Court Opinion

ID: 9796640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:01:23.660135+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:53.214675
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
concurring.
€ 1 Neither the polite legal language of the court's formal order nor the texts offered by nonconcurring justices unveil the eclipsed reality of today's controversy. It is a clash of wills unable to reach a compromise-the interaction of an immovable object confronting the irresistible force. Each side seems utterly unwilling to agree with the other on who should bear the political blame for the passage of the infirm legislation and how the quantum of potential disadvantage (likely to flow from the condemned enactment) should be allocated. "
12 The primary focus of today's pronouncement is on the hegemony of the State's constitution. Although the order settles, as it must, the vitiating infirmity present in text of the bill under serutiny, the court's message is not entirely deaf or oblivious to its additional, equally important rolée-that of preventing, so far as possible, a consequential destruction of government either by a total shut-down or by partial disruption of its services.
T3 I am. confident that at the rehearing stage-both sides will assist us in the task of cushioning the immediate negative fallout from today's sentence of nullity by crafting a sensible solution that will satisfy the warring parties and prevent serious harm to the people they are duty-bound to serve.
T4 The nonconcurring justices' prophecy of gloom and doom offers us a less-than realistic prediction of what is likely to unfold in postdecisional stages. The immediate effect of today's command may be stayed on motion to suspend the writ's present effectiveness. The parties will on rehearing have ample opportunity to guide the court to a reasonably safe remedy by carefully exploring through the arcana of an unforeshadowed change in today's course of constitutional jurisprudence. See Strelecki, et al v. Oklahoma Tax Commission, 1993 OK 122, 872 P.2d 910, 918.