High court scatters its shots to kill petitions

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By HOWARD TROXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 17, 2000

Here is the age-old question: Does the end justify the means? As usual, the Florida Supreme Court answers "yes."

In this case, the end was to kick Ward Connerly out of Florida. Connerly is the California businessman who has been trying to end affirmative action.

Connerly's critics cheered last week when the Supreme Court ruled that his constitutional amendments cannot appear on the Florida ballot.

If you oppose Connerly, then feel free to join this cheering. Hooray!

Except . . .

Except that to reach this result, the court's ruling was strained and even intellectually dishonest. To use a technical term, it was a stinker.

Remember, the court's job is not to rule on whether a petition is a good or bad idea. That is up to the voters.

The court is supposed to make only two decisions:

(1) Does the petition deal with a single subject, as our Constitution requires?

(2) Are the title and ballot summary written clearly?

These are good rules.

We don't want huge, complicated messes on the ballot. We don't want titles that are deliberately misleading, like a measure titled "Save Bambi" that really allows nuclear waste dumping.

But the Florida Supreme Court has repeatedly abused these rules, striking down citizen petition drives willy-nilly -- especially those trying to limit the power of the government.

If you play enough word games, anything can be ruled to be about more than "a single subject." If you strain at enough gnats, any ballot language can be ruled "ambiguous."

In Connerly's case, he submitted four petitions. The main one outlawed affirmative action in the areas of public education, government hiring and government contracts.

However, Connerly correctly guessed that the court would rule those were three different subjects. So he also submitted three more petitions, one covering each area. This did not save him; the court mowed down all four.

Connerly's amendments would affect different parts of the state Constitution, the court ruled. They should have listed them. Furthermore, they dealt with two subjects by affecting both the legislative and judicial branches.

"That these effects constitute substantial alterations of governmental functions," the court ruled, "is incontrovertible."

Court-poop. By this thin reasoning, no petition could EVER pass muster, because the same Constitution governs both the Legislature and the courts.

Let's take a silly example: a petition to change the title of "governor" to "Grand Pooh-bah." By such cockeyed logic, our petition would deal with more than one subject, because both the Legislature and the courts would have to use the new title.

Just to make sure Connerly was killed double-good, the court further ruled that his ballot title and summary language were misleading. For one thing, they used the word "people" in some places and "persons" in another.

For another thing, the title that says the amendment would "end" preferential treatment, according to the court, creates "the negative implication that the government is presently practicing discrimination."

Puh-leese. Only a minority of three of the seven justices attached their name to this puny stuff. A fourth wrote a separate opinion, slightly better. The last three agreed "in result only" but did not bother to enlighten us with an opinion. Nice work if you can get it.

The bottom line is that the fractious Connerly lost. Republicans such as Gov. Jeb Bush are happy because it means part of their party is silenced to prevent controversy in an election year. The Democrats are happy. Everybody is happy. And if we stretched the law and the Constitution to get there, well, what the heck.

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