- Court: Oregon Court of Appeals
- Area(s) of Law: Election Law
- Date Filed: 02-13-2019
- Case #: A164828
- Judge(s)/Court Below: Garrett, J. pro tempore, for the Court; Ortega, P.J.; & Powers, J.;
- Full Text Opinion
Defendant, the Secretary of State, appealed the trial court’s ruling that the Secretary had exceeded his pre-election authority by engaging in a “substantive” review and analysis when he determined whether Initiative Petition 2016-055 (IP 55) complied with the Oregon Constitution. On appeal, the Secretary argued that his review of IP 55 for the 2016 ballot was permissible because it was not a review of the measure’s general constitutionality; rather, the Secretary merely was fulfilling his constitutional duty to ensure that the proposed measure met threshold constitutional requirements directly governing the initiative power. In response, Plaintiff argued that the Secretary may invalidate a measure on the basis of the separate-vote or revision rules only if the secretary can discern from the “face” of the petition that one or more of those rules is violated. “Proposed initiatives may be evaluated before an election to determine whether they are of the type authorized by the Oregon Constitution to be placed on the ballot but may not be evaluated for ‘general questions of constitutionality, such as whether the proposed measure, if enacted, would violate some completely different portion of the constitution.’” Foster v. Clark, 309 Or 464, 469-70 (1990). The Court found that the Secretary may review a proposed measure for “legal sufficiency,” that is, compliance with the limitations that Article XVII places on the initiative power. Thus, the Court held that the trial court erred to the extent that it determined that the Secretary exceeded his authority by reviewing IP 55 for compliance with the rules set out in Article XVII. Reversed.