Court Opinion

ID: 9793674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:51:24.4622+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:33.906818
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
Having concurred in the Court’s decision to deny the issuance of a writ, I write only to explain why the views of the dissenting justices are not persuasive.
If the initiative gets the requisite number of votes, it will become statutory law. This would be equally true if it were a legislative enactment (with or without the Governor’s approval).
As the well-written brief of the able Attorney General makes clear, at such time as any bill, people proposed or legislature proposed, becomes law, it is subject to a constitutional challenge in this Court. The people are possessed of just as much right as is the legislature to enact a law notwithstanding that its constitutionality has been brought under question in the process.
By example, in 1959 a law was enacted by the legislature which would authorize municipalities to issue bonds for acquisition of manufacturing, industrial or commercial enterprises and village ordinance providing for acquisition by village of a site and the construction of an industrial plant thereon to be leased to a corporation which will *506occupy and use the plant in a private manufacturing enterprise. The constitutionality of that law was not subject to judicial attack until it became the law.1 In June of 1960, that law was held violative of constitutional prohibition against any municipality lending its credit in aid of a corporation, notwithstanding that the bonds are revenue bonds and that there will be an incidental or indirect benefit to the public. The Court’s comprehensive opinion was authored by Chief Justice Taylor and joined by every member of the Court. “For all the reasons mentioned, we hold Chapter 265, Session Laws 1959, to be unconstitutional and void.” Village of Moyie Springs, Idaho v. Aurora Manufacturing Co., 82 Idaho 337, 350, 353 P.2d 767, 780 (1960).
Twenty-five years later with no member of the 1960 Court still sitting, the Court worked its way around the Moyie Springs case in a concerted effort to uphold a strikingly similar situation where the city government of Idaho Falls agreed to float a bond issue in order to build a power manufacturing facility on land owned by Utah Power & Light Company, a corporate utility under the laws of the State of Utah. Utah Power & Light Co. v. Campbell, 108 Idaho 950, 703 P.2d 714 (1985).2 Conceding the impediment of the continuing validity of the Moyie Springs case, a four-member majority in the Utah Power case found language in Hansen v. Kootenai County Board of Commissioners, 93 Idaho 655, 471 P.2d 42 (1970), which was utilized to deny the invalidity of Utah Power’s arrangement with the city. Of the 1960 Court, only Justices McFadden and McQuade sat on the Hansen case, as was true in a companion case decided just a year earlier in Coeur d’Alene Turf Club, Inc. v. Cogswell, 93 Idaho 324, 461 P.2d 107 (1969). In the Hansen case, Justice McQuade was the only dissenting vote, and Justice McFadden wrote the majority opinion in the Turf Club case, in which District Judge Scoggin, sitting with the Court, joined the dissent of Justice McQuade. Justice Spear, who was the district judge who had upheld the validity of the Moyie Springs-Aurora transaction, was a necessary third vote in the Turf Club case, and undoubtedly a strong voice and vote in the Hansen case.
The foregoing review is offered for the purpose of suggesting the improvidence of today’s two dissenters in forecasting the invalidity of the proposed lottery initiative. While chances are that, should the initiative pass into law, there will be a challenge, chances also are that the five attorneys who presently serve as justices of the Idaho Supreme Court might not yet be sitting when any challenge reaches this Court. Life is not all that certain, and it is also not improbable that in the meanwhile Chief Justice Donaldson, or Justice Shepard, or Justice Bakes, or all three, might be elevated to the federal judiciary.
In my view it is questionable for any member of the judiciary to voice an assessment of the validity of proposed legislation, but especially questionable for such expressions to come from anyone in the judiciary who can reasonably be expected to become involved in deciding an issue that may or may not develop into a justiciable controversy.
My own assessment, as to the past, is that the Court as comprised in 1960 would not have ruled as did the Court as differ*507ently comprised in Hansen, supra, in Turf Club, supra, and in Utah Power, supra. Again, as to the past, my own view, erroneous at the time, was that the same Court membership which was unanimous in the Moyie Springs case would have voted otherwise than occurred in Oneida County Fair Board v. Smylie, 86 Idaho 341, 386 P.2d 374 (1963), the decision which held v.alid the law authorizing betting on horses.
If it be true, as the dissenters say, that all of the parties who have briefed and argued orally have agreed that the proposed initiative is unconstitutional, that would be not one whit more binding on this Court than would be the case were there to be an aetual justiciable controversy before us as to the constitutional validity of an enacted statute.
Generally, I agree with Chief Justice Donaldson’s assessment of the lack of pertinence of the Gumprecht case, and also his statement that as in Gumprecht we do not address the constitutional validity of the proposed initiative — noting somewhat of an inconsistency in his adding that if the initiative passes, then the legislators, on being so advised, can proceed to amend the Constitution in a constitutional manner. I had rather thought that only the two dissenting voters were presently advocating the uneonstitutionality of the initiative.3
I most strongly disagree with the language in the dissenting opinion wherein it is stated that all of the parties have agreed that our Idaho Constitution cannot be amended by use of the initiative — my disagreement being not with the statement itself (a point on which I tender no premature view), but being addressed to the singular fact that such is not an issue before us.
Citing Gumprecht and another case, the dissenters say: “Because of the importance of this issue to the citizens of the State of Idaho, we should rule upon the merits now____ Both the public treasury and public expectations deserve our immediate action on this important issue.” That which I wrote in Gumprecht is admirably suited for my response here:
However, over the many years I have generally remained apprehensive of the actions of those who profess to act for the benefit of the people — and necessarily must apply that scrutiny to myself as well, or plead guilty to hypocrisy. Where the right to legislate has been conferred directly upon the electorate of the cities of Idaho, Coeur d’Alene being such, it behooves a court to be extremely careful in disenfranchising that electorate.
Gumprecht, supra, 104 Idaho at 619, 661 P.2d at 1218.
And on a page following added:
Where as here we do not speculate on the outcome of the initiative election, it would be both premature and improper to in any way allude to the validity of the proposed ordinance.
Id. at 620, 661 P.2d at 1219.
The dissenters say in closing that the Court’s decision to not interfere with the initiative is fueling the expectations of the people — making them believe that their votes in November will be meaningful when “they are not.”
This is not overly influencing. John Corlett, political writer for The Idaho Statesman has already cast some doubt on the validity of the initiative should it pass into law. The people are not all that uninformed as is suggested. Not only have they heard from Mr. Corlett, but the President Pro Tern of the Senate, who, from my reading of the newspapers and listening to the other media, has suggested to the people that the initiative be used. And, is not the President Pro Tern also, as are we, an attorney admitted to the Bar of this state? If the people of the state are not fully or capably informed, the correction of that state of affairs is not a matter for this Court.

. When one scans the list of senators and representatives in the 1959 legislature, one may be certain that in those bodies there were those who forewarned of the constitutional invalidity of that legislation. To name a few (some of whom were practicing attorneys): Carl A. Burt, Holger Albrethsen, Glenn E. Bandelin, C.A. Bottolfsen, R.H. “Bill” Young, Robert M. Wetherell, Cy Young, Grant L. Young, J. Ray Cox, Jr., Jack M. Murphy, Vernon Daniel, Arthur P. Murphy, James B. Donart, W.D. "Bill" Eberle, Sam Kaufman, Jr., T.F. Terrell, Pete T. Cenarrusa, Orval Hansen, C.H. Higer, Gregg Potvin, and Harry B. Turner.

. “On July 19, 1984 the Idaho Falls City Council adopted ordinance No. 1763, in which it found that it was necessary, desirable and essential to the well-being of the City’s inhabitants to undertake acquisition and construction of the Project.” Utah Power & Light, supra, 108 Idaho at 952, 703 P.2d at 716.

. It is noted that the dissenters quickly seized upon this inconsistency in adding footnote 3 to their opinion.