Court Opinion

ID: 9858641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:34:20.616069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:55:21.670670
License: Public Domain

ELLISON, C.J.
(dissenting). — I respectfully dissent from the principal opinion and concur in the dissenting opinion of Hyde, J. on the following grounds.
As to referendums, Sec. 52(a), Art. Ill of the Constitution of 1945 provides now, as it has ever since 1908, that referendum petitions may be filed with the Secretary of State not more than 90 days after the final adjournment of the session of the General Assembly which passed the bill on which the referendum is, demanded, save as to certain laws not subject to reference.
As to legislation, See. 29, Art. Ill of the Constitution of 1945 provides generally that no law passed by the General Assembly shall take effect until 90 days after the adjournment of the session at which it was enacted. But to it have been added-an exception and a proviso. The exception covers appropriation acts, and acts passed with an emergency clause expressed in the preamble or body thereof. As to these the act may take effect sooner if both houses of the General Assembly so direct by a two-thirds vote of the membership. The proviso authorizes the General Assembly to recess for thirty days or more and to prescribe by joint resolution that laws previously passed and not effective shall take effect 90 days from the beginning of such recess.
This section was a modification of Sec. 36, Art. IY, Const. 1875, adopted in 1943, Laws Mo. 1943, pp. 1080, 1088, providing that no laws except appropriation acts should take effect or go into force until 90 days after enactment and approval, save declared emergency measures passed by a two-thirds vote of all the members elected to each house. The same section in the Constitution of 1875 had provided that’legislation in general and the general appropriation act should take effect and go into force 90 days after the adjournment of *260the session at which, enacted, save as to emergency measures passed by a two-thirds vote of all the members of each house directing otherwise.
But while these changes in the effective date of laws have been made, the time for filing referendum petitions has remained the same for forty-four years, since 1908, Sec. 57, Art. IV, amendment to Const. 1875'. It has always provided, and still does in Sec. 52(a), Art. Ill, Const. 1945, that “Referendum petitions shall be filed with the secretary of state not more than ninety days after the final adjournment of the session of the general assembly which passed the bill on which the referendum is demanded.”
The people did not change it when they adopted the then Sec. 36, Art. IV, Const. 1875 in 1943, and the same is true of the Constitutional Convention and the people when they retained the same provision in the Constitution of 1945. The Constitutional Convention of 1945 was a more elastic body, able to resort to research and iron out inconsistencies in the instrument. They did not do so. In my opinion this court-is doing violence to the Constitution in’holding Sec. 52a, Art. Ill means referendum petitions must be filed within 90 days from the beginning of a thirty day recess when the section itself says they must be filed within 90 days after final adjournment.
The question is vital here because the referendum petitions involved were filed in time if they could be filed within 90 days of final adjournment, whereas they are insufficient if they should have been filed 90 days after the beginning of a declared recess, to wit, on April 22. I think Sec. 29, [708] Art. Ill refers only to the effective date of bills passed thereunder and has no bearing on the time for filing of referendum petitions.
I further agree with the holding in the dissenting opinion of Hyde, J. that the words law and laws appearing in See. 29, Art. Ill, Const. 1945, do not refer to bills which have only been passed by the General Assembly and have not been signed by the Governor under Sec. 31, Art. Ill, or otherwise become laws under Sec’s 32 or 33, Art. III. The provision in Sec. 30, Art. Ill that “no bill shall become a law until it is signed by the presiding officer of each house”, does not mean that as soon as the bill is so signed it becomes a law. On the contrary it is still a bill, as clearly shown by the concluding sentence of Sec. 30, which provides that “when a hill has been signed” it must be presented to the Governor. Likewise, Sec. 31 provides that all hills shall be presented to the Governor. And Sec’s 32 and 33 refer to bills presented to the Governor as “bills” and not as “laws”. [Italics in quotations are mine].
In view of this Senate Bill 267 was not a “law” when the joint resolutions were passed by the Senate and House on January 21, *2611952, accelerating the effective date of laws previously passed and not effective. It had not then been signed by the Governor, and was not signed until thereafter on March 5. It seems clear the proviso in Sec. 29, Art. Ill enabling' the Assembly to accelerate the effective date of laws “previously passed and not effective” refers to bills which had previously been signed by the Governor under Sec. 31, Art. Ill, or had been passed over his veto under Sec. 32, or had become a law under Sec. 33 because of the Governor’s failure to return the bill. In the specification in Sec. 29, Art. Ill referring to laws “previously passed and not effective”, the word “effective” does not include bills passed by the Senate and House which had not been finally passed in one of the three ways specified. On the contrary it refers to laws which had not become effective in a temporal sense under the opening provision of See. 29 — that is to say 90 days after the adjournment of the session.
Leedy and Hyde, .//., concur.