Dunigan, 165 Ill. 2d at 255; see also Cutinello, 161 Ill. 2d at 423 (acknowledging that “[t]he number of provisions in an act is not determinative of its constitutionality”). A second and, perhaps, more troubling issue is the dissent’s insistence that the recent jurisprudence of this court has somehow created a separate, heightened analytical step to be used in making single subject rule determinations. 187 Ill. 2d at 367 (Heiple, J., dissenting, joined by Harrison, J.). That is, the dissent has taken the requirement that an act’s provisions have some legitimate relation to each other to mean that all of an act’s provisions must be interrelated beyond their common connection to a single subject. The dissent makes this analytical assumption and then inexplicably attributes the court’s decisions in Johnson and Reedy to that very assumption. I find no support for such a stance. What may be lacking, perhaps, is a realization that the single subject rule analysis employed by the court is already two-tiered. What is apparent from our decisions in Johnson and Reedy especially is that, at some point, a court should look to see whether an act, on its face, involves a legitimate single subject. In carrying out this portion of the single subject rule analysis, the court has considered, for example, whether the stated subject of an act is so broad as to frustrate the very purpose of the single subject clause of the Illinois Constitution. See Johnson, 176 Ill. 2d at 517-18; Reedy, 186 Ill. 2d at 12. An additional component to this analysis is the separate inquiry of whether the various provisions within an act all relate to the proper subject at issue. This is what has been meant by the requirement that an act’s provisions have “a natural or logical connection,” or “a legitimate relation to each other.” Indeed, this two-factor analysis formed the basis for the court’s decisions in both Johnson and Reedy. In Johnson, it was determined that the act’s subject of “public safety” was, on its face, too broad and vague to withstand single subject rule scrutiny and that the act’s provisions failed to relate to a single legitimate subject. In other words, when the purported subject of “public safety” was rejected, there was no proper subject that could reconcile the various provisions of the act in question. Johnson, 176 Ill. 2d at 517-18. Similarly, in Reedy, we determined that the subject of “matters involving county State’s Attorneys” was not legitimate by virtue of being overbroad and that the provisions of the act failed to relate to one legitimate subject. When this court concluded in Reedy “that there is no ‘natural and logical connection’ that could justify the enactment of these various matters in one act,” the court was addressing the absence of a legitimate single subject that could unite the act’s provisions. Reedy, 186 Ill. 2d at 12. In the present case, it is readily apparent that all of the provisions within Public Act 89—21 are related, since they all pertain to the subject of state budget implementation. That is, the Act’s provisions are interrelated and have a natural and logical connection to each other in that they share the common trait of effectuating the state budget. Additionally, the subject of state budget implementation, unlike the subjects in Johnson and Reedy, is legitimate. It is not an overbroad and vague category that attempts to unite discordant measures; rather, it is a definite subject that implicates all of the Act’s provisions in a similar manner. It is for these reasons that Public Act 89—21 does not violate the single subject rule. A third level of analysis, as propounded by the dissent, is not required by the single subject clause, perhaps for the obvious reason that it would drastically restrict the legislature’s ability to enact necessarily inclusive laws. The court’s decision in American Badge Co. v. Lena Park Improvement Ass'n, 246 Ill. 589 (1910), is instructive, for, even under the more restrictive predecessor to our current single subject clause (Ill. Const. 1870, art. IV § 13), the court stated: “Every act must embrace but a single subject, but it may include other provisions not foreign to the general subject, which legitimately tend to accomplish the legislative purpose as to that subject. An act may contain many provisions and details for the carrying out of its purpose. The object of this provision of the constitution is to prevent the joining in one act of incongruous or unrelated matters. It was not its design to embarrass legislation by making laws unnecessarily restrictive in their scope and operation ***.” American Badge Co., 246 Ill. at 590. As has always been the case, all that the Constitution requires is that an act’s provisions be united by a single legitimate subject. Today’s decision, perhaps, serves as a reminder of the limited scope of the single subject rule. Although the rule is designed to combat the type of legislative defects found in Johnson and Reedy, the doctrine is not meant to unfairly hamper the legislature’s ability to pass proper laws whose provisions happen to be multifaceted. As society becomes increasingly complex, acts whose single subjects range from criminal law, to taxation, to implementation of the state budget will necessarily address various laws and entities. Provided that those acts consist of legitimate single subjects and that their contents all have legitimate relations to those subjects, such acts fully comport with the mandate of the single subject clause of the Illinois Constitution. For these reasons, I concur in the court’s judgment. JUSTICE RATHJE joins in this special concurrence.