Court Opinion

ID: 9560355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:48:13.456424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:52.388182
License: Public Domain

ARABIAN, J., Dissenting.
An attachment to the principle of popular sovereignty has been one of the hallmarks of this court’s jurisprudence. Yet *725it is that very principle that the majority breach in declaring that the clear desire of the voters to impose real controls on the stream of money corroding our political life—a desire expressed not once, but twice in the same election—has produced what? Little more than a ban on officeholders’ use of their mailing privileges. I dissent from a result that reduces to such an anemic state the exercise of the powers of initiative and referendum reserved to the people by article IV, section 1 of our Constitution.
The majority’s conclusion that insignificant features of Proposition 73 can be severed from the central purpose of the initiative is flawed. Appraised in light of its dominant purpose, it is plain that those who supported the measure would not have settled for a ban on mailing privileges, a truly trifling “reform,” had they foreseen the total frustration of their overriding aim in passing the initiative—imposing limits on campaign contributions, a goal now permanently enjoined by a judgment of the federal courts.
Moreover, Proposition 73’s ban on public funding is inseparably linked to the invalid contribution limits; it cannot stand alone either. In Justice Mosk’s piquant phrase, Proposition 73 “was offered to the voters as a package deal, and not a smorgasbord” (Johnson v. Bradley (1992) 4 Cal.4th 389, 420 [14 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 841 P.2d 990] (conc. & dis. opn. of Mosk, J.)); invalidating its animating purpose invalidates all of Proposition 73. Under these circumstances, judicial duty and a realistic appraisal of the voters’ intentions require us to hold that Proposition 68, the competing campaign reform initiative, should now take effect. The alternative, as represented by the majority, eviscerates the only real chance at reforming the link between money and politics that the voters of California have had in a generation.
I
A
The essentials of the severability doctrine were formulated by Lemuel Shaw almost 150 years ago; in their rationale and simplicity they are virtually unchanged today. In Warren v. Mayor of Charlestown (1854) 68 Mass. [2 Gray] 84, the Chief Justice wrote that if the valid and invalid parts of a statute “are so mutually connected with and dependent on each other, as conditions, considerations or compensations for each other, as to warrant a belief that the legislature intended them as a whole, and that, if all could not be carried into effect, the legislature would not pass the residue independently, and some parts are unconstitutional, all the provisions which are thus dependent, conditional or connected, must fall with them.” (Id. at p. 99.)
Statements of the doctrine often include a requirement that the part of the law to be severed must be “mechanically” capable of separation. Later cases *726have elaborated on this requirement, dividing it into two parts, grammatical and functional. (See, e.g., Calfarm Ins. Co. v. Deukemjian (1989) 48 Cal.3d 805 [258 Cal.Rptr. 101, 771 P.2d 1247] [Calfarm].) But these refinements are not the essentials: “The final determination depends on whether ‘the remainder . . . would have been adopted by the [lawmaker] had [it] foreseen the partial invalidation of the statute.’ ” (Santa Barbara Sch. Dist. v. Superior Court (1975) 13 Cal.3d 315, 331 [118 Cal.Rptr. 637, 530 P.2d 605] [Santa Barbara], quoting In re Bell (1942) 19 Cal.2d 488, 498 [122 P.2d 22].) Above all else, underlying every formulation, issues of severability are questions of the lawmaker’s intent.
In purporting to glean the intent of those who voted for Proposition 73, the majority lean heavily on the statement of the Court of Appeal in People’s Advocate, Inc. v. Superior Court (1986) 181 Cal.App.3d 316, 333 [226 Cal.Rptr. 640] (People’s Advocate), that “[t]he test is whether it can be said with confidence that the electorate’s attention was sufficiently focused upon the parts to be severed so that it would have separately considered and adopted them in the absence of the invalid portions.” Given the nature of the ballot proposition at issue in that case, I have no quarrel with the Court of Appeal’s formulation. Because the task of a court dealing with a severability problem is to approximate the presumed intent of the lawmaker had it known that the law was partly invalid, it makes sense to suppose that, as Judge Thomas Cooley put it in his famous treatise, first published in 1868, “[i]f a statute attempts to accomplish two or more objects, and is void as to one, it may still be in every respect complete and valid as to the other.” (1 Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations (8th ed. 1927) ch. VII, p. 362; see also Stem, Separability and Separability Clauses in the Supreme Court (1937) 51 Harv.L.Rev. 76, 81.)
Our decision in Santa Barbara, supra, 13 Cal.3d 315, the principal authority invoked in People’s Advocate, supra, 181 Cal.App.3d 316, to fortify its severability analysis, is an even clearer example of the type of measure which seeks to “accomplish two or more objects.” There, a majority of the voters approved Proposition 21, a measure purporting to achieve two goals: “enact[] anti-busing legislation and repeal[] existing [state] statutes dealing with the prevention and elimination of racial and ethnic imbalance in pupil enrollment.” (13 Cal.3d at p. 319.) Despite our holding that the antibusing features of the initiative were unconstitutional, we severed the initiative’s corollary feature—the elimination of a state commitment to school integration independent of constitutional requirements—against a claim that it was inseparably related to the unconstitutional provision.
Although the twin purposes of Proposition 21 could not be enacted, we said that the initiative “reflect[ed] separable methods of achieving [an *727overall] purpose” (13 Cal.3d at p. 331) and reasoned that “those who favor the proposition would be happy to achieve at least some substantial portion of their purpose.” (Id. at p. 332.) It is that statement that the majority seize on as somehow clinching its view that the ban on the use of the frank survives the judicial nullification of the heart of Proposition 73.
While our reasoning and the result we reached in Santa Barbara, supra, 13 Cal.3d 315, are sound, I cannot embrace the view that what we characterized in that case as a “substantial portion of [the voters’] purpose”—achieving one of the two independent objects of an initiative—has any bearing at all on this case. To say that those who thought they were voting for far-reaching and substantial reform of the connection between money and politics in California’s political life would be “happy” to settle for a ban on the use of mass mailing privileges not only grossly overestimates the significance of a minor feature of Proposition 73, but also applies the wrong analytical model in resolving the severability issue in this case.
If a measure seeks “to accomplish two or more objects,” it is reasonable to insist that “the provisions to be severed must be so presented to the electorate in the initiative that their significance may be seen and independently evaluated in the light of the assigned purposes of the enactment.” (People’s Advocate, supra, 181 Cal.App.3d at pp. 332-333.) That test is a sensible one when applied to measures with multiple aims because it helps to assure the court that “sufficient attention was drawn” to the valid part of the measure “to identify it as worthy of independent consideration" in the collective mind of the electorate. (Id. at p. 333, italics added.) But the test is not exhaustive and, because it presupposes that the remainder of the law is not inseparably linked in the minds of the voters to the invalid part, it can yield unreliable results when applied to differently structured measures. It certainly does so in this case.
B
Although we apply a “substantial purpose” test where a measure seeks to enact two or more goals that can be independently realized, measures that have a central or inducing purpose evoke a test with a different emphasis. In these cases, we have applied what might be called a “dominant purpose” test to reach the touchstone of severability—“whether the remainder . . . would have been adopted by the [lawmaker] had [it] foreseen the partial invalidation of the statute.” (Santa Barbara, supra, 13 Cal.3d at p. 331.) The reason for framing the test in this way is prominent on the surface of the earliest formulations of the severability doctrine. As Judge Cooley put it, “. . . if [a law’s] purpose is to accomplish a single object only, and some of its *728provisions are void, the whole must fail unless sufficient remains to effect the object without the aid of the invalid portion.” (1 Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, supra, ch. VII, p. 362, italics added, fn. omitted.)1
More often than not, the cases in which this court has applied a dominant purpose test have been ones in which we concluded that the invalid part was not central to the overall object of the statute, thus allowing us to save the remainder as severable. In at least one recent case, however, we concluded that the invalidity of the central purpose of a measure destroyed its basic rationale and prevented severance. In Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego (1982) 32 Cal.3d 180 [185 Cal.Rptr. 260, 649 P.2d 902] (Metromedia), we applied a dominant purpose analysis to a city ordinance that banned off-site billboard advertising. After the high court concluded that San Diego’s ban on noncommercial billboards was invalid on First Amendment grounds, we considered whether the remainder of the ordinance could be severed. We concluded that although the unconstitutional portion was mechanically separable, the result “would take a strange form.” (Id. at p. 190.) Because the city’s ban on off-site billboard advertising was intended to be comprehensive and that goal would be frustrated without the invalid portion, we held the entire ordinance facially invalid. It was “doubtful,” we said, “whether the purpose of the original ordinance is served by a truncated version limited to commercial signs.” (Id. at p. 190.)
In one of our frequently cited recent applications of the severability doctrine, Calfarm, supra, 48 Cal.3d 805, we invalidated the insolvency standard of Proposition 103, the automobile insurance rate rollback initiative, on the ground that it was confiscatory. We left standing the remainder of the measure, not because of assurances that the attention of the voters had been sufficiently focused, but because there was “no persuasive reason to suppose the insolvency standard was so critical to the enactment of Proposition 103 that the measure would not have been enacted in its absence.” (Id. at p. 822, italics added.)
*729We also held the measure’s tax adjustment provision invalid but severed it from the remainder because the dominant purpose of the initiative could still be achieved: “Proposition 103 was enacted to make insurance more available and affordable, not to increase or stabilize revenues. . . . The deletion of [the tax adjustment] provision will not hamper the achievement of the initiative’s stated purpose,” we said, and “the removal of [the invalid provision] permits the supporters to achieve all of their stated objectives.” (Calfarm, supra, 48 Cal.3d at pp. 840-841, fn. omitted.)
In Sonoma County Organization of Public Employees v. County of Sonoma (1979) 23 Cal.3d 296 [152 Cal.Rptr. 903, 591 P.2d 1] (Sonoma County), we used similar language and a similar emphasis. At issue there was a comprehensive statutory plan to alleviate the fiscal problems of local agencies caused by the passage of Proposition 13 by distributing to local agencies $5 billion in surplus state funds. We held invalid a provision of the plan barring the distribution of funds to agencies that had granted cost of living increases to employees above a specified level. The remainder of the measure was severable, however, in light of its dominant purpose. “The invalid provisions constitute only a minute portion of a lengthy, detailed, and comprehensive measure designed to afford fiscal relief to local agencies by the distribution of the state surplus . . . ,’’ we wrote, and “[t]he basic objective of the rescue plan” would be furthered by our conclusion that “the unconstitutionality of the provisions challenged in these proceedings does not invalidate the entire legislative design.” (Id. at p. 320.)
In City and County of San Francisco v. Cooper (1975) 13 Cal.3d 898 [120 Cal.Rptr. 707, 534 P.2d 403] (Cooper), we considered a taxpayer challenge to a resolution of a local school board setting teacher salaries. Although we found that the bulk of the resolution passed constitutional muster, we invalidated a provision granting employees veto power over board decisions. Despite the taxpayers’ claim that the veto provision was inseparable from the remainder and tainted the entire resolution, we found it “clearly sever-able” because we had “little doubt that the school board did not consider the private ‘veto’ power such an inseparable part of the resolution that it would have declined to enact the resolution in its absence.” (Id. at p. 931.)
Our language in Metromedia, supra, 32 Cal.3d 180, Calfarm, supra, 48 Cal.3d 805, Sonoma County, supra, 23 Cal.3d 296, and Cooper, supra, 13 Cal.3d 898, is not the language of “substantial purpose." In resolving the severability issues presented in those cases, we did not look to the organization of the measure for evidence that the lawmaker’s attention was “sufficiently focused” on the remainder as worthy of independent enactment, or ask whether it would have been “happy to achieve . . . some substantial portion” of its aims.
*730Instead, we asked “whether the purpose of the [measure] is served’ by severance (Metromedia, supra, 32 Cal.3d at p. 190), whether the invalid part of the measure was “so critical” to the lawmaker’s purpose (Calfarm, supra, 48 Cal.3d at p. 822), whether its deletion would “hamper the achievement of the [measure’s] stated purpose” (id. at p. 841), whether “all of [the] stated objectives” could yet be achieved (ibid.), whether the invalid provisions were “only a minute portion of a lengthy, detailed, and comprehensive measure,” and whether “the basic objective” or the “entire legislative design” of the measure would be compromised by the deletion of the invalid portion (Sonoma County, supra, 23 Cal.3d at p. 320). Above all, we inquired whether it was reasonable to conclude that the lawmaker would have regarded the invalid portion as “such an inseparable part” of the measure that it “would have declined to enact the [law] in its absence.” (Cooper, supra, 13 Cal.3d at p. 931.) That is the approach we ought to take in this case.
C
It is obvious that the dominant, indeed, the inducing purpose of Proposition 73, was to enact a “comprehensive regulatory scheme” that would limit political contributions to candidates for public office. (Taxpayers to Limit Campaign Spending v. Fair Pol. Practices Com. (1990) 51 Cal.3d 744, 747 [274 Cal.Rptr. 787, 799 P.2d 1220] [Taxpayers].) One need only read our account of the ballot materials in Taxpayers, or the text of the measure itself, to grasp this fundamental fact. Checking the flow of campaign funds was the central purpose of the measure, the core rationale animating a majority of voter support in the June 1988 Primary Election. Without that purpose—and there is no mistaking that the final judgment of a federal court has permanently enjoined enforcement of all of Proposition 73’s regular election campaign contribution and transfer limits—the overriding objective of the voters who supported the measure cannot be achieved.
To apply in such a context and to such a measure a test fashioned to confirm voter awareness of independent provisions of a law—severing virtually the entire operational part of an initiative represented as achieving a broad reform of political campaign financing, leaving standing a ban on mailing privileges—on the ground that the voters would “be happy to achieve at least some substantial part of their purpose,” yields a result that is intuitively unsound. It ignores the central truth of the 1988 political reform campaign and, with all respect, substitutes in its place a kind of “logic chopping.” Because these minor and supplementary features of Proposition 73—the ban on officeholders’ mass mailing privileges and. contribution limits for special elections—are peripheral to the initiative’s central objective, and because the federal injunction against enforcement of the measure’s *731limitations on campaign contributions completely thwarts its overriding purpose; these elements of the measure are not severable under any rational estimate of the voters’ intent.2
II
Although the majority find it unnecessary to decide the issue, I would take up the additional question whether Proposition 73’s ban on the use of public funds to finance political campaigns can be severed from its unenforceable limits on campaign contributions. The argument that Proposition 73’s ban on public financing has significance independent of its linkage to the initiative’s contribution limits is derived from the fact that, although both of the competing campaign finance reform measures passed at the June 1988 Primary Election, more people voted for Proposition 73 than voted for its rival. That priority in voter preferences is said to support an inference that the electorate’s real desire was for extensive reform of campaign financing without the use of public funds. That is true, of course, but it proves little in this case.
Proposition 68, after all, was not defeated, it was only rendered “inoperable” under the “winner-take-all” construction of article II, section 10, subdivision (b) (section 10(b)) of the Constitution that we adopted in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal.3d at page 770. The voters thus demonstrated their approval of a financing reform measure that limits campaign contributions without the use of public funds (Proposition 73) and one that limits campaign contributions with the use of public funds (Proposition 68). It is also true that, because more voters approved Proposition 73 than approved its rival, we can assign relative strengths to the voters’ preference: First, they wanted reform without the use of public funds. Failing that, they wanted reform with *732limited public funding. Unquestionably, they wanted reform over no reform at all.
It makes little sense to argue, as do some amici curiae, that what the voters “really” would have chosen, had they foreseen the invalidity of the contribution limits of Proposition 73, was Proposition 68 and the fragmented ban on the use of public funds left following the nullification of Proposition 73’s contribution limits. Because no creature remotely resembling such a proposition was presented to the voters, it is bootless speculation to imagine the outcome of such a contest.
That the voters were asked to choose between competing “package deals” and that the ban on the use of public funds was inseparably tied to Proposition 73’s campaign contribution limits is not speculation, however, because the ban on public funding was the principal feature that distinguished Proposition 73 from its rival, Proposition 68. “Proposition 73 will reform the way political campaigns are financed in California Without Giving Your Tax Money to Politicians!” trumpeted the opening sentence of the ballot argument (Ballot Pamp., argument in favor of Prop. 73 as presented to the voters, Primary Elec. (June 7, 1988) p. 34.). Later in the ballot argument, the measure’s sponsors promised that “Proposition 73 Accomplishes . . . Needed Reform of Campaign Financing Without Giving Your Hard-Earned Tax Money to Politicians, [¶]. . . [¶] Taxpayer Financing Of Political Campaigns Makes No Sense! [¶]. . . [¶] Fortunately, you have an alternative to taxpayer financing of political campaigns. [¶] Proposition 73 Is That Alternative.” (Ibid., italics in original.)
Moreover, it is clear from the very title of Proposition 73 that the ban on public financing was indissolubly linked to limits on campaign contributions. As petitioners point out, the connection between contribution limits and the ban on public financing is neither conjunctive nor disjunctive, it is relational. The proponents of Proposition 73 did not promise the voters “campaign contribution reform and no public financing.” Instead, they promoted, in opposition to the rival measure, one indivisible idea, “Campaign Contribution Limits Without Taxpayer Financing.” The notion that the electorate would have enacted a measure, pitched by its sponsors as delivering what a majority of voters indisputably wanted—and without taxpayer expense—that in the end has no valid limits on campaign contributions at all is even more unlikely considering the fact that California had no law permitting the use of public funds to finance political campaigns. In other words, standing alone, a ban on public financing would have represented no “reform” at all.
*733In his concurring opinion, Justice Baxter relies on the statement in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal.Sd at page 760, that the fact that “some voters would have been satisfied with the adoption of either proposition [68 or 73] does not suggest that they wanted both, or that the same voters cast a majority of the affirmative votes for each initiative.” (Italics & fn. omitted.) From this, he infers that the fact that “campaign contribution limits were a part of both measures . . . does not lead logically to the conclusion that [those] who voted for Proposition 73 regarded such limits as the central purpose of the measure, or that they would prefer contribution limits with public funding to no limits at all.” (Cone. opn. of Baxter, J., ante, at p. 724, italics in original.)
The assertion in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal.3d at page 760, relied on in the concurring opinion may be sound as an abstract proposition. However, it is impeached (if not demolished) by exit poll findings that are directly contrary. In an exit poll survey of voters taken during the June 7, 1988, Primary Election, the Los Angeles Times found that “[f]or the most part, people either voted for both Propositions 68 and 73, or against both. Two-thirds of the electorate voted the same way on each measure, not selectively choosing one over the other.” (Los Angeles Times (June 9, 1988) p. 1, col. 4.)
It is thus reasonable to infer from exit poll data that, although a majority of the voters preferred campaign finance reform without public financing, they were almost equally prepared to accept the alternative of publicly financed reform to the result reached by the majority—no real reform at all. Perhaps the surest conclusion that one can draw is that, as we also said in Taxpayers, “those voters who did cast ballots for both Proposition 68 and 73 did so in an effort to ensure that one or the other . . . scheme would be adopted . . .” (51 Cal.3d at p. 761), a conclusion fortifying the view that the voters wanted campaign financing reform above all else.
Moreover, in relying on the statement quoted above from Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal.3d at page 760, the concurring opinion ignores the bedrock on which our holding in that case stands, namely, that Propositions 68 and 73 were “competing, conflicting initiative measures which address and seek to comprehensively regulate the same subject” (51 Cal.3d at p. 770): “Both the differences . . . and the manner in which the two propositions were drafted and presented to the voters,” we said, “clearly indicated that they were offered as alternative regulatory schemes. Each was to add a chapter 5 to title 9 of the Government Code. Each sought to add sections to that code that bore the same number, but differed in content. The ballot arguments also alerted the voters to the presentation of the two propositions as alternatives.” (Id. at p. 754, italics added, fn. omitted.)
*734Last, and even more telling, as the Chief Justice, writing for the court in Johnson v. Bradley, supra, 4 Cal.4th 389, observed, there is every reason to doubt that, standing alone, Proposition 73’s ban on the use of public funds to finance political campaigns “advances in any way the goal of enhancing the integrity of the electoral process. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. . . . [¶] . . . [¶] . . . assuming spending limitations may enhance the integrity of the electoral process, a ban on public funding [of political campaigns] would actually frustrate achievement of that goal.” (4 Cal.4th at pp. 410-411, italics added.)
III
The final barrier erected by the majority to the electorate’s overwhelming desire for the reform of campaign financing is the argument that the court is somehow barred from deciding the very question we explicitly reserved in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal.3d 744. I understand the majority’s reasoning to rest on the proposition that because the rule of Taxpayers is founded on the competing and irreconcilable nature of the measures as they were presented to the voters, we are prohibited from reassessing the relationship between the two in light of transforming postelection events, namely, the federal injunction gutting Proposition 73. To embark on such a course, the majority say, would be “unworkable,” and “produce potential uncertainty” never contemplated by the framers of section 10(b).
The circumstances under which this case arises, however, are sufficiently unusual to permit us to reexamine the question of merger without endangering “settled expectations.” It is conceded that Propositions 73 and 68 have been the subject of continuous litigation from virtually the day after the June 1988 Primary Election. The contribution limits of Proposition 73, its “heart and soul,” have been stayed and have never gone into effect; they are now permanently enjoined from being enforced. We noted the existence of these challenges and the uncertainty of the outcome in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal. 3d at page 771, footnote 13, and reserved the question of the fate of Proposition 68 should its rival prove inseverable. A federal court, we observed, “has recently restrained enforcement of the Proposition 73 restrictions on campaign contributions and transfers thereof. (Service Employees v. Fair Political Practices (EJD.Cal. 1990) 747 F.Supp. 580.)” (51 Cal.3d at p. 771, fn. 13.) Noting that the decision was not final and did not invalidate “the remainder of Proposition 73,” we concluded that “we need not decide in this proceeding whether an initiative measure that has no effect at the time it is adopted because it is superseded by another measure adopted by a larger vote at the same election becomes effective if the latter is subsequently invalidated.” (51 Cal.3d at p. 771, fn. 13.)
*735One of the members of this court wrote separately in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal.3d 744, to suggest that we were adopting “an ostrich-like approach to recent developments in the real world concerning the fate of Proposition 73” by purporting to decide the section 10(b) issue in the shadow of federal court proceedings that even then had succeeded in enjoining most of Proposition 73. (Conc. & dis. opn. of Mosk, J., 51 Cal.3d at p. 773.) The district court’s injunction against enforcement of Proposition 73’s campaign contribution limits has since become permanent; that judgment has been affirmed on appeal by the Ninth Circuit and the high court has denied further review; we ought now to reach the question reserved in footnote 13 of Taxpayers (supra, 51 Cal.3d 771, fn. 13).
It is settled law that “[a]s a general rule ... a repealing clause in an invalid act is ineffective to repeal a prior valid law. This result follows whether the repealing act is void in toto ... or declared totally void because it contains inseparable invalid provisions . . . .” (Note, Statutory Construction: Effect Where Repealing Act Is Unconstitutional in Part (1941) 30 Cal.L.Rev. 108, 108-109, fns. omitted; see also 7 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law (9th ed. 1988) Constitutional Law, § 87, p. 138.) In Taxpayers supra, 51 Cal.3d 744, we concluded that when conflicting competing initiatives are both approved by a majority of the voters, “only the provisions of the measure receiving the highest affirmative vote become operative upon adoption.” (Id. at p. 770.) Reasoning by analogy, it ought to follow that where an initiative that would otherwise be operative is invalid, it cannot, in the words of section 10(b), “prevail” over a prior valid initiative, much less over one approved by a majority of the voters in the same election. Because it is reasonable to assume that a majority of the voters wanted one or the other, but not neither of the successful measures to prevail, any other result would run contrary to “our solemn duty to jealously guard the precious initiative power, and to resolve any reasonable doubts in favor of its exercise.” (Legislature v. Eu (1991) 54 Cal.3d 492, 501 [286 Cal.Rptr. 283, 816 P.2d 1309]; see also Raven v. Deukmejian (1990) 52 Cal.3d 336, 341 [276 Cal.Rptr. 326, 801 P.2d 1077] [describing the initiative power as “being one of the most precious rights of our democratic process”].)
Respondents evoke the spectre of a permanent legal uncertainty, of runner-up initiatives suddenly springing to life years after an election, should we hold that Proposition 68 takes effect in the wake of its invalid and inseverable rival. Although I agree that, for prudential reasons, a declaration of unconstitutionality in response to a challenge brought many years after *736voter approval of an initiative should not invariably result in the revival of provisions of a competing initiative that the voters simultaneously approved, especially if retroactive revival threatens vested rights or firmly rooted expectations, that threat is insubstantial under the circumstances present here. Far more troubling is the reality at hand, where it appears that, entirely as a result of uninterrupted litigation challenges to the validity of the campaign finance reform initiatives, the voters, a clear majority of whom signaled a desire for reform, will be denied the very substance of reform.
Had the federal district court judgment become final only a few months earlier than it did, can anyone suppose that we would have decided Taxpayers as we did? Yet the majority now decline to examine one of the most important issues affecting the political health of the state in the last 20 years simply because our decision in Taxpayers, supra, 51 Cal. 3d 744, became final before the federal judgment. I cannot subscribe to a result that, with due respect to the majority, makes a judgment of this court appear so at odds with the palpable desires of the voters and events in the “real world.”3
Conclusion
I would, in sum, hold that no provision of Proposition 73 is severable from the measure’s campaign contribution limits that have been permanently enjoined by the federal courts and that, under the circumstances presented by this case, the complete nullification of Proposition 73 means that Proposition 68, the rival campaign finance reform measure approved by the voters at the June 1988 election, “prevails.”
It is anomalous that both sides of the political aisle join in this successful effort to thwart the will of the people they serve. Although their fear of reform has been temporarily assuaged, they shall bear the unpropitious *737consequences of tomorrow. The popular will of the electorate will not long be denied. I dissent.
Mosk, J., and Kennard, J., concurred.

The “dominant purpose” formulation harkens back to some of the earliest opinions of this court dealing with severability problems. In Hale v. McGettigan (1896) 114 Cal. 112, 119 [45 P. 1049], we said that severability issues turn on “the nature of the different provisions in view of the evident purpose of the legislature. If the provisions are so interdependent that those which are invalid are to be regarded as the condition or consideration upon which others were enacted, and it is evident that the legislature would not have enacted the statute except in its entirety, and did not intend that any part should have effect unless the whole could be made operative, the entire statute must be held invalid.” In Bacon Service Corporation v. Huss (1926) 199 Cal. 21, 32 [248 P. 235], we used a similar formula, noting that “if the objectionable portions of an act are so connected with the rest of the act as to be inseparable ... the entire act must fall.” And in In re Portnoy (1942) 21 Cal.2d 237, 242 [131 P.2d 1], we again invoked the relation between the parts of a measure, observing that “where the invalid portions of the statute are so connected with the rest of the statute as to be inseparable, ... the entire act must fall.”

The majority opinion chides us by suggesting that we ignore the severability clause in Proposition 73, noting that our “cases require that we afford more respect to a legitimate severability clause.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 719, fn. 10.) This is not the place to trace the curious, even paradoxical, history of the ubiquitous severability clause which, as Sutherland has it, “is regarded as little more than a mere formality.” (2 Sutherland, Statutory Construction (5th ed. 1992) § 44.08, p. 521.) It is enough to note that, under our cases, “[s]uch a clause plus the ability to mechanically sever the invalid part while normally allowing severability, does not conclusively dictate it. The final determination depends on whether ‘the remainder . . . is complete in itself and would have been adopted by the [lawmaker] had the latter foreseen the partial invalidation of the statute’ [citation] or ‘constitutes a completely operative expression of the legislative intent. . . [and is not] so connected with the rest of the statute as to be inseparable.’ [Citation.]” (Santa Barbara, supra, 13 Cal.3d at p. 331, italics added; see also Calfarm, supra, 48 Cal.3d at p. 821 [same]; Metromedia, supra, 32 Cal.3d at p. 190 [same; refusing severance despite a clause].) In other words, although such clauses permit a court to sever the invalid portions, they do not mandate it; the touchstone remains the intent of the lawmaker as it is gleaned through the application of commonsense principles of construction.

(Parenthetically, one can only wonder why the drafters of Proposition 73—who appear in this litigation as amici curiae—or some other partisan of campaign finance reform has not asked this court itself to “reform” or construe the fiscal year provisions of the initiative that the federal courts have found do not pass constitutional muster. The issues- underlying the First Amendment concerns that led the Ninth Circuit to nullify the bulk of Proposition 73 are, after all, matters of state rather than federal law. Under our precedents, they are arguably susceptible to a construction by the state’s highest court that repairs any constitutional infirmity. [See, e.g., Arp v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1977) 19 Cal.3d 395, 407 [138 Cal.Rptr. 293, 563 P.2d 849]; Del Monte v. Wilson (1992) 1 Cal.4th 1009,1026 [4 Cal.Rptr.2d 826, 824 P.2d 632]; cf. Welsh v. United States (1970) 398 U.S. 333, 361 [26 L.Ed.2d 308, 330-331, 90 S.Ct. 1792] (Harlan, J., conc.); Ginsburg, Some Thoughts on Judicial Authority to Repair Unconstitutional Legislation (1979) 23 Clev.St.L.Rev. 301, 310-312.])