WERDEGAR, J.
In 2014, the California Legislature sought to place on the general election ballot a nonbinding advisory question, Proposition 49. The measure would have asked the electorate whether Congress should propose, and the Legislature ratify, a federal constitutional amendment overturning the United States Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n (2010) 558 U.S. 310 [175 L.Ed.2d 753, 130 S.Ct. 876].
In response to a petition for writ of mandate urging the unconstitutionality of the Legislature's action, we issued an order to show cause and directed the Secretary of State to refrain from taking further action in connection with placement of Proposition 49 on the ballot. Our action did not rest on a final determination of Proposition 49's lawfulness. Instead, we concluded "the proposition's validity is uncertain" and the balance of hardships from permitting an invalid measure to remain on the ballot, as against delaying a proposition to a future election, weighed in favor of immediate relief. (See American Federation of Labor v. Eu (1984) 36 Cal.3d 687, 697 [206 Cal.Rptr. 89, 686 P.2d 609].)
We now resolve the merits of Proposition 49's constitutionality. We conclude, (1) as a matter of state law, the Legislature has authority to conduct investigations by reasonable means to inform the exercise of its other powers; (2) among those other powers are the power to petition for national constitutional conventions, ratify federal constitutional amendments, and call on Congress and other states to exercise their own federal article V powers (U.S. Const., art. 5); (3) although neither constitutional text nor judicial precedent provide definitive answers to the question, long-standing historical practice among the states demonstrates a common understanding that legislatures may formally consult with and seek nonbinding input from their constituents on matters relevant to the federal constitutional amendment process; (4) nothing in the state Constitution prohibits the use of advisory questions to inform the Legislature's exercise of its article V-related powers; and (5) applying deferential review, Proposition 49 is reasonably related to the exercise of those powers and thus constitutional. We deny the instant petition for a writ of mandate.
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n, supra, 558 U.S. 310, a divided United States Supreme Court invalidated federal election law restrictions on the political speech of corporations, holding that a speaker's identity as a corporation, as opposed to natural person, could not justify greater regulation of speech than the First Amendment would have otherwise permitted. (Citizens United, at pp. 319, 365.) In the few years since its issuance, Citizens United's holding concerning the speech rights of corporations has generated considerable democratic debate, receiving criticism in the presidential State of the Union address,
The Legislature first joined issue with Citizens United in Assembly Joint Resolution No. 1, introduced in 2012 and adopted by both houses of the Legislature in 2014. (Assem. Joint Res. No. 1, Stats. 2014 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) res. ch. 77.) The resolution declared: "Corporations are legal entities that governments create and the rights that they enjoy under the United States Constitution should be more narrowly defined than the rights afforded to natural persons." (Ibid.) Acknowledging Citizens United's holding to the contrary, the resolution exercised the Legislature's federal constitutional power to "apply to the United States Congress to call a constitutional convention for the sole purpose of proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would limit corporate personhood for purposes of campaign finance and political speech and would further declare that money does not constitute speech and may be legislatively limited." (Assem. Joint Res. No. 1, Stats. 2014 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) res. ch. 77; see U.S. Const., art. V ["The Congress ... on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments...."].)
Separately, the Legislature enacted Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) (Senate Bill No. 1272), "[a]n act to submit an advisory question to the
Subsequently, then Secretary of State Debra Bowen designated the advisory question Proposition 49 and began preparing ballot materials. The proposition was to read: "`Shall the Congress of the United States propose, and the California Legislature ratify, an amendment or amendments to the United States Constitution to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) 558 U.S. 310 [175 L.Ed.2d 753, 130 S.Ct. 876], and other applicable judicial precedents, to allow the full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, may express their views to one another, and to make clear that the rights protected by the United States Constitution are the rights of natural persons only?'" (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, § 4, subd. (a).)
Petitioners Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Jon Coupal (collectively, Howard Jarvis) promptly filed a petition for writ of mandate in the Third District Court of Appeal, seeking to prevent Secretary Bowen from proceeding with placement of Proposition 49 on the November 2014 ballot. A divided Court of Appeal denied relief.
Howard Jarvis next filed an original emergency petition for writ of mandate in this court. After expedited briefing, we issued an order to show cause and stayed Secretary Bowen from taking further actions in connection with Proposition 49 until after a final decision, effectively removing the advisory question from the November 2014 ballot. The order explained, "[t]ime constraints require the court to decide immediately whether to permit Proposition 49 to be placed on the November 4, 2014, ballot pending final resolution of this matter." A five-justice majority concluded Proposition 49's
Our actions in August 2014 resolved whether Proposition 49 could be placed on the November 2014 ballot. Senate Bill No. 1272 directs only placement on that ballot (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, §§ 3-4), and this case is thus technically moot. But whether the Legislature ever has power to place advisory questions on a statewide ballot is important and undecided, and in the event we were to conclude Senate Bill No. 1272 was indeed constitutional, the Legislature could pass an identical measure directing placement of the same advisory question on a future ballot. In response to our order to show cause, Howard Jarvis and real party in interest the state Legislature of California have briefed the larger questions the petition raises: whether legislative advisory questions are ever permissible, and whether in particular Proposition 49 is permissible or should be enjoined from placement on any future statewide ballot. Notwithstanding that the passage of an election cycle has interposed mootness as a potential obstacle to resolving a significant election law issue, we conclude retaining jurisdiction and addressing the merits is the better course here. (See Independent Energy Producers Assn. v. McPherson (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1020, 1024 [44 Cal.Rptr.3d 644, 136 P.3d 178]; Costa v. Superior Court (2006) 37 Cal.4th 986, 994, 1005 [39 Cal.Rptr.3d 470, 128 P.3d 675].)
Although the Legislature notes in passing that Proposition 49 resulted from a statute, it does not rest its argument for constitutionality on the syllogism that the legislative power includes the power to enact statutes, Senate Bill No. 1272 takes the form of an enacted statute, and thus for that reason alone the bill and Proposition 49 are within a constitutional source of power. Instead, the Legislature argues it has the inherent power to conduct an investigation in order to select the wisest policy course. Pursuant to that implied investigative power, the Legislature contends, it may enact a statute placing an advisory question before the voters.
Even aside from separation of powers concerns, the investigative power permits inquiry only into those subjects "in reference to which [the Legislature] has power to act." (Ex parte D. O. McCarthy, supra, 29 Cal. at p. 404, italics omitted.) Investigation is permitted as a necessary aid to the execution of other legislative powers, not as an expansion of matters with respect to which the Legislature may act. Where those other powers are subject to limit, so too an investigation in support of them may be constrained. (See Special Assembly Int. Com. v. Southard, supra, 13 Cal.2d at p. 504 ["`when the power to legislate ceases, then the power to investigate for the purpose of aiding the legislature in exercising this power ceases, or stated another way, when the main power of legislating dies the incidental or implied power dies with it ...'"].) The investigative power, constitutionally implied as necessary for the execution of the Legislature's other powers, does not stand as an unbounded, freestanding power in its own right.
Given these constraints, to determine whether a particular legislative action is authorized as an exercise of investigative power, we must in the first instance ascertain whether a nexus exists between the matter investigated and some potential action the Legislature has authority to undertake. Senate Bill No. 1272 seeks to conduct a statewide plebiscite on a proposed federal amendment and deliver its results to Congress. (Id., § 4, subds. (a), (b).) The Legislature contends the plebiscite should be understood as part of an investigation into how and whether to exercise the Legislature's powers in connection with a potential future federal constitutional amendment. Accordingly, we examine next the extent of the role the federal Constitution contemplates for state legislatures in the amendment process.
The Constitution identifies two explicit roles for state legislatures, one at each stage. At the proposal stage, a state legislature may apply to Congress for the calling of a national convention. (See, e.g., Sen. Joint Res. No. 23,
If instead Congress chooses the state convention ratification route, as it did for the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition, state legislatures may still assume a role. Article V conveys power as much through "what is reasonably implied" as through "what is expressed." (Dillon v. Gloss (1921) 256 U.S. 368, 373 [65 L.Ed. 994, 41 S.Ct. 510].) It grants to Congress and state legislatures those powers "necessary and incidental" to the carrying out of explicitly required tasks. (State ex rel. Donnelly v. Myers (1933) 127 Ohio St. 104 [186 N.E. 918]; see Dillon, at pp. 373-376; State ex rel. Tate v. Sevier (1933) 333 Mo. 662 [62 S.W.2d 895, 898].)
The several states have never successfully called for a constitutional convention. To date, each of the 27 federal amendments is the product of a proposal by Congress. But this does not mean state legislatures can play no part until ratification. Legislatures are instituted with the inherent power to issue resolutions (Jefferson, A Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1st ed. 1801) § XXI), statements that "declare[] policy or entreat[] action" but without the binding force of law (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra,
In 1793, the legislatures of Massachusetts and Virginia passed resolutions appealing to their representatives in Congress for a constitutional amendment overturning the United States Supreme Court's narrow construction of state sovereign immunity in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) 2 U.S. 419 [1 L.Ed. 440, 2 Dall. 419]. (See New Hampshire v. Louisiana (1883) 108 U.S. 76, 88 [27 L.Ed. 656, 2 S.Ct. 176] [Mass. res.]; Florida v. Georgia (1855) 58 U.S. 478, 519-520 [15 L.Ed. 181] (dis. opn. of Campbell, J.) [Va. res.].) Senator Caleb Strong of Massachusetts responded by moving that Congress propose such an amendment (Florida v. Georgia, at p. 520; 4 Annals of Cong. (3d Cong. 1794) pp. 25, 29-30), and the first post-Bill of Rights amendment was ratified in 1795 (U.S. Const., 11th Amend.). Similar resolutions preceded the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804. (See 13 Annals of Cong. (7th Cong. 1st Sess. 1802) pp. 95-96 [Mass. res.]; 11 Annals of Cong. (8th Cong., 1st Sess., 1803) pp. 509, 602-603, 1285 [N.Y. res.]; id. at p. 629 (1802) [N.C. res.]; id. at p. 472 (1802) [Vt. res.].)
Aside from changes wrought by the Civil War, the Constitution remained static for the next century, but when the next wave of changes came, state legislative resolutions were again at the forefront. California's Legislature first urged the direct election of senators to Congress in 1874, and did so again in 1893 and 1900.
State resolutions calling for a congressionally proposed federal amendment also preceded the Nineteenth Amendment, which extended suffrage to women. (O'Connor, The History of the Women's Suffrage Movement (1996) 49 Vand. L.Rev. 657, 667.) The same was true in advance of the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing Prohibition. (E.g., 1931 Conn. Pub. Acts 285.)
State pressure for constitutional change fails far more than it succeeds. Over the years, state legislatures have submitted thousands of resolutions, but Congress has proposed only a few dozen amendments. For example, state legislatures disturbed by the United States Supreme Court's reapportionment decisions
As noted, however, the state law investigative power is not unbounded. Any investigation must be tethered to the exercise of other established legislative powers, and the method chosen in a particular instance must be reasonable. The issue we face is whether the Legislature may pose to the electorate a single advisory question concerning the People's support for a federal constitutional amendment. Its resolution depends on the answer to two sub-questions. First, in the abstract, does anything in the text or structure of the state or federal Constitutions preclude the Legislature from posing an advisory question when exercising its own article V authority or entreating other bodies with article V authority (Congress and fellow state legislatures) to act?
As for precedent, in our past decisions elucidating the constitutional principles that govern legislative investigations we have not been called upon to determine whether the investigative power may include the enactment of a statute placing an advisory measure on the statewide ballot. (Cf. Parker v. Riley, supra, 18 Cal.2d at p. 91 [approving formation of an independent commission]; In re Battelle, supra, 207 Cal. at p. 241 [approving formation of investigative committees]; Ex parte D. O. McCarthy, supra, 29 Cal. at p. 404 [approving summoning of witnesses].)
In 1721, noted British Whig and republican Thomas Gordon, writing pseudononymously as Cato, declared: "[T]he difference between free and enslaved countries lies principally here, that in the former, their magistrates must consult the voice and interest of the people; but in the latter, the private will, interest, and pleasure of the governors, are the sole end and motives of their administration." (1 Trenchard & Gordon, Cato's Letters (Hamowy edit., 1995) No. 38 (July 22, 1721) The Right and Capacity of the People to Judge of Government (Gordon) p. 272 (Cato's Letters).)
Consultation shortly took root in the colonies and soon became "much more an American technique than a British one." (Reid, The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution (1989) p. 86.) In New York and Massachusetts, consultation flourished; occasionally it was resorted to even in other colonies such as Pennsylvania that did not have an established town meeting structure through which to assess the popular will. (Id. at pp. 86-95.) When the Continental Congress was faced with its most momentous decision in the spring of 1776, it did not act unilaterally, but instead "delayed its vote on Independence by three weeks `to give an Oppertunity [sic] to the Delegates from those Colonies, which had not yet given Authority to adopt this decisive Measure, to consult their Constituents.'" (Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997) p. 67 [quoting a letter from Maryland's congressional representatives]; see Kruman, Between Authority & Liberty (1997) p. 77.) Maryland's delegates desired "`the fair and uninfluenced Sense of the People' on Independence" and asked their colonial assembly to "`endeavour to collect the opinion of the people at large in some Manner or other.'" (Maier, at p. 67.) So too Massachusetts; there, the assembly asked every town to hold a special meeting, debate whether to declare independence, and advise its representatives where its people stood. (Id. at p. 59; see Luce, Legislative Principles (1930) p. 570; Reid, at p. 102.) And in 1780, New York's assembly sought popular instruction concerning whether to draft a colonial constitution. (Kruman, Between Authority & Liberty, supra, at p. 77.) Pre-constitutional America thus had an established tradition whereby the people's representatives could, if they so chose, solicit the people's views to inform momentous decisions.
Until adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment, the federal Constitution vested the selection of senators in state legislatures. (See U.S. Const., art. I, § 3.) By the late 19th century many states, especially in the Midwest and West, were inclined to transfer that power to the people themselves. (1 Haynes, The Senate of the United States: Its History and Practice (1938) pp. 96-104; Rossum, California and the Seventeenth Amendment in The California Republic (Janiskee & Masugi edits., 2004) pp. 83-85.) In 1891, our Legislature placed on the next year's general election ballot an advisory
Nevada in 1893 and Illinois in 1902 followed suit. The Nevada Legislature, viewing it as "expedient that the wishes of the people of this State upon the subject of the election of United States Senators should be unmistakably expressed" (1893 Nev. Stat. 21-22), placed on the ballot an advisory question and forwarded the results (nearly eight to one in favor of amendment) to Congress and other states' Governors (id., p. 22; Haynes, The Election of Senators, supra, at pp. 106, 110). Illinois's Legislature sought general constitutional guidance, asking the polity whether "`the next General Assembly [should] take the necessary steps, under Article 5 of the Constitution of the United States, to bring about the election of United States Senators by the direct vote of the people?'" (Haynes, at p. 110, fn. 10.) Guidance it got; by a nearly six-to-one margin, voters favored legislative efforts to bring about a federal amendment. (Id. at p. 106.) So advised, the next year the Illinois Legislature petitioned for a national constitutional convention. (See id. at p. 108.)
Prior to ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, our Legislature turned again to the advisory question mechanism to obtain advice on whom to select for the Senate under its not-yet-superseded federal power to choose senators. (Stats. 1909, ch. 405, § 2, p. 691 [providing for an "advisory vote for the purpose of ascertaining the sentiment of the voters" concerning senatorial candidates]; Stats. 1911, ch. 387, § 1, pp. 704-705 [directing that future general election ballots include the names of party candidates for Sen., with results of the advisory referenda to be forwarded to the Leg.].) Here, California was following the lead of the many other legislatures that saw fit to inform their exercise of their federal power to choose senators through advisory plebiscites. Nebraska was the first state to adopt this course, in 1875 (Kyvig, Explicit & Authentic Acts, supra, at p. 210); in 1899, the Nevada Legislature adopted an advisory procedure essentially identical to what California later enacted (1899 Nev. Stat. 86-87); and by 1911, more than half of all states had some form of advisory plebiscite in place (Kyvig, at p. 210; see generally Haynes, The Election of Senators, supra, at pp. 140-150).
More recently, the Florida Legislature placed on the ballot two advisory questions asking whether the people supported federal constitutional amendments to prohibit forced busing and permit school prayer. (1972 Fla. Laws 114-115.) And in 2010, the Florida Legislature applied to Congress for the calling of a constitutional convention to propose a balanced budget amendment (Fla. Sen. Conc. Res. No. 10 (2010); see 160 Cong. Rec. S5563-S5564 (daily ed. Sept. 11, 2014)) and again placed on a subsequent general election ballot a nonbinding advisory question asking whether the federal Constitution should "be amended to require a balanced federal budget without raising taxes?" (Fla. Sen. Bill No. 2742 (2010 Reg. Sess.) § 1).
State legislatures have also seen fit to resort to advisory questions when debating whether to ratify a proposed amendment. In the 1920s, Congress sent to the states an amendment overturning United States Supreme Court decisions limiting Congress's regulatory power over child labor. (H.J.Res. No. 184, 68th Cong., 1st Sess. (1924) 43 Stat. 670; see Child Labor Tax Case (1922) 259 U.S. 20 [66 L.Ed. 817, 42 S.Ct. 449]; Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) 247 U.S. 251 [62 L.Ed. 1101, 38 S.Ct. 529].) Before acting, the Massachusetts Legislature submitted the question of ratification to an advisory vote of the people. (Kyvig, Explicit & Authentic Acts, supra, at p. 259.)
When contested, these actions have been upheld. California's provision for including an advisory senatorial vote on primary election ballots was challenged as violating the one-subject rule because it was adopted as part of an act also regulating binding, not merely advisory, primary voting. (Socialist Party v. Uhl (1909) 155 Cal. 776, 781 [103 P. 181]; see Cal. Const., art. IV, § 9 [one-subject rule].) In the course of rejecting the challenge, this court held: "There is nothing in the constitution — either the amendment of [former] section 2½ of article II, or any other provision — which prohibits the legislature from providing at a primary for an expression of a choice as to a candidate for United States senator. It is within the general legislative power to do so, and that it has provided for this advisory vote at a primary election is for the purpose of convenience" and sufficiently germane to the subject of primary elections. (Socialist Party, at p. 782.) We considered "whether legislation in connection with primary laws granting such right of expression of a choice is prohibited by the constitutional provision particularly under consideration [relating to the one-subject rule], or any other" and concluded it was not. (Ibid., italics added.)
The Nevada Supreme Court rejected a federal constitutional challenge to the Nevada Equal Rights Amendment vote, explaining that the advisory question was not "a limitation on legislative power violative of article V of the federal constitution" but instead "simply specifie[d] a means by which to assist the legislature whether to consent or not to consent to the proposed amendment." (Kimble v. Swackhamer (1978) 94 Nev. 600 [584 P.2d 161, 162-163].) Then Justice Rehnquist, acting as circuit justice, rejected an application for summary reversal of this decision, agreeing that the advisory question posed no article V problem: "Under the Nevada statute in question, ratification will still depend on the vote of the Nevada Legislature, as provided by Congress and by Art. V. I would be most disinclined to read either Hawke, supra, [253 U.S. 221,] or Leser [v. Garnett (1922) 258 U.S. 130
In 1986, the Idaho Attorney General considered the constitutionality of the then extant Idaho requirement that decisions whether to ratify federal amendments be deferred until after a nonbinding advisory referendum. (See Idaho Code former § 34-2217, repealed by 1995 Idaho Sess. Laws, ch. 227, § 1.) The Attorney General did not doubt that state legislatures could voluntarily submit nonbinding advisory questions concerning federal constitutional amendments to the electorate in individual cases; the legislature could choose to follow a "referendum first, legislative decision second" rule. The only potential problem with the advisory vote law involved its attempt to constrain future legislatures; that is, while any legislature in its discretion could decide to pose an advisory question before voting on ratification, the current state legislature could not mandate that future legislatures be required to do so. (Ops. Idaho Atty.Gen. No. 86-9 (1986).)
Howard Jarvis argues that the power to investigate is limited by California Constitution, article IV, section 11, which authorizes investigations by committee. Under that provision, "[t]he Legislature or either house may by resolution provide for the selection of committees necessary for the conduct of its business, including committees to ascertain facts and make recommendations to the Legislature on a subject within the scope of legislative control." (Ibid.) From this language, Howard Jarvis reasons that the Legislature may ascertain facts only through committee investigations, and not by any other means. This argument misapprehends the import of the committees clause.
Prior to the clause's adoption in 1940 (see Cal. Const., art. IV, former § 37, added by initiative, Gen. Elec. (Nov. 5, 1940)), the extent of the Legislature's ability to act through less than all of the members of one house was the subject of dispute. (See Swing v. Riley (1939) 13 Cal.2d 513 [90 P.2d 313]; Special Assembly Int. Com. v. Southard, supra, 13 Cal.2d 497; In re Battelle, supra, 207 Cal. 227.) In Battelle, this court considered but rejected the argument that the Legislature could not investigate by committee, explaining that the Constitution implied a power to investigate and committee investigations were a permissible exertion of that power. (Battelle, at pp. 240-244.) In Special Assembly, we again construed the state Constitution as implying a power to investigate, including a power to investigate by committee. (Special Assembly, at pp. 502-504.) We held, however, that the Legislature was not a continuing body, that it ceased to exist between sessions, that its express powers ceased to exist at the same time, and accordingly that the implied power to investigate died too. (Id. at pp. 504-507.) Consequently, an interim committee established by the Assembly to conduct investigations after legislative adjournment and report to the next session of the Legislature was
At the next general election after Special Assembly, the Legislature placed on the ballot a constitutional amendment making explicit the power to investigate and act by committee and overturning the holdings that that power did not extend between legislative sessions.
Various provisions of the state Constitution expressly authorize the Legislature to place measures on the ballot for voter approval. The Legislature may amend or repeal a statute adopted by voter initiative, but generally only if the
Here, however, the canon has no application. The expressio unius inference arises only when there is some reason to conclude an omission is the product of intentional design. (Marx v. General Revenue Corp. (2013) 568 U.S. ___, ___ [185 L.Ed.2d 242, 253, 133 S.Ct. 1166, 1175]; Silverbrand v. County of Los Angeles (2009) 46 Cal.4th 106, 126 [92 Cal.Rptr.3d 595, 205 P.3d 1047].) The text must contain a specific list or facially comprehensive treatment. (See Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co. (2003) 537 U.S. 149, 168 [154 L.Ed.2d 653, 123 S.Ct. 748] [the canon "has force only when the items expressed are members of an `associated group or series,' justifying the inference that items not mentioned were excluded by deliberate choice, not inadvertence"]; Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Echazabal (2002) 536 U.S. 73, 81 [153 L.Ed.2d 82, 122 S.Ct. 2045] [the canon requires a "series of terms from which an omission bespeaks a negative implication"]; In re Sabrina H. (2007) 149 Cal.App.4th 1403, 1411 [57 Cal.Rptr.3d 863] [the canon "is generally applied to a specific statute, which contains a listing of items to which the statute applies" and may not have any application to "an entire code"].) The provisions Howard Jarvis relies on are widely separated, both in where they are codified and as to how and when they were adopted. The provision allowing the Legislature to propose to the electorate amendments to initiative measures was adopted by the voters at the 1946 general election. (See Cal. Const., art. IV, former § 1b, enacted by Prop. 12, Gen. Elec. (Nov. 5, 1946); People v. Kelly (2010) 47 Cal.4th 1008, 1038 [103 Cal.Rptr.3d 733, 222 P.3d 186].)
More fundamentally, Howard Jarvis's argument rests on a misconception as to the nature of the constitutional provisions it cites. Each involves not a grant of authority but a limitation on legislative power — an occasion when the Legislature must turn to the voters, where otherwise it would have been at liberty to act without voter input. Whatever might be said for the logic of inferring from a few specific grants of authority the absence of some more general authority, that logic cannot be turned on its head to infer from a few specific limits on legislative authority the presence of a broader, unstated limit on legislative authority. The expressio unius canon, were we to apply it here, would at most support the inference that the three cited instances are an exhaustive list of the circumstances in which submission of a matter to a plebiscite is mandatory. The canon and the scattered provisions Howard Jarvis cites offer no guidance at all on the actual question before us, whether the Legislature in its discretion may turn to the voters to ascertain their will concerning a possible amendment to the federal Constitution.
In a closely related argument, Howard Jarvis notes this court's holding that the people by initiative may place on the ballot only measures that enact law. (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d at pp. 694, 708-714; see Cal. Const., art. II, § 8, subd. (a) ["The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them."].) From this, Howard Jarvis reasons that the people's initiative and referendum power and the constitutional provisions mandating electoral review of particular actions by the Legislature (Cal. Const., art. II, §§ 8-10; id., art. XVI, § 1; id., art. XVIII, §§ 1, 4) define an exhaustive list of matters that may be placed on the ballot, that they all involve the adoption of law, and accordingly that the Constitution forbids ballot measures that do not enact laws.
Howard Jarvis and the dissent contend that if, under American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d 697, the people are limited to placing on the ballot only proposed laws, then the Legislature must be too. We reject that argument as well. Our decision in Eu defined limits on the initiative power, not limits on what the Legislature might do or limits on the proper use of the ballot. Indeed, we explicitly recognized that the Legislature's powers were broader than those conveyed by the initiative power: "Even under the most liberal interpretation, however, the reserved powers of initiative and referendum do not encompass all possible actions of a legislative body." (Id. at p. 708.) When the people established the Legislature, they conveyed to it the full breadth of their sovereign legislative powers. (Nougues v. Douglass, supra, 7 Cal. at p. 69.) When they adopted the initiative power in 1911, they restored to themselves only a shared piece of that power. (See Eu, at p. 708.) There is nothing incongruous in reading the state Constitution as allocating broader powers to the deliberative body representing the people than to the people directly. Such is the nature of a republic. (See generally U.S. Const., art. IV, § 4 [guaranteeing a republican form of government]; Browne, Report of the Debates in Convention of Cal. on Formation of the State Constitution (1850) pp. 393-394 [noting the fundamentally republican nature of the state Constitution]; 1 Willis & Stockton, Debates & Proceedings, Cal. Const. Convention 1878-1879, p. 242 [the state Constitution implicitly establishes a republican form of government].)
Of course Eu of itself does not establish that the Legislature has the specific authority to ask an advisory question about a federal constitutional amendment where the people might lack the power to opine unilaterally on the same matter; that issue, central to this case, was far afield from the question in Eu. The point, rather, is that nothing in Eu forbids this understanding, while the substantially broader powers assured the Legislature by the federal Constitution's article V and the state Constitution's article IV, section 1, in contrast to the narrower powers restored to the people by the latter section and the state Constitution's article II, section 8, support it.
Finally, Howard Jarvis argues the state Constitution contains an implicit structural barrier to the use of advisory questions by the Legislature. It asserts new laws may come into being by legislative enactment, with no participation by the people, or they may come into being by initiative, with no involvement from the Legislature (Cal. Const., art. II, § 8; id., art. IV, § 1), and in each instance, accountability for a given law is clear. Advisory questions on legislative matters, in contrast, would supposedly blur lines of accountability and hamper the ability of voters appropriately to evaluate their representatives at the ballot box: should they be held responsible for a particular legislative action pre-approved by the electorate, or not?
As an initial matter, we note our system of government is one in which the lines of accountability are inevitably blurred to some extent. In a representative democracy, legislators are generally expected to be responsive to their constituents. If a representative votes in favor of a legislative measure that tracks the results of an advisory ballot measure, a voter may not be able to know if the representative is voting his or her own conscience or instead is following the views of a majority of the representative's constituents. But even in the absence of an advisory measure, questions will sometimes arise as to whether a representative's vote on a particular matter is based on the representative's individual views or instead reflects those of his or her constituents, as embodied in polls or other gauges of public sentiment.
Instructions are a practice borrowed from England. They were employed frequently in the colonies as a formal means for the represented to communicate their views to representatives. (See generally Kruman, Between Authority & Liberty, supra, at pp. 76-81; Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (1998) pp. 189-190; Terranova, The Constitutional Life of Legislative Instructions in America (2009) 84 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 1331, 1333-1339.) For example, states delivered instructions to their delegates in connection with the issuance of the Declaration of Independence, during the period of the Articles of Confederation, and to guide deliberations at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. (Kobach, May "We the People" Speak?: The
Unlike the federal Constitution, the state Constitution has codified a right to instruct since before statehood. (See Cal. Const. of 1849, art. I, § 10 ["The people shall have the right freely to assemble together, to consult for the common good, to instruct their representatives, and to petition the Legislature for redress of grievances."].) Its incorporation into the state Constitution was accompanied by many of the same fundamental debates seen at the federal level in connection with the omission of the right from the First Amendment — Are representatives independent or agents? Do they represent the constituents of their district or the entire state/country? If a right to instruct were granted, would instructions be binding? — but the state convention ultimately struck a balance in favor of, rather than against, a right to instruct. (See Browne, Report of the Debates in Convention of Cal. on Formation of the State Constitution, supra, at pp. 42, 294-297.)
That right clouds to some extent the attribution of responsibility for representative actions. If instructions are given and disobeyed, no accountability problem arises; plainly the representative has voted his or her conscience, and the electorate may provide, if it chooses, the same response that met Edmund Burke.
In any event, whatever the general merits of the concern that advisory ballot measures blur accountability, the concern is less significant in the context of a measure such as Proposition 49 relating to federal constitutional
Our concurring colleague, Justice Liu, expresses concern that we, like the Legislature, have rested authority for the advisory question here on the
Justice Liu also expresses concern that the means of investigation selected here is unlike the methods expressly addressed in previous cases. But novelty alone is no basis for imposing a categorical constitutional barrier where none otherwise exists. Here, as we have discussed, none does.
Having concluded the Legislature may use advisory ballot questions to facilitate the exercise of its article V functions, we next consider whether the specific measure before us, Proposition 49, is a reasonable exercise, not barred by any law, of the Legislature's power to investigate and determine the best course of action in connection with a potential federal constitutional amendment. Howard Jarvis contends that because the Legislature has already submitted to Congress a call for a national convention, no further purpose can be served by a ballot measure. We disagree.
We conclude there is a sufficient nexus between Proposition 49 and, at a minimum, the potential exercise of every one of the Legislature's amendment powers. For the legislators of a state collectively to call on Congress for a federal amendment, or to call for a national convention, is one matter. For the people of a state, by the millions, to vote in favor of pursuing an amendment is another. The 1892 plebiscite concerning direct election of senators yielded a resounding 93 percent to 7 percent majority in favor of constitutional change. (Rossum, California and the Seventeenth Amendment in The California Republic, supra, at p. 84.) The Legislature rationally could believe that a decisive result in the present day might carry more weight with members of Congress, when deciding whether to propose or vote in favor of an amendment,
Moreover, even a result at the ballot box rejecting the proposal could afford material assistance to the Legislature in determining how to exercise its article V-related powers. Although the Legislature has already called for a constitutional convention, "[w]hat the Legislature has enacted, it may repeal." (California Redevelopment Assn. v. Matosantos, supra, 53 Cal.4th at p. 255; see Fletcher v. Peck (1810) 10 U.S. 87, 135 [3 L.Ed. 162] (6 Cranch) ["one legislature is competent to repeal any act which a former legislature was competent to pass ..."].) Nothing in the text of article V establishes an intent to depart from this fundamental understanding about the nature of legislative bodies and to afford Congress and state legislatures only the power to make, but never to withdraw, proposals. Indeed, the logic of the amendment process the Article establishes urges strongly to the contrary. Convention calls take effect only when a supermajority, two-thirds of the legislatures, have joined in. A national consensus is a foundational necessity. To allow the making of calls, but not their subsequent negation, might place Congress under orders to call a convention when far fewer states, perhaps not even a majority, presently favored amendment. It follows that convention calls are not static; they can be, and as a matter of historical practice frequently have been, rescinded. (See, e.g., Nev. Assem. Res. No. 157 (1989 Reg. Sess.), reprinted in 101 Cong. Rec. S7911 (daily ed. July 13, 1989) [rescinding convention call]; Kyvig, Explicit & Authentic Acts, supra, at p. 378 [noting N.C. and Okla. rescissions of convention calls]; Paulsen, A General Theory of Article V: The Constitutional Lessons of the Twenty-seventh Amendment (1993) 103 Yale L.J. 677, 765-789 [cataloguing both state-by-state convention calls and their repeals].) The Legislature has called for a national convention; it might,
Illustrative of the relevance an advisory vote can have even after a legislature has acted is the case of the Massachusetts Legislature's 1924-1925 change of heart on the question of a child labor amendment. In 1924, Massachusetts was among those states petitioning Congress for submission of a constitutional amendment to the states to overturn United States Supreme Court decisions limiting Congress's regulatory power over child labor. However, when Congress complied and proposed an amendment, the state's legislature did not immediately act but instead submitted the question of ratification to a November 1924 advisory vote of the people. The plebiscite demonstrated widespread popular opposition, with the amendment losing by more than three to one. Taking those views into account, the legislature reversed its support from the year before and declined to ratify the amendment. (Kyvig, Explicit & Authentic Acts, supra, at pp. 259-260.) So too, an advisory vote may guide a legislature in deciding whether to persist with efforts to obtain, or rescind a call for, a national convention or congressionally proposed federal amendment.
We discharge the order to show cause, deny Howard Jarvis's petition for a peremptory writ of mandate, and vacate our previously ordered stay.
Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., Corrigan, J., Cuéllar, J., and Kruger, J., concurred.
CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J., Concurring.
As the majority observes, I dissented from this court's August 2014 order removing an advisory measure, designated Proposition 49, from California's November 2014 general election ballot. My vote was based on my conclusion that petitioners had failed to make a sufficient showing of the invalidity of the challenged measure to warrant removing it from the ballot.
The court's opinion, arrived at following full briefing, oral argument, and extensive deliberation, concludes that the Legislature properly exercised its
I write separately to avoid any misunderstanding or implication that legislatively authorized advisory ballot measures are permissible only concerning the narrow universe of matters relating to the Legislature's role under article V of the federal Constitution (sometimes, article V). As I will explain, legislative authority to pose advisory ballot questions has long been properly employed — by our own Legislature, by the legislatures of numerous other states, and by local legislative bodies (such as county boards of supervisors and city councils) throughout California and the nation — to obtain the views of the voters concerning all manner of subjects reasonably within a legislative body's authority to act. Nothing in today's decision should be viewed as calling into question the validity of all types of statewide and local advisory ballot measures, even those completely unrelated to any proposed amendment to the federal Constitution.
Before addressing the legal principles and precedent supporting the Legislature's general authority to submit advisory measures to a vote of the people, it is useful to review in some detail the long-standing historical and recent practice demonstrating that legislatively initiated advisory ballot measures have been used regularly and extensively concerning a wide variety of subjects both within California and nationwide. This considerable use of advisory ballot measures may not be as well known within the legal community or among the general public as it perhaps should be, but this practice is important to keep in mind when the question of the permissible scope of advisory ballot measures is considered.
As section 2, subdivision (m) of the challenged statute (Stats. 2014, ch. 175) itself observes, ballot measures seeking the nonbinding advisory views
The first advisory ballot measure in California — an ugly reflection of its times, asking the statewide voters whether they were "`[f]or'" or "`[a]gainst'" Chinese immigration — was submitted to California voters by the Legislature in 1877 (Stats. 1877, ch. 5, p. 3), and appeared on the statewide general election ballot in September 1879, just a few months after the voters had approved a newly proposed state Constitution at a special election in May 1879. That advisory measure required, similarly to the one at issue here, that the result of the balloting be conveyed to Congress. (Stats. 1877, ch. 5, §§ 2, 3, p. 3.)
The next two advisory ballot measures were presented to the statewide voters in 1892. One implicated the Legislature's article V role — it sought the electorate's views concerning whether the federal Constitution should be amended (as it eventually was, more than two decades later) to provide for direct election of United States senators. That advisory measure required, again similarly to the one at issue here, that the result of the balloting be conveyed to Congress. (Stats. 1891, ch. 48, § 3, p. 46.) The second advisory measure of that year asked whether the ability to read and write in English should be a requirement for voting in the state. (Stats. 1891, ch. 113, pp. 704-705.)
As explained in the majority opinion (ante, at p. 508), in 1909, and again in 1911 — both prior to adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the federal Constitution — our Legislature, like those in numerous other states, asked voters to give their advice at the ballot box concerning which candidate the Legislature should appoint as United States senator. (Stats. 1909, ch. 405, § 2, p. 691; Stats. 1911, ch. 387, § 1, p. 705.) And in 1933, the Legislature posed to the statewide electorate two advisory ballot questions concerning the use of gasoline tax funds. (Stats. 1933, ch. 435, pp. 1125-1126.)
Dating initially from the late 1700s, and with growing use in the mid 1800s, the legislatures of other states have sought the advice of their statewide voters on all kinds of matters unconnected with any article V issue
The use of such advisory and nonbinding ballot measures has continued nationwide in the intervening decades. For example, the Massachusetts Legislature put 12 advisory measures on the ballot from 1919 to 1998, and the Wisconsin Legislature placed 20 such measures on the ballot between 1948 and 1995. (Zimmerman, The Referendum (2001) p. 62.)
Focusing only on the most recent four decades, advisory measures wholly unconnected with any article V role have been placed on the statewide ballot by 12 state legislatures, all of which operate under constitutions similar to California's, in that none contains any provision specifically authorizing such legislative action. These most recent examples of statewide ballot measures have posed to the statewide voters the following policy questions addressing myriad issues coming within the legislature's authority to act.
Alaska: Should the legislature propose an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting the state from providing employment benefits to same-sex partners of public workers? Should a portion of the Alaska Permanent Fund be used to balance the state budget? Should the legislature revise the state's annuity program by adopting a longevity bonus for those 65 and older? Should the Legislature adopt a resolution placing before the voters an amendment to the state constitution calling for regular legislative sessions to be 120 days long with the possibility of a 10-day extension upon a majority vote?
Idaho: In light of the fact that the United States Supreme Court ruled that the state's term limits law does not apply to members of Congress, should that law continue to apply to state elective offices? Should the state maintain previously adopted property tax relief, reducing property taxes and protecting funding for public schools, by keeping the sales tax at 6 percent?
Illinois: Should any health insurance plan that provides prescription drug coverage be required to include prescription birth control as part of that coverage? Should the state increase its minimum wage to $10 per hour by a certain date? Should the state Constitution be amended to require that each school district receive additional revenue, based on its number of students, from an additional 3 percent tax on income greater than $1 million?
Massachusetts: Should taxpayer money be used to fund political campaigns for public office? Should the commonwealth require that radio and TV broadcast outlets give free equal time to all candidates running for public office? Should the commonwealth change the legal age for consuming alcohol from 21 to 18? Should voluntary recitation of prayer be authorized in the commonwealth's public schools?
Oregon: Should the state change the system for funding public schools in various ways specified in a menu of options, concerning income, property, and sales taxes, presented in four separate advisory measures?
Vermont: Should the legislature consider enactment of a lottery to supplement state revenues? Should the state hold a constitutional convention?
Wisconsin: Should the death penalty be enacted in the state for cases involving first degree intentional homicide if the conviction is supported by DNA evidence? Do the voters favor restrictions on gambling, or new forms of gambling, or continuation of existing forms of gambling, as described in five separate advisory measures? Should local control over vocational, technical and adult education be changed to state control, with funding paid out of state tax revenues, instead of principally from local property tax revenues? Do the voters favor greater state aid to municipalities for accelerated water pollution abatement facilities through the issuance of bonds? Do the voters favor expanding state acquisition and development of land for recreational purposes through the issuance of bonds?
For example, federal environmental issues have been the subject of advisory questions in at least four states. The North Carolina Legislature asked voters if they were "for" or "against" location of a radioactive waste facility in the state, and directed that the results of the ballot be shared with the President, Congress, and other federal officials. Likewise, the Oregon Legislature asked: Should state officials continue challenges to federal selection of the state to house high-level nuclear waste repositories? The Wisconsin Legislature asked: Do voters support construction of a national or regional high-level radioactive waste disposal site in the state? The Massachusetts Legislature asked: "Shall the Commonwealth urge the President ... and ... Congress to enact a national acid rain program" requiring specific reductions in total national sulfur dioxide and allocate the costs of reductions equitably among the states?
Concerning the federal government's military policies, the legislature of Massachusetts in 1970 polled its voters regarding "the future course of action by the United States in Vietnam," asking whether military victory, withdrawal pursuant to a "planned schedule," or immediate withdrawal was preferable.
Regarding the federal government's role in legislating concerning health care, the Massachusetts and New Jersey Legislatures each asked voters: Should the state urge Congress to enact a national health care program?
Nationwide, the use of legislative advisory ballot measures to ask voters similar policy questions is even more frequent at the level of local legislatures — county boards of supervisors and city councils. (See Ballotpedia, <http://ballotpedia.org/Advisory_question> [as of Jan. 4, 2016] ["Advisory questions are most commonly used at the local level, often to voice the opinions of [the] region to higher levels of government."].) Cities have made use of such advisory measures since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (See, e.g., Zimmerman, The Referendum, supra, at p. 140 [describing such measures in New York City, Buffalo, Chicago, and Wilmington]; Crouch, Municipal Affairs: The Initiative and Referendum in Cities (1943) 37 Amer. Poli. Sci. Rev. 491, 492, 501 (hereafter Referendum in Cities) [observing that "[m]any city councils have made use of ... the advisory referendum, or `straw vote'" advisory ballot, and noting that between 1910 and 1938, 32 such measures were submitted to the voters in Detroit].)
Local legislatively initiated advisory ballot measures in California reflect a similar pattern. Prior to 1940, and even though there was at that time no explicit constitutional or statutory authority for doing so, advisory policy measures often appeared on the ballot in Los Angeles and San Francisco. (See Referendum in Cities, supra, 37 Amer. Poli. Sci. Rev. at pp. 492, 501 [noting 46 "[p]ublic [p]olicy [r]eferenda" on the L.A. ballot, and 21 on the S.F. ballot].) Eventually, in 1976, the Legislature specifically codified and
What has been the nature of these local advisory measures? They have mirrored the types of statewide policy inquiries described above, with a special focus on specific issues of local importance and within the local legislature's authority to act. Typical have been, for example, questions concerning the conduct of local elections. The City of Modesto has asked its voters: Should city council members be elected by district, or at large? The City of Davis has asked: Should city council elections be conducted pursuant to "choice voting" (also known as "instant runoff" or "preference" voting)? The City of Lancaster has asked: Should the city adopt an ordinance consolidating municipal elections with countywide school district elections?
Other measures have probed the voters' policy preferences concerning a variety of miscellaneous local matters. The City of Milpitas has asked: Should the city council submit to the voters a proposal to revise the city charter in various ways, including enlarging the city council? The City of National City has asked: Should the city council establish a Citizens' Police Oversight Commission? The City of South Gate has asked: Should the city council enact a permit system regulating the number of vehicles that may be
Many other advisory measures have addressed housing, development, and related public service issues. For example, the City of San Diego has asked: Do the voters endorse development of up to 5,000 low-rent apartments and townhomes scattered throughout the city? The City of Modesto has asked: Should the city council expand sewer service to certain areas? Los Angeles County has asked: Should a new flood control district be formed, or should an existing area be annexed to a current county flood control district?
Local voters have been questioned about their policy views concerning prioritization of existing taxes and related revenues. For example, the City of Plymouth has asked: Should 2 percent of revenue from the increase in the transient occupancy tax be used to fund streets, parking, and landscaping, and should another 2 percent of that revenue fund events, signs and advertising for tourism promotion? Kings County has asked: Should revenue from new voter-approved sales taxes be used for specified local criminal-justice system improvements? Tehama County has asked: Should tax proceeds funding police and fire services be distributed to the county and incorporated cities in proportion to their respective populations?
With this overview in mind, I turn to the question whether, as a general matter, the Legislature has authority to place an advisory measure on the statewide ballot.
As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, over numerous decades legislative bodies have submitted advisory ballot measures to the voters in California and throughout the country. If such measures were constitutionally impermissible, one would have thought that objections would have been raised on numerous occasions throughout the last century and that we would find judicial decisions striking down such measures. But the parties have pointed to no such decision and independent research has uncovered none. Instead, the validity of such legislatively instigated advisory ballot measures has apparently been so well accepted that judicial challenges to such measures have been very rare and, as explained below, the few that have been filed have been rejected.
As an initial matter, it is important to recognize that the drafters of the 1879 Constitution — the version of the charter that, as revised in 1966, remains operative today — assumed that under it, the Legislature had power to place an advisory measure upon the statewide ballot in order to acquire the official views of the electorate on a question of policy that was completely unrelated to any effort to amend the federal charter. Moreover, it is clear that the electorate that approved the charter assumed that the Legislature had authority to present such a measure for the people's vote.
As observed ante, part I.A., by statute in 1877 the Legislature placed an advisory measure on the September 1879 general election ballot, asking the
The few early lawsuits challenging advisory measures were rebuffed. As mentioned earlier, in both 1909 and 1911 our Legislature, like those in numerous other states, again posed advisory measures to the electorate, seeking its advice concerning which candidate the Legislature — at that time possessing the power to appoint the state's United States senators — should appoint to that position. (Stats. 1909, ch. 405, § 2, p. 691; Stats. 1911, ch. 387, § 1, p. 705.) As the majority opinion observes, when the 1909 enactment
The South Dakota Supreme Court had reached a consistent conclusion 14 years previously in State ex rel. Cranmer v. Thorson (1896) 9 S.D. 149 [68 N.W. 202] (Cranmer), upholding the validity of a legislative advisory ballot measure outside the article V context. The South Dakota Legislature sought to pose a question to its statewide voters concerning whether a provision of the state charter, establishing Prohibition within the state, should be repealed. (Cranmer, 68 N.W. at p. 202, citing 1895 S.D. Sess. Laws p. 39.) A prospective voter, arguing that the ballot measure as phrased was not itself a proposed amendment, but instead a mere question seeking the electorate's nonbinding policy views about a possible future amendment, sought — similarly to petitioners in the present case — to enjoin the defendant secretary of state from placing such an advisory measure on the ballot. The state Supreme Court rejected that challenge, explaining that even if the measure sought merely the voters' advice and not their actual determination of the ultimate issue, the court was aware of "no law prohibiting the legislature from submitting any question its wisdom may suggest." (68 N.W. at p. 202, italics added.) Regarding the challenger's contention that the measure, as phrased, posed only a policy query to the voters, and that "the constitution will not be changed whatever reply may be returned" (ibid.), the court stated that the legislature was perfectly free to "submit a question not intended to change the organic law" (ibid.), and concluded that the legislature "has done what it had a right to do" (id., at p. 203). To determine otherwise and take the matter off the ballot, the court wrote, "would disturb the system of checks and balances which the constitution has so carefully constructed." (Id., at p. 204; see also Wyatt v. Kundert (S.D. 1985) 375 N.W.2d 186, 191 [acknowledging the legislature's power to pose advisory "questions to a vote of the electors" on the statewide ballot];
Scholars have long reached the same conclusion. More than 100 years ago, after describing some of the advisory policy measures mentioned above, Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer observed: "There is nothing, it would seem, that could prevent the legislature from resolving to ask the people for advice" by posing questions on the statewide ballot. (Oberholtzer, The Referendum in America (1911) p. 208 (hereafter The Referendum in America); see Lowell, The Referendum in the United States in The Initiative, Referendum and Recall (Munro edit., 1912) p. 134 [noting that a legislature "can, of course, consult" "the electors" "by means of an informal vote"].) More recently, Markku Suksi echoed those earlier observations: "[T]here seems to be nothing that would prevent a state legislature from organizing an advisory referendum" or ballot measure. (Suksi, Bringing in the People: A Comparison of Constitutional Forms and Practices of the Referendum (1993) p. 89 (Bringing in the People).)
The majority's legal analysis, recognizing that the Legislature's legislative authority is plenary and there is nothing in the California Constitution that precludes the Legislature from placing an advisory measure on the ballot, itself supports the conclusion that no constitutional principle confines advisory measures to the article V context.
First and foremost: The California Legislature's legislative power, unlike that of Congress under the federal Constitution, is plenary. As explained in hornbook passages of numerous decisions, the Legislature enjoys "all the powers and privileges which are necessary to enable it to exercise in all respects, in a free, intelligent and impartial manner, its appropriate functions,
Second: An essential attribute of the legislative function is the "`determination and formulation of legislative policy.'" (Carmel Valley Fire Protection Dist. v. State of California (2001) 25 Cal.4th 287, 299 [105 Cal.Rptr.2d 636, 20 P.3d 533].) "In fact it could be said that policymaking is the legislative function." (Schabarum v. California Legislature (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 1205, 1219 [70 Cal.Rptr.2d 745].) The Legislature's determination of policy comes into play not only with regard to its traditional lawmaking function, but also with regard to its traditional function concerning the issuance of resolutions reflecting a majority vote of each house, expressing approval or disapproval of legislation pending or proposed in Congress, or regarding programs or activities of the federal government.
Fourth and finally: "The presumption which attends every act of the legislature is that it is within the constitutional power" — and this "presumption... holds good until it is made to appear in what particular it is violating constitutional limitations." (Macmillan Co. v. Clarke (1920) 184 Cal. 491, 496-497 [194 P. 1030].) "`If there is any doubt as to the Legislature's power to act in any given case, the doubt should be resolved in favor of the
As demonstrated earlier, advisory ballot measures have long been used by our Legislature, those of other states, and local legislatures, to obtain information to inform the legislative body about possible laws or resolutions. As observed more than 75 years ago, even when the ultimate decisionmaking power remains with the "presumably technically more qualified ... legislature" (whose members retain and employ "full power to act independently, whether it be in accordance with or against the wishes of the people"), an advisory ballot measure is a useful device for securing "authoritative popular participation in public policy-making upon a non-legislating basis" and "facilitating communication between the electorate and its representatives." (The Advisory Referendum, supra, 14 Pub. Opinion Q. at pp. 304, 315.)
For similar reasons, nearly 40 years ago Chief Justice Rehnquist approved the same kind of advisory communication between the electorate and its representatives in Kimble v. Swackhamer (1978) 439 U.S. 1385 [58 L.Ed.2d 225, 99 S.Ct. 51]. As the majority opinion observes (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 510-511), in that matter, acting as circuit judge, then Associate Justice Rehnquist refused to remove from the Nevada ballot an advisory measure submitted by the state legislature, seeking the electorate's views on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Justice Rehnquist explained that he would be "most disinclined" to read the high court's prior cases or the federal Constitution "as ruling out communication between the members of the legislature and their constituents. If each member of the Nevada Legislature is free to obtain the views of constituents in the legislative district which he represents, I can see no constitutional obstacle to a nonbinding, advisory referendum of this sort." (Id., at pp. 1387-1388, italics added; see also Kimble v. Swackhamer (1978) 94 Nev. 600 [584 P.2d 161] [rejecting challenges to the advisory measure in the face of a dissenting justice who suggested that the legislature had no authority under the state Constitution to submit such a ballot measure to the voters].)
Nor do I perceive any reason to question, as a general matter, either the efficacy or the prudence of this form of information gathering by a legislative body. As the majority opinion observes, "[i]n a representative democracy, legislators are generally expected to be responsive to their constituents." (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 517.) In this regard, recent empirical scholarship suggests that in practice, the use of advisory measures is efficacious, providing pertinent information to a legislative body, and that legislative bodies have employed the information obtained from results of advisory ballot measures when deciding whether, and how, to undertake actions reasonably within their own powers. A study of local advisory ballot measures in California revealed that county boards and city councils complied with the advice of the voters more than 80 percent of the time — while still exercising, of course, prudence and measured discretion to disagree and depart from that advice as appropriate. (Ely, Government by Advice: Public Participation and Policymaking Through Advisory Ballot Measures (2015) 47 St. & Local Gov't Rev. 92, 97, 99 (hereafter Government by Advice).)
Moreover, the Commission advanced its "[p]roposals involving substantive change ... only after especially detailed examination and only in instances where the change [was] needed and [would] promote a smoother-running state government." (Revision of Article IV, supra, at p. 3.) A searching review of the extensive revision documents has found nothing to suggest any intent by the Commission or anyone else to restrict, remove or preclude the Legislature's power, as assumed by the drafters of the 1879 charter and voters who enacted it — and as illuminated by the history, cases and commentary discussed above — to place advisory policy measures, even those completely unconnected with any article V issue, on the statewide ballot.
For reasons set out above, when the Legislature in 2014 enacted the challenged statute posing to the statewide voters the advisory policy questions set out in Proposition 49, it performed well within its authority to inform itself concerning possible action that it might take regarding matters reasonably within its powers.
Moreover, and again for reasons set out above, it is important to avoid any implication that advisory ballot measures are proper only in connection with a legislative body's exercise of its functions under article V of the federal Constitution. Such a narrow view of legislative authority would find no
Because petitioners have, in their briefing, argued that the structure of our constitutional scheme, our republican form of government, and concerns regarding accountability, all militate against recognizing the validity of advisory ballot measures, we must address those claims now. The majority opinion rejects these contentions by explaining, as an initial matter, that under our existing system of representative democracy "lines of accountability are inevitably blurred to some extent." (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 517.) Moreover, as the majority opinion observes, the people's "right to instruct their representatives," set out in the California Constitution, article I, section 3, subdivision (a), itself also blurs lines of accountability, and is inconsistent with petitioners' view that the state charter implicitly prohibits the Legislature's use of advisory ballot measures. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 517-518.)
Petitioners argue that the people's creation of direct democracy rights in 1911 by necessary implication divested the Legislature of power to place advisory measures on the statewide ballot. They contend: "[T]he legislative power is shared by the people and the Legislature. This power to enact law is essentially two sides of the same coin." (Italics added.) They assert that this court must protect both the people, in their exercise of the initiative power, and the Legislature, in the exercise of its own powers, against "encroachment and interference by the other." Applying these principles in the present context, petitioners claim, in essence, that when the people obtained direct democracy rights to make law in 1911, by implication they also necessarily and simultaneously stripped the Legislature of any power it previously had under the prior iterations of the Constitution to pose advisory questions to the statewide voters. This would have surprised the people who voted for these reforms more than 100 years ago, and this conclusion would be stunning today.
As observed earlier, prior to adoption of the initiative and referendum as part of the California Constitution in 1911, the Legislature had five times exercised its authority to place advisory measures on the statewide ballot in order to determine the voters' views on issues of public import concerning matters within the Legislature's power to act. In fact, as explained earlier, the Legislature's right to pose an advisory ballot question unconnected with any article V issue was assumed by the drafters of the 1879 Constitution, and necessarily by the electorate who adopted it as well. (See ante, pt. II.A.) And as noted previously, in rejecting a single-subject rule challenge to one of those enactments — providing that the voters should be asked at the primary election their advice about which candidate the Legislature should appoint as United States senator — this court upheld the statute, observing that nothing in the Constitution prohibits the Legislature from posing such a question on the ballot. (Socialist Party v. Uhl, supra, 155 Cal. 776, 782.) Although no other
Neither was there in 1911, nor is there now, authority from any jurisdiction holding that a state legislative body lacks such power. To the contrary: as noted earlier, in 1896 the South Dakota high court had in Cranmer rejected a claim that the legislature had no power to place such a measure on the statewide ballot. The court concluded that it was aware of "no law prohibiting the legislature from submitting any question its wisdom may suggest," and that the legislature was perfectly free to "submit a question not intended to change the organic law." (Cranmer, supra, 68 N.W. at p. 202, italics added.) Consistently with that early decision, also as noted above, contemporaneous scholars addressing the burgeoning direct democracy movement found "nothing, it would seem, that could prevent the legislature from resolving to ask the people for advice" at the ballot box. (The Referendum in America, supra, at p. 208; see also Lowell, The Referendum in the United States in The Initiative, Referendum and Recall, supra, at p. 134.)
Nevertheless, petitioners suggest that by necessary implication, legislative power to pose advisory questions to the electorate must have been removed in 1911, when the people of California followed the lead of South Dakota, Oregon, and 10 other states, adding what is now article II, sections 8 and 9 of the Constitution, giving themselves direct democracy rights of initiative and referendum. (See, e.g., People v. Kelly (2010) 47 Cal.4th 1008, 1032 & fn. 30 [103 Cal.Rptr.3d 733, 222 P.3d 186] [describing the early direct democracy movement].) And yet petitioners point to nothing in the language or history of the initiative and referendum provisions made part of the California Constitution that year (Stats. 1911, res. ch. 22, Sen. Const. Amend. No. 22, § 1) purporting to speak to the Legislature's authority, or to restrict or preclude its power, by implication or otherwise, and in any manner. There is simply no support for the view that, by granting to the people initiative and referendum power in 1911, there was any implied intent to limit or bar the Legislature's
The same "necessary implication" argument now advanced by petitioners (that the creation of direct democracy rights itself removed the Legislature's power to pose advisory ballot measures) was raised and rejected — once more by the South Dakota Supreme Court — this time in its 1985 decision in Wyatt v. Kundert, supra, 375 N.W.2d 186. In the face of a majority opinion acknowledging the legislature's authority to pose advisory "questions to a vote of the electors" on the statewide ballot (id., at p. 191), a dissenting justice argued that such power had been necessarily and implicitly withdrawn when the state constitution was subsequently amended to grant the people initiative and referendum power (id., at p. 198 (dis. opn. of Wuest, J.)). The majority rebuffed that contention, explaining that the South Dakota Constitution's direct democracy provision "has not removed the legislature's inherent referral power and the restrictions imposed by and through [the state charter's direct democracy provision] apply only to referendums of the people and not to a referendum by the legislature." (375 N.W.2d at p. 191; see also the Michigan appellate court decision in Southeastern Michigan Fair Budget Coalition v. Killeen, supra, 395 N.W.2d 325, 330 [the legislature may place advisory policy questions on the statewide ballot and empower local governmental entities to do so as well].) As noted earlier, this state of affairs led a 1993 scholarly study to conclude that nothing appears to prevent a state legislature from placing an advisory measure on the statewide ballot. (Bringing in the People, supra, at p. 89.)
Neither does petitioners' hypothesized implied limitation on the Legislature's authority find support in logic. The notion that the people, in enacting their direct democracy rights to propose and actually adopt statutes and state constitutional amendments, also necessarily (but only implicitly) intended to preclude the Legislature from posing advisory questions to the voters, is at best counterintuitive.
Nor do I find persuasive petitioners' corollary argument that the initiative process, once enacted, became, and remains, the sole province of the electorate — and that it contemplates no involvement by the Legislature. They assert in their reply brief that "the basic structure of the Constitution ... indicates that there is a clear line drawn between the lawmaking function of the Legislature on one hand, and the [initiative] powers reserved to the people on the other hand." That unsupported assertion is dubious as a matter of
In conclusion, petitioners' various structural objections underlying their assertions that the state charter implicitly bars advisory ballot measures do not come close to satisfying the standards of deference, clarity, and strict construction that, as explained in the decisions cited ante, part II.B., we adhere to when deciding whether a power is, by necessary implication, denied to the Legislature. The historical employment of the power to submit advisory ballot measures by our Legislature and local California legislative bodies, as well as state and local legislative bodies in other states, would render our acceptance of petitioners' structural challenge to the Legislature's action at this late stage all the more striking. (Schabarum v. California Legislature, supra, 60 Cal.App.4th at p. 1218 [cautioning against interpretation that raises significant separation of powers issue].)
For the forgoing reasons, and with the caveat that nothing in today's decision should be viewed as calling into question the validity of statewide and local advisory ballot measures that are unrelated to any proposed amendment to the federal Constitution, I concur in the majority's opinion and disposition.
CORRIGAN, J., Concurring.
With the benefit of time to fully consider the issues presented by this writ petition; which go to the fundamental structure
Both the majority opinion and the Chief Justice's concurrence appropriately emphasize that judicial review of the Legislature's exercise of its plenary powers must be restrained. Doubts should be resolved in favor of legislative action, and constitutional limitations on legislative authority strictly construed. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 520-521; conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 541.) The foundations of these limits on the judicial function were soundly explained by Justice Sparks of the Third District Court of Appeal in Schabarum v. California Legislature (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 1205 [70 Cal.Rptr.2d 745]. I place great weight on the following considerations:
LIU, J., Concurring.
The question presented in this case is "whether the Legislature may pose to the electorate a single advisory question concerning the People's support for a federal constitutional amendment." (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 504.) The court answers yes to this narrow question and goes no further, "reserv[ing] for another day whether, in support of other powers not implicated here, an advisory ballot measure would be a permissible means of legislative investigation." (Id. at p. 504, fn. 11.) With this limited holding, I concur.
I would not rely on the Legislature's investigative power in reaching today's result. Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) is an effort by the Legislature to marshal the solemn voice of the people of California in support of a federal constitutional amendment. Article V of the United States Constitution assigns state legislatures a special role in facilitating and promoting constitutional change. I would simply hold that Senate Bill No. 1272 is a reasonable exercise of the Legislature's implied power under article V.
Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) is titled the "Overturn Citizens United Act." (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, § 1.) In enacting this statute, the Legislature declared that the United States Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n (2010) 558 U.S. 310 [175 L.Ed.2d 753, 130 S.Ct. 876] "presents a serious threat to self-government by rolling back previous bans on corporate spending in the electoral process and allows unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection, policy decisions, and public debate." (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, § 2, subd. (e).) It further declared that "Article V of the United States Constitution
Amending the federal Constitution is a difficult task, successfully accomplished only 27 times in our nation's history. To secure approval for a constitutional amendment, a political movement must convince an extraordinary number of citizens to take the movement's aims more seriously than they do most issues of ordinary government. This was by design. By making the process of constitutional change more "unwieldy and cumbrous" than ordinary lawmaking (Barron v. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore (1833) 32 U.S. 243, 250 [8 L.Ed. 672]), article V of the federal Constitution serves as a bulwark against the whims of bare legislative majorities and ensures that rules entrenched in the "supreme law of the land" (U.S. Const., art. VI) represent the considered and collective judgments of the people of the United States. Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) is a statute enacted in furtherance of the federal constitutional amendment process.
Article V of the federal Constitution (article V) provides in relevant part: "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress...." As this text makes clear, article V assigns key roles to state legislatures at the proposal and ratification stages of the federal constitutional amendment process.
Challenges to the manner in which state legislatures have exercised their article V powers have almost always been rejected. In Hawke v. Smith, No. 1 (1920) 253 U.S. 221 [64 L.Ed. 871, 40 S.Ct. 495] (Hawke), the Ohio General Assembly adopted a resolution ratifying the proposed Eighteenth Amendment
In Leser v. Garnett (1922) 258 U.S. 130 [66 L.Ed. 505, 42 S.Ct. 217] (Leser), the plaintiff argued that the Nineteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution was invalid because the legislatures of several states had violated state constitutional provisions in ratifying the proposed amendment. The high court disagreed on the ground that state legislatures have authority to exercise their article V functions as they see fit, free from interference by the "limitations sought to be imposed by the people of a State." (Leser, at p. 137.)
More recent decisions are in accord. Walker v. Dunn (Tenn. 1972) 498 S.W.2d 102 (Walker) involved a provision of the Tennessee Constitution prohibiting the state legislature from acting on any federal constitutional amendment unless the legislature had been elected after submission of the amendment. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the state legislature's ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, even though the legislature did not wait until the election cycle following submission. The court concluded that the state constitutional provision was "a limitation upon the General Assembly of Tennessee in the exercise of its federally derived power" and accordingly was invalid. (Walker, at p. 106; see Trombetta v. Florida (M.D.Fla. 1973) 353 F.Supp. 575, 577-578 (Trombetta) [invalidating similar Fla. constitutional provision].)
In Dyer v. Blair (N.D.Ill. 1975) 390 F.Supp. 1291 (Dyer), the court considered a provision of the Illinois Constitution, as well as rules adopted by Illinois's legislature, that required a three-fifths majority vote to ratify an amendment to the federal Constitution. Each house of the legislature had approved the proposed Equal Rights Amendment by a vote of more than a majority but less than a three-fifths supermajority. The court observed that the framers of the federal Constitution had a "basic understanding that state legislatures should have the power and the discretion to determine for
Subtler attempts at cabining the discretion of the state legislatures when performing their article V functions have also been rejected. In American Federation of Labor v. Eu (1984) 36 Cal.3d 687 [206 Cal.Rptr. 89, 686 P.2d 609], we considered various state and federal challenges to an initiative advocating a federal balanced budget amendment. Among other provisions, the initiative proposed to suspend the compensation and benefits of state legislators who would not take specific actions to support a balanced budget amendment. (Id. at pp. 692-693.) We invalidated this aspect of the initiative on the ground that it would coerce state legislators to take actions in support of a particular constitutional amendment. (Id. at p. 694.) Similarly, in Bramberg v. Jones (1999) 20 Cal.4th 1045 [86 Cal.Rptr.2d 319, 978 P.2d 1240] (Bramberg), we considered whether a voter initiative could require future ballots for the United States Congress to include the statement "`Disregarded Voters' Instruction on Term Limits'" next to the names of incumbents who did not support a federal term limits amendment in the previous session. (Id. at p. 1047.) We held that the initiative was "impermissibly coercive" and thus violated article V. (Bramberg, at p. 1060; see id. at p. 1063.)
In addition to the powers that article V expressly delegates, state legislatures have played a crucial role in achieving the popular mobilization necessary to ratify many of the amendments to the federal Constitution by issuing resolutions to Congress and to other states. Today's opinion recounts numerous examples throughout our nation's history, dating back to the founding era. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 502-504.)
State legislatures have also established state conventions when Congress has chosen that method of ratification. As today's opinion recounts, when Congress submitted the Twenty-first Amendment to state conventions, state legislatures across the country enacted legislation establishing how delegates were to be chosen and when and where conventions would meet. (Brown, Ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (1938) pp. 521-700 [collecting laws]; see Stats. 1933, ch. 149, pp. 598-602 [establishing procedures for Cal. convention to ratify the 21st Amend.].) Courts have found these actions to be within the legislatures'
From the discussion above, it is evident that judicial decisions in this area have given state legislatures wide latitude in carrying out their art. V functions and taking actions reasonably related to the federal constitutional amendment process. This judicial posture befits the nature of constitutional change. Occasions for amending the federal Constitution are, by design, infrequent and unusual. Each is a separate and solemn moment that requires a political process calibrated to the perceived problem at hand. Courts have recognized that the actors to whom article V delegates authority have broad discretion to address each proposal for constitutional change on an individualized basis. History and precedent suggest a very narrow role for the judiciary in monitoring the federal amendment process.
The texts of the federal and state Constitutions do not address whether the Legislature may place an advisory measure on the ballot asking voters whether they support a federal constitutional amendment. Although we have previously recognized that such an advisory ballot measure "does not offend article V" (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d at p. 707), no court has confronted the precise question before us. But the historical use of advisory questions in connection with the federal constitutional amendment process sheds light on the issue here. (See Dyer, supra, 390 F.Supp. at pp. 1303-1307 [consulting historical practice to illuminate the scope of state legislatures' art. V powers].)
The practice of state legislatures consulting the voters on federal constitutional amendments must be understood in historical context. Since the founding, "the animating principle of our Constitution [is] that the people themselves are the originating source of all the powers of government." (Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm'n (2015) 576 U.S. ___, ___ [192 L.Ed.2d 704, 135 S.Ct. 2652, 2671].) Because constitutional commitments bind future legislative majorities, cannot be easily undone, and speak on behalf of "the People of the United States" (U.S. Const. preamble), the framers repeatedly emphasized the necessity of the people's consent in amending the federal Constitution.
At the state conventions for ratifying the federal Constitution, advocates for ratification repeatedly invoked the sovereign will of the people as the sole ground for amending its terms. In Pennsylvania, James Wilson remarked:
Today's opinion ably recounts the history of such advisory measures, with examples from a multitude of states concerning a wide range of proposed constitutional amendments from the late nineteenth century to the present day. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 507-510.) Challenges to these measures have not succeeded. (Id. at pp. 510-511.) As the court recognizes (id. at p. 505), it is appropriate in this case to "put significant weight upon historical practice" (Noel Canning, supra, 573 U.S. at p. ___ [134 S.Ct. at p. 2559], italics omitted)).
This robust body of shared historical practice suggests a common source of legislative authority. As noted, article V of the federal Constitution gives state legislatures a central role in the process of proposing and ratifying federal constitutional amendments. Under article V, the function of state legislatures is to convey to Congress and to other states an expression of the state's sovereign will with respect to federal law of the most fundamental character. Sovereignty ultimately lies in "the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves" (The Federalist No. 39 (Cooke ed., 1961) p. 254 (Madison)), and the ratification function assigned to state legislatures under article V is intended to elicit "a decisive expression of the people's will" (Dillon v. Gloss (1921) 256 U.S. 368, 374 [65 L.Ed. 994, 41 S.Ct. 510] (Dillon)). In submitting an advisory ballot measure to the electorate, a state legislature acts in furtherance of its article V function by vesting the people's will with a degree of solemnity that cannot be achieved through an opinion poll or other means, and by ensuring and communicating to others that its
The concept of implied powers under the federal Constitution has been well established since M'Culloch v. Maryland (1819) 17 U.S. 316 [4 L.Ed 579] (M'Culloch), which held (among other things) that Congress had the power to establish a national bank. (Id. at p. 424.) Although M'Culloch is often cited for its interpretation of the necessary and proper clause (M'Culloch, at pp. 411-421), the high court's discussion of that clause appears only after the opinion has already made an affirmative case for Congress's implied power to create the bank (id. at pp. 401-411). M'Culloch's primary arguments for the constitutionality of the national bank are based not on the necessary and proper clause but on the nature of the federal Constitution itself.
Chief Justice Marshall began the court's opinion by noting that although the Constitution does not enumerate a power to establish a bank, "there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described.... The men who drew and adopted [the 10th] amendment had experienced the embarrassments resulting from the insertion of [the word `necessary'] in the articles of confederation, and probably omitted it to avoid those embarrassments. A constitution ... requires, that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves." (M'Culloch, supra, 17 U.S. at pp. 406-407.) Unlike the Articles of Confederation, the second article of which had narrowly limited the powers of the Congress of the Confederation to those "expressly delegated," the 1787 Constitution was meant to constitute a new system of government and to provide only the broad outlines of the powers of its component parts.
M'Culloch went on to say that although the word "bank" or "incorporation" does not appear in the federal Constitution, the enumerated powers of
M'Culloch's reasoning is not limited to powers granted in article I of the federal Constitution. M'Culloch rests on a general principle that each power enumerated in the federal Constitution may imply other powers necessary to the exercise of the enumerated power. (See The Federalist No. 44, supra, at pp. 304-305 (Madison) ["No axiom is more clearly established in law, or in reason, than that wherever the end is required, the means are authorized; wherever a general power to do a thing is given, every particular power necessary for doing it, is included."].) Subsequent decisions have confirmed that this principle of constitutional construction applies to powers other than those assigned to Congress. (See, e.g., Chambers v. NASCO, Inc. (1991) 501 U.S. 32, 43-44 [115 L.Ed.2d 27, 111 S.Ct. 2123] [discussing implied powers of the federal courts]; American Ins. Assn. v. Garamendi (2003) 539 U.S. 396, 414-415 [156 L.Ed.2d 376, 123 S.Ct. 2374] [discussing implied powers of the President].)
Like articles I, II, and III of the federal Constitution, article V also conveys power as much through "what is reasonably implied" as through "what is expressed." (Dillon, supra, 256 U.S. at p. 373; see id. at p. 376 ["As a rule the Constitution speaks in general terms, leaving Congress to deal with subsidiary matters of detail as the public interests and changing conditions may require; and Article V is no exception to the rule." (fn. omitted)].) In the article V context, courts have recognized a variety of implied powers. The high court has held that Congress has the power to place a time limit on ratification of a proposed amendment by the states. (Dillon, at pp. 375-376.) And as noted, when Congress chose the state convention method for ratifying the Twenty-first Amendment, legislatures across the country established the
Here the Legislature's briefing contends that "[f]or the people of this state, Proposition 49 represents their only means under article V of the federal Constitution to be heard on this momentous question [i.e., whether Citizens United should be overturned by constitutional amendment]. Elections on advisory ballot questions have been held in a wide variety of other states to ascertain and to formally convey the will of the voters as to whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended in various respects, and the courts have repeatedly upheld the submission of such measures to the electorate. The California Legislature is likewise entitled to seek this input from the voters as a matter `incidental and ancillary' to its constitutional power and responsibility to ratify proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution." I would hold that the Legislature has implied power under article V to submit Proposition 49 to the electorate because the use of an advisory ballot measure uniquely serves to aid the Legislature's expression of California's sovereign will.
As I explain in the rest of this opinion, the Legislature does not have general authority under the California Constitution to submit advisory questions to the electorate. But even if this means the Legislature has no authority under state law to submit an advisory measure on a federal constitutional amendment (see dis. opn., post), such a limitation must yield to the federal authority that article V confers on the Legislature. As discussed above (ante, at pp. 553-555), courts have consistently invalidated state law limitations, including state constitutional limitations, on a state legislature's exercise of its federal functions under article V. (See Leser, supra, 258 U.S. at p. 137; Hawke, supra, 253 U.S. at p. 231; Dyer, supra, 390 F.Supp. at pp. 1307-1308; Trombetta, supra, 353 F.Supp. at pp. 577-578; Walker, supra, 498 S.W.2d at p. 106.)
Because article V's "delegation is not to the states but rather to the designated ratifying bodies" (Dyer, supra, 390 F.Supp. at p. 1308), state legislatures "have the power and the discretion to determine for themselves how they should discharge the responsibilities committed to them by the federal government" (id. at p. 1307). It may be that certain elemental precepts of state law — for example, state constitutional provisions that create a legislature and define its membership — must remain operative when a state legislature exercises federal functions. But this case does not concern the character or legitimacy of the Legislature as the duly constituted and properly functioning legislature of California. This case concerns the source and
The analysis above affirms the Legislature's broad latitude to act in the unique context of amending the federal Constitution and amply justifies today's narrow holding. Yet the court's opinion rests not only on the Legislature's role under article V but also on "the Legislature's power to investigate." (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 520.) This doctrinal move unnecessarily calls into question the narrowness of today's holding — for if investigation by use of an advisory ballot measure "is permitted as a necessary aid to the execution of other legislative powers" (id. at p. 499), and if an advisory ballot measure is permissible so long as "a nexus exists between the matter investigated and some potential action the Legislature has authority to undertake" (id. at p. 500), then what is to distinguish the validity of an advisory ballot measure concerning a federal constitutional amendment from the validity of such a measure concerning any ordinary issue of public policy? Although the court expresses no view on that question (id. at p. 504, fn. 11), the Chief Justice says there is no distinction at all. She would hold that the Legislature may use advisory ballot measures "with regard to any potential action that the Legislature has authority to undertake," including matters "completely unconnected with any article V issue." (Conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at pp. 542, 544.)
I find unpersuasive the court's reliance on the Legislature's investigative power as well as the Chief Justice's expansive view of the Legislature's power to use advisory ballot measures. At the outset, I acknowledge that "[u]nlike the federal Constitution, which is a grant of power to Congress, the California Constitution is a limitation or restriction on the powers of the Legislature." (Methodist Hosp. of Sacramento v. Saylor (1971) 5 Cal.3d 685, 691 [97 Cal.Rptr. 1, 488 P.2d 161].) "The legislature is vested with the whole of the legislative power of the state and may deal with any subject within the scope of civil government unless it is restrained by the provisions of the constitution, and the presumption that the legislature is acting within the constitution holds good until it is made to appear in what particular it is
We previously addressed the issue of advisory ballot measures in American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d 687, where concerned citizens sought to place on the ballot a nonbinding resolution urging Congress to propose a federal balanced budget amendment and directing the Secretary of State to apply for a constitutional convention. We invalidated this advisory ballot measure on the ground that it was not authorized by the initiative power. (Id. at pp. 714-715.) Observing that the initiative "is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them" (Cal. Const., art. II, § 8, subd. (a)), we explained that a measure that merely adopts a resolution or declaration of policy is one that "fails to adopt a statute" (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, at p. 715).
This precedent makes clear that a citizen-initiated advisory measure asking the electorate whether the Legislature should increase the gasoline tax, for example, would be unconstitutional. The court in American Federation of Labor v. Eu reasoned that the initiative power does not authorize the people to place an advisory measure on the ballot. But upon a moment's reflection, it is evident that our decision suggests a deeper structural principle.
Suppose citizens who support an increase in the gasoline tax qualify the following initiative for the general election ballot: "Proposition X. The People of the State of California hereby enact the following statute: In the next general election, the Secretary of State shall place on the ballot an advisory question asking the people of California whether the Legislature should increase the tax on retail sales of gasoline by 5 cents per gallon." If Proposition X were to pass, would the statute it enacted be constitutional? Of course not; otherwise, our decision in American Federation of Labor v. Eu would be easily evaded and reduced to a virtual nullity. But the invalidity of Proposition X does not arise from the fact that it is an advisory ballot measure like the advisory initiative at issue in American Federation of Labor v. Eu. Proposition X is not an advisory measure; it enacts a statute that directs the Secretary of State to place an advisory measure on the ballot at the next election.
If Proposition X is invalid, then an identical statute enacted by the Legislature would be invalid as well because "[t]he electorate's legislative power is `generally coextensive with the power of the Legislature to enact statutes.'" (Professional Engineers in California Government v. Kempton (2007) 40 Cal.4th 1016, 1042 [56 Cal.Rptr.3d 814, 155 P.3d 226]; see Santa Clara County Local Transportation Auth. v. Guardino (1995) 11 Cal.4th 220, 253 [45 Cal.Rptr.2d 207, 902 P.2d 225]; Legislature v. Deukmejian (1983) 34 Cal.3d 658, 675 [194 Cal.Rptr. 781, 669 P.2d 17].) In resisting this conclusion, the court cites our recognition that "`the reserved powers of initiative and referendum do not encompass all possible actions of a legislative body.'" (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 516, quoting American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d at p. 708.) But we made that statement in the context of explaining that the Legislature, but not the citizenry, has the authority to adopt or reject "a resolution which merely expresses the wishes of the enacting body." (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, at p. 708.) Nothing in American Federation of Labor v. Eu suggests that the Legislature has authority that the citizenry lacks to place an advisory measure on the ballot.
Distinguishing Proposition X from its legislatively enacted twin would require us to hold that our state Constitution does not authorize the citizenry, on its own initiative, to vote on an advisory measure, but does authorize the citizenry to do so when directed by the Legislature. Yet it seems dubious to say that our Constitution privileges the ordinary lawmaking process over the initiative qualification process as a gatekeeper for the people's exercise of their putative advisory voice. After all, the Legislature is the agent of the people, not the other way around.
As I explain more fully below, the infirmity of Proposition X is not that the electorate, as opposed to the Legislature, has authorized the electorate to vote
When the California Constitution of 1849 was ratified, article IV, section 1 provided: "The legislative power of this State shall be vested in a Senate and Assembly, which shall be designated the Legislature of the State of California...." This language affirmed what the people had accomplished by forming the Legislature: The people gave up the "legislative power of this State" and vested it in their duly elected representatives. The only exceptions were provided expressly: The people retained the power to approve or reject proposed constitutional amendments and proposed assumptions of debt. (Cal. Const. of 1849, arts. VIII, X.) By ratifying the 1849 Constitution and creating the Legislature, the people of California established a republic. They divested themselves of authority to exercise certain forms of power, they authorized the Legislature to exercise those powers on their behalf, and they restrained their ability to take those powers back without amending the state Constitution. Most prominently, the people gave up the authority to enact laws and vested that authority in the Legislature. That is why the initiative and referendum had to be established by constitutional amendment in 1911 and why the Legislature does not have authority to submit ordinary statutes for the citizenry to enact by ballot. (See post, at pp. 565-566.)
Apart from the power to enact laws (what I will call "lawmaking power," as distinguished from the more encompassing term "legislative power"), what powers were included in the people's grant of "legislative power" to their representatives under article IV, section 1 of the 1849 Constitution? The basic contours of the legislative power are established by its historical roots in the powers of parliament. In Ex parte D. O. McCarthy (1866) 29 Cal. 395 (McCarthy), we explained: "A legislative assembly, when established, becomes vested with all the powers and privileges which are necessary and incidental to a free and unobstructed exercise of its appropriate functions. These powers and privileges are derived not from the Constitution; on the contrary, they arise from the very creation of a legislative body.... [¶] What powers and privileges ... a legislative assembly takes by force and effect of its creation, are to be ascertained by a reference to the common parliamentary law." (Id. at p. 403.) We then cited Luther Stearns Cushing's 1856 treatise, Elements of the Law and Practice of Legislative Assemblies in the United States of America, for examples of "necessary and incidental" powers. (McCarthy, at pp. 403-404.)
In vesting "[t]he legislative power of this State" in the Legislature (Cal. Const. of 1849, art. IV, § 1), the people gave up their authority to exercise the power to adopt resolutions — that is, to express an opinion in their official capacity as the people of California — and they restrained their authority to take that power back. That power could not be returned to or shared with the people without a state constitutional amendment or some other source of authority such as article V of the federal Constitution. Under the California Constitution of 1849, the people were not authorized to adopt a nonbinding resolution, just as they were not authorized to enact ordinary law.
As the Legislature's briefing explains, our state Constitution is now more democratic and less republican than it was in 1849. In 1911, amid widespread perception that the Legislature had become corrupt and self-serving, Governor Hiram Johnson and a wave of representatives were elected on the promise of amending the state Constitution to give some power back to the people. (Cal. Com. on Campaign Financing, Democracy by Initiative: Shaping California's Fourth Branch of Government (1992) pp. 36-42.) Those representatives proposed, and the people ratified, amendments to the California Constitution that created the broad outlines of our current structure of government. Article IV, section 1 of the California Constitution now provides: "The legislative power of this State is vested in the California Legislature which consists of the Senate and Assembly, but the people reserve to themselves the powers of initiative and referendum."
Importantly, the departures from republican government introduced in 1911 were specific and circumscribed. "When the people established the Legislature, they conveyed to it the full breadth of their sovereign legislative powers.
Of course, this does not mean the Legislature may not investigate the views of the citizenry through committee hearings, town halls, opinion polls, meetings with constituents, social media, and myriad other information-gathering mechanisms aided by modern technology. It just means the Legislature may not use the ballot for this purpose. The framers of the 1849 Constitution knew well the ballot's singular political significance and the importance of circumscribing the purposes for which it could be used. The words "election," "electors," and "ballot" appeared in the original charter 69 times. Collectively, these usages contemplated only three ways in which the ballot would be employed: to approve the assumption of state debt (Cal. Const. of 1849, art. VIII), to ratify state constitutional amendments (id., art. X), and to elect constitutional officers. The terms of our state Constitution today continue to authorize use of the ballot for the solemn and legally binding tasks of electing public officials and approving limited and specific types of laws. Nothing in our Constitution contemplates use of the statewide ballot — the traditional means for solemn expression of the people's will — to gauge public opinion on a "purely precatory" nonbinding resolution. (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d at p. 708.)
In sum, the legislative power — i.e., the full range of parliamentary power, including the power to make laws and the power to adopt resolutions — was vested in the Legislature and divested from the people in the 1849 Constitution. That is why the 1911 amendment to article IV, section 1 of the California Constitution was needed to authorize the people, not just the Legislature, to exercise general lawmaking power. And that is why the people do not have general authority to vote on advisory ballot measures. No constitutional amendment has returned that power to the people or authorized the Legislature to do so.
This understanding of how legislative power has been vested, divested, and shared throughout our constitutional history draws further support from the indirect initiative process that existed between 1911 and 1966. In addition to reserving to the people the powers of initiative and referendum, the 1911 amendment to article IV, section 1 of the California Constitution provided for "direct" and "indirect" initiatives, with the "indirect" initiative process authorizing the Legislature to place on the ballot, alongside a voter initiative, an alternative measure for the electorate to approve or disapprove. (Cal. Const., art. IV, former § 1, as amended Oct. 10, 1911 ["The legislature may reject any measure so proposed by initiative petition and propose a different one on the same subject...."].) The specific authorizing language of this provision — "The legislature may ... propose a different [measure] on the same subject" — would have been unnecessary if the Legislature already had general power to submit ordinary statutes for the people to enact by ballot. The indirect initiative confirms that the people originally vested in the Legislature and divested from themselves the power to enact ordinary laws, and then later authorized the Legislature to share a limited portion of that vested power with the electorate. No similar measure has ever authorized the Legislature to share the power to adopt nonbinding resolutions with the electorate. It remains a power that the people have vested in the Legislature and divested from themselves.
The Center for State and Local Government Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, in an amicus curiae brief, contends that the Legislature has always had general power to submit statutes for the voters to enact and, because "[t]he greater power includes the lesser," also has power to submit advisory measures. According to amicus curiae, the 1911 indirect initiative provision "acknowledged" rather than authorized the Legislature's power to submit to the voters an alternative measure on the same subject as a citizens' initiative. For this proposition, amicus curiae relies on a report by the California Constitution Revision Commission (Commission) discussing 1966 and 1968 revisions that included elimination of the indirect initiative. The "Introduction" to the report said: "The Legislature can exercise all of the State's legislative power and can act upon any subject unless the power has been delegated to the federal government or exercise of the power is forbidden by the State or Federal Constitution. It therefore is unnecessary to grant power in the Constitution which the Legislature inherently possesses. It is appropriate, however, to prohibit or compel by constitutional provision certain exercises of the Legislature's inherent power. [Citation.] [¶] Our Constitution is encumbered by this type of unnecessary grant of power to the Legislature and by provisions which the Legislature is competent to enact by statute. Relying upon the rule of inherent legislative power, the Commission often has formulated recommended revisions which free our Constitution
But this quotation, which states the Commission's general objective of eliminating unnecessary grants of power to the Legislature, does not illuminate whether the specific revision eliminating the indirect initiative was an instance of eliminating an unnecessary grant of power. As the Legislature's briefing notes, the Commission's specific rationale for eliminating the indirect initiative was that a separate proposed revision had "reduced the percentage of signatures required for an initiative statute from 8 to 5 percent, the same as required for the indirect initiative. The indirect initiative merely adds an additional step to accomplish the same result that can be accomplished under the initiative generally. Further, the indirect initiative has been used only four times, and only once successfully. Accordingly, it was determined that the indirect initiative could be deleted without impairing the right of the people to propose laws through the initiative procedure." (Com., Proposed Revision (1966) p. 52; see People v. Kelly (2010) 47 Cal.4th 1008, 1040 & fn. 55 [103 Cal.Rptr.3d 733, 222 P.3d 186] [discussing history of elimination of indirect initiative].) Nothing in this explanation suggests that the indirect initiative provision merely acknowledged the Legislature's extant power to submit statutes to the electorate. The provision is most naturally read to grant the Legislature a power it did not previously have.
Amicus curiae also contends that article II, section 12 of the California Constitution — "No amendment to the Constitution, and no statute proposed to the electors by the Legislature or by initiative, that names any individual to hold any office, or names or identifies any private corporation to perform any function or to have any power or duty, may be submitted to the electors or have any effect" (italics added) — confirms that the Legislature has authority to place ordinary statutes on the ballot. But this provision became part of our Constitution in 1950 (Cal. Const., art. IV, former § 26, as adopted Nov. 7, 1950, renumbered June 8, 1976), when the Legislature possessed the power of indirect initiative. Moreover, well before 1950 and ever since, our state Constitution has required the Legislature to submit to the people any statute that issues state bonds above a certain amount (Cal. Const., art. XVI, § 1) or that amends or repeals an initiative statute (id., art. II, § 10, subd. (c)). Thus, even after the indirect initiative was eliminated in 1966, article II, section 12's reference to a "statute proposed to the electors by the Legislature" has served to ensure that statutes authorizing state debt and statutes amending or repealing initiative statutes do not name any individual to hold office or any private corporation to perform any function or duty. It does not necessarily imply that the Legislature has general authority to propose statutes to the voters. (Cf. Czesla, Review of Article IV of the California Constitution
Most telling, the Legislature in its briefing does not claim it has the power to submit ordinary statutes to the electorate. When pressed on this point at oral argument, counsel for the Legislature declined to assert the Legislature has such power. This hesitation undermines the broad contention in the Legislature's briefing that no action of the Legislature may be found "inconsistent with the `structure' of the Constitution, without it violating some explicit prohibition contained therein." Even though our Constitution does not explicitly prohibit the Legislature from submitting ordinary statutes to the electorate, the Legislature refuses to claim it has such authority.
And for good reason: Apart from the powers of initiative and referendum, the people have vested lawmaking power in the Legislature, thereby divesting it from themselves, and the Legislature may not delegate that power to the people without specific constitutional authorization. Such authorization has occurred at various times through various provisions of our Constitution, demonstrating that when our Constitution contemplates shared lawmaking authority between the people and their representatives, it has said so explicitly. Article I's declaration that "[t]he people have the right to instruct their representatives" is another provision that expressly authorizes shared accountability in lawmaking. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 3, subd. (a); but cf. dis. opn., post, at p. 585 [the people's right to instruct cannot empower the Legislature to submit advisory questions that the people themselves cannot place on the ballot].) Absent such authorization, the Legislature may not statutorily alter the constitutional allocation of lawmaking power between the people and their representatives. And by the same logic, the Legislature may not statutorily authorize the people to adopt a nonbinding resolution because that power is constitutionally vested in the Legislature and not retained by the people. This arrangement, with its clear lines of accountability, is not the only way to structure a well-functioning lawmaking process. But it is the way the people of California have chosen.
The Chief Justice contends that advisory ballot measures have long been used by states and localities, and that this historical practice suggests that such measures are legally valid. (Conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at pp. 524-535.) But it is unclear how probative the examples from other jurisdictions are. For one thing, the "scores" (and how many "scores" are there really?) "of legislatively initiated advisory ballot measures that have been submitted to statewide voters, both in California and throughout the
What is clear is that historical practice in California provides scant support for the broad thesis that the Legislature has general authority to place advisory measures on the statewide ballot. Although the Chief Justice cites a wide range of local advisory measures, such measures are specifically authorized by statute (Elec. Code, § 9603) and do not illuminate the constitutional question presented here. As to the seven examples of statewide advisory measures identified by the Chief Justice, three implicated the Legislature's role under article I, section 3, or article V of the federal Constitution of expressing the state's sovereign will concerning the election of United States Senators. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 507-508.) That leaves four advisory measures that did not concern any function assigned to the Legislature by the federal Constitution.
Among those four measures, the Chief Justice places greatest emphasis on an 1879 advisory measure that asked the electorate whether it was "`[f]or'" or "`[a]gainst'" Chinese immigration. (Stats. 1877, ch. 5, § 1, p. 3.) According to the Chief Justice, this measure, which resulted in a 96 percent majority voting against Chinese immigration (Certificate of Vote on "An Act to Ascertain and Express the Will of the People of the State of California on the Subject of Chinese Immigration" (1879)), shows that the delegates to the 1878-1879 Constitutional Convention "obviously assumed that the Legislature possessed and retained authority to submit such an advisory measure to
But this example should not guide our constitutional inquiry. As the Chief Justice acknowledges, the 1879 advisory measure was motivated by "virulent and racist views" (conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 536), and this court recently observed that "[a]nti-Chinese sentiment was a major impetus for the California Constitutional Convention of 1879" (In re Chang (2015) 60 Cal.4th 1169, 1172 [185 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 344 P.3d 288]). Against this historical backdrop, it is fanciful to posit that the constitutional delegates — a large portion of whom were members of the Workingmen's Party, whose slogan was "The Chinese Must Go!" (ibid.) — had a well-considered view of the constitutionality of the anti-Chinese advisory measure.
Scarcely a decade after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution — section 1 of which says no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the law" — those delegates wrote the infamous former article XIX (titled "Chinese") into the 1879 Constitution, expressly prohibiting employment of the Chinese, authorizing the Legislature and localities to remove the Chinese from their jurisdictions, and directing the Legislature to "discourage their immigration by all the means within its power." (Cal. Const., art. XIX, as ratified 1879; see In re Chang, at pp. 1172-1173.) The delegates also constitutionalized the denial of the right to vote to any "native of China." (Cal. Const., art. II, § 1, as ratified 1879.) Given the fact that the anti-Chinese advisory measure received "the blessing of the constitutional delegates" (conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 536) alongside these other blatantly unconstitutional provisions, I do not think the 1879 example sheds much light on the constitutionality of statutes placing advisory measures on the ballot. For the same reason, I would not assign any weight to the Legislature's submission of another anti-Chinese advisory measure in 1891 asking whether English literacy should be a requirement for voting. (Stats. 1891, ch. 113, pp. 704-705.) The fact that an advisory ballot measure, as a procedural mechanism, "is not by its nature invariably discriminatory or offensive" (conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 549, fn. 39) does not explain why we should think that legislators who did submit advisory measures that were patently discriminatory during an era of "xenophobia" (In re Chang, at p. 1172) thought or cared much about the constitutionality of such measures.
The two remaining examples are a pair of 1933 measures asking voters whether the Legislature should divert gasoline tax funds to pay down debt on outstanding highway bonds. (Stats. 1933, ch. 435, § 3, p. 1126.) The voter
In sum, the Legislature's past uses of advisory ballot measures hardly demonstrate a "well accepted" practice (conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 535), let alone one whose constitutionality has been implicitly affirmed. As Justice Chin notes, "the most recent of these advisory measures occurred over eight decades ago, long before the development of modern polling techniques, the Internet, and other methods of ascertaining the people's wishes in political matters." (Dis. opn., post, at p. 587.) If anything, the paucity of historical examples, with none in the last 80 years, tends to cast doubt on the existence and validity of the power claimed here.
No member of the court suggests that American Federation of Labor v. Eu was wrongly decided or that our holding in that case may be evaded by an initiative statute that directs the Secretary of State to place an advisory measure on the ballot. But today's opinion rejects the argument that "if, under American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d 697, the people are limited to placing on the ballot only proposed laws, then the Legislature must be too...." (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 516.) Noting that the Legislature's powers are broader than the people's initiative power (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, at p. 708), the court contends that the Legislature's broader powers authorize it to pass a statute placing an advisory measure on the ballot even though the people may not do so by initiative. I agree with this thesis where, as here, the Legislature is exercising its implied power under article V of the federal Constitution. But I do not agree when it comes to advisory ballot measures on ordinary matters of public policy.
The court, like the Legislature, does not rest its reasoning "on the syllogism that the legislative power includes the power to enact statutes,
As an initial matter, it is odd to characterize Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.), which the Legislature labeled the "Overturn Citizens United Act" (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, § 1), as an effort to investigate the electorate's views. The Legislature's findings include declarations that Citizens United "presents a serious threat to self-government" (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, § 2, subd. (e)); that "[a] February 2010 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 80 percent of Americans oppose the ruling in Citizens United" (id., subd. (k)); and that "Article V of the United States Constitution empowers and obligates the people of the United States of America to use the constitutional amendment process to correct those egregiously wrong decisions of the United States Supreme Court that go to the heart of our democracy and the republican form of self-government" (id., subd. (l)). This is the language of public mobilization, not investigation, and it fits comfortably within the Legislature's role under article V in marshaling vigorous and solemn expressions of California's sovereign will on whether to amend our nation's basic charter. It blinks reality to suggest that the Legislature — plainly aware of opinion polls showing that broad majorities of Americans are opposed to Citizens United — enacted Senate Bill No. 1272 in order to investigate the citizenry's views.
More fundamentally, the court's invocation of the investigative power in this context is a novel expansion of how we have historically construed this power. Our case law on the investigative power uniformly consists of disputes concerning the Legislature's prerogative to establish committees, boards, commissions, and agencies, and to vest such entities with authority to compel evidence and testimony and to hold noncompliant witnesses in contempt. Those issues are far afield from the question before us. As a review of the cases shows, nothing in this court's treatment of the Legislature's power to investigate suggests it encompasses the authority to submit an advisory measure to the electorate.
In McCarthy, supra, 29 Cal. 395, a newspaper editor was held in contempt by the state Senate and jailed after he refused to answer questions posed by the Senate in the course of investigating charges of bribery against its members. (Id. at pp. 397-399.) The petitioner challenged his detention, claiming the Senate lacked power to investigate the bribery charges. We
In In re Battelle (1929) 207 Cal. 227 [277 P. 725] (Battelle), the state Senate adopted a resolution authorizing a committee of senators to investigate a possible price-fixing conspiracy among cement manufacturers. The committee subpoenaed witnesses and required them to bring certain records and documents within their control, but various witnesses refused. The Senate adopted a resolution holding the witnesses in contempt. The petitioner was arrested and sought habeas corpus relief in this court. In addressing the petitioner's claims, we said that "in many instances, in order to the preparation of wise and timely laws the necessity of investigation of some sort must exist as an indispensable incident and auxiliary to the proper exercise of legislative power." (Id. at p. 241.) We further explained that "the inherent and auxiliary power reposed in legislative bodies to conduct investigations in aid of prospective legislation has already been held to carry with it the power in proper cases to require and compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of books and papers by means of legal process and to institute and carry to the extent of punishment contempt proceedings in order to compel the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such documentary evidence as may be legally called for in the course of such proceedings, whether conducted by the legislative body or a branch of it, directly or through properly constituted committees thereof." (Ibid.) We rejected the claim that the use of such compulsory process meant the Legislature was exercising a judicial function in violation of the separation of powers. (Id. at pp. 241-244.) But we ultimately granted the petitioner relief on the ground that the contempt order did not adequately explain how the questions the petitioner refused to answer were pertinent to the issue the Legislature was investigating. (Id. at pp. 246-247.) Like McCarthy, Battelle had nothing to do with advisory ballot measures.
The other cases cited in today's opinion are similarly far afield. Both Swing v. Riley (1939) 13 Cal.2d 513 [90 P.2d 313] and Special Assembly Int. Committee v. Southard (1939) 13 Cal.2d 497 [90 P.2d 304] (Southard) addressed issues concerning the proper appointment of legislative committees. Parker v. Riley (1941) 18 Cal.2d 83 [113 P.2d 873] held that a statute creating the California Commission on Interstate Cooperation did not violate separation of powers. The key passage in that case discussing the power to investigate gives context and substance to this power: "`The ascertainment of facts in its essence is not a legislative function. It is simply ancillary to legislation. It may be accomplished in divers ways. While it may be done by the Legislature itself, it is a responsibility not infrequently placed upon committees and individuals.... Frequent illustrations of this practice also are found respecting permanent boards or commissions.... The ascertainment of
The novelty of the court's reasoning has an even deeper dimension. As noted, neither the Legislature nor any member of this court has invoked the Legislature's ordinary lawmaking power as its source of authority for enacting Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.), even though a duly enacted statute (as opposed to, say, a mere committee resolution or executive order) is required to place Proposition 49 on the ballot. The court instead resorts to the Legislature's incidental power to investigate. Yet in every case cited by the court regarding the scope of the Legislature's incidental powers, the Legislature acted without passing a statute. (See Battelle, supra, 207 Cal. at pp. 230-240; Southard, supra, 13 Cal.2d at pp. 498-502; Swing v. Riley, supra, 13 Cal.2d at pp. 514-517; McCarthy, supra, 29 Cal. at pp. 397-399; Parker v. Riley, supra, 18 Cal.2d at pp. 89-91.) Today's opinion holds for the first time that the Legislature's investigative power is itself a font of authority, separate and apart from its ordinary lawmaking power, for the Legislature to enact statutes. This holding implies that the Legislature may enact certain statutes pursuant to its investigative power that it could not enact pursuant to its ordinary lawmaking power. After all, if the Legislature's ordinary lawmaking power were sufficient in this case, presumably the court's analysis would have stopped there.
But to say that the investigative power itself encompasses a power to enact a statute, whether or not the statute could be enacted pursuant to the Legislature's ordinary lawmaking power, appears to contravene the settled principle that the Legislature's ordinary lawmaking power under our state Constitution is "plenary." (California Redevelopment Assn. v. Matosantos (2011) 53 Cal.4th 231, 254 [135 Cal.Rptr.3d 683, 267 P.3d 580].) In other words, the Legislature's lawmaking power is "[f]ull," "complete," and "entire." (Black's Law Dict. (9th ed. 2009) p. 1273, col. 1.) This court has never held that the Legislature's authority under the California Constitution to make laws may be grounded in anything other than its lawmaking power, and we have never suggested that the investigative power or any incidental power subsumes a portion of the Legislature's power to make laws. Of course, the Legislature may exercise its lawmaking power to pass laws that accomplish
Today's opinion cautions that "[t]he investigative power is not unlimited" (maj. opn., ante, at p. 499) and holds only that this power authorizes an advisory ballot measure as "a reasonable and lawful means of assisting the Legislature in the discharge of its article V-related functions" (id. at p. 523). Whether this holding can be limited to the article V context remains to be seen. If all that is required is "any reasonable connection" between the advisory measure and the Legislature's potential exercise of any power it lawfully possesses (id. at p. 521), then I find it difficult to discern any meaningful justiciable limit on the Legislature's use of advisory ballot measures.
In sum, today's application of the Legislature's investigative power finds no support in our precedent and disturbs the settled understanding that the Legislature's lawmaking power is plenary. It is hard to believe that the people of California — having vested "[t]he legislative power of this State" in the Legislature (Cal. Const., art. IV, § 1), including the power to adopt a resolution (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d at p. 708) — at the same time contemplated that the Legislature, by exercising an incidental power, could restore to the people a portion of that constitutionally vested legislative power.
The court's reliance on the investigative power is unnecessary to reach today's limited holding. As explained above, Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) is a valid exercise of the Legislature's implied power under article V of the federal Constitution. Although the Chief Justice would uphold advisory ballot measures "with regard to any potential action that the Legislature has authority to undertake" (conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 542), the court wisely declines to go so far. A decision of this court opening the door to advisory ballot measures on virtually any subject would potentially transform the way electoral politics and policymaking are conducted in California.
I do not doubt that advisory ballot measures can provide the Legislature with valuable information about the electorate's views on public policy. But such prosaic uses of advisory measures do not exhaust the possibilities. For
In addition, advisory measures could be used to influence voter sentiment about a qualified initiative. Suppose, not unrealistically, that one political party controls majorities in the Legislature and the governorship, and that the majority party opposes tax cuts. Suppose further that concerned citizens qualify an initiative proposing broad-based tax cuts. If the Legislature had general authority to put advisory measures on the ballot, then presumably the Legislature could pose the following questions on the same ballot as the tax-cutting initiative:
Moreover, advisory ballot measures could be used to entrench a political majority. Consider, for example, the 2010 gubernatorial race between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman. Whitman, a wealthy business executive, faced controversies over her alleged inside dealings with an investment bank and the retention of a housekeeper whose undocumented status she allegedly knew. Suppose Democrats had controlled majorities in the Legislature and the governorship during the 2010 campaign season. If the Legislature had general
In these examples above, the advisory measures would be designed to cue voters to defeat the tax-cutting initiative (Propositions A, B, and C) or to defeat Meg Whitman (Propositions D, E, and F). I am not sure whether these measures would bear a "reasonable connection" to the Legislature's lawful power to act under today's opinion. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 521.) But if we are not to "inquire into underlying motives" (ibid.), and if the Legislature may "obtain the views of the voters concerning all manner of subjects reasonably within a legislative body's authority to act" (conc. opn. of Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., ante, at p. 524), then on what basis could this court foreclose the Legislature from placing such measures on the ballot?
It is easy to dismiss the possibility of such canny tactics as speculative or remote. But even if advisory measures in local elections have not been used in such shrewd ways, there is little assurance that the same would be true in statewide elections, where matters of broader scale and impact are typically at stake, and where much greater sums of money and higher levels of political sophistication are brought to bear on electioneering tactics. Moreover, because advisory measures provide an avenue for influencing voters right at the moment of voting, they are likely to be far more effective — and certainly far less expensive — than running ads on television or the Internet, or using mail, e-mail, text messages, or social media to reach voters. In a hard-fought political battle, the ability to prime voters with messages on the ballot itself presents an enormously attractive option. And there would be no point in calling such tactics abusive, for they would be perfectly legal and fair game if this court were to hold that the Legislature has general authority to place advisory measures on the ballot. As the proponents of Proposition 49 well know, the judiciary plays a critical role in setting the rules of politics, and it is no surprise when political actors seek every possible advantage within those rules.
The California Constitution, like the United States Constitution and other state constitutions, establishes the fundamental structure of government. It is within this structure that the Legislature exercises its power. No issue is more basic to the structure of government than what types of matters may be placed on the ballot for a vote of the citizenry. Our state Constitution establishes the rules by which voters may propose initiatives and referenda, and it requires the Legislature to submit constitutional amendments and certain statutes to the voters for approval. This constitutional structure constrains the power of legislative majorities. Just as the Legislature does not have general authority to submit statutes for voters to approve, it does not have general authority to use advisory ballot measures to poll the electorate. As a matter of state law, the Legislature may not alter its constitutional role as the people's accountable representative body by directing the people, at the Legislature's convenience, to exercise a merely hortatory, nonbinding voice in ordinary public affairs. If this court were to revise the balance our Constitution has struck between direct and representative democracy, it would have potentially serious consequences for our political system.
The case before us is different. Here the Legislature is playing a role that originates not in our state Constitution but in article V of the federal Constitution. Under article V, the Legislature has wide latitude to marshal the electorate's views in order to express California's sovereign will to Congress and to other states on whether to amend the nation's fundamental charter. The court properly confines today's holding to advisory measures concerning federal constitutional amendments. Such a measure is all that is at issue here, and I concur in the judgment upholding its placement on a statewide ballot.
CHIN, J., Dissenting.
I dissent. In August 2014, this court correctly removed Proposition 49 from the ballot. It should now prevent a similar measure from being placed on the ballot in the future. Placing advisory measures on the ballot — a right denied even to the people (American Federation of Labor v. Eu (1984) 36 Cal.3d 687 [206 Cal.Rptr. 89, 686 P.2d 609] (American Federation)) — is no part of the legislative function and does not come within either the Legislature's lawmaking or ancillary powers.
In 2014, the Legislature adopted a resolution urging Congress to call a constitutional convention to propose an amendment to the United States Constitution that would overrule the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n (2010) 558 U.S. 310 [175 L.Ed.2d 753, 130 S.Ct. 876] (Citizens United). (Assem. J.Res. No. 1, Stats. 2014 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) res. ch. 77.) The Legislature also enacted Senate Bill No. 1272 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) (Senate Bill 1272). (Stats. 2014, ch. 175.) That bill directed the Secretary of State to submit an "advisory question to the voters" at the November 2014 election asking whether Congress should propose, and the Legislature ratify, an amendment to the United States Constitution that would overturn Citizens United. (Stats. 2014, ch. 175, § 4.)
The Governor permitted Senate Bill 1272 to become law without his signature. He issued a statement explaining why he did so: "[T]his bill and the advisory vote it requires has no legal effect whatsoever. The only way to overturn a Supreme Court decision such as Citizens United is by the process outlined in Article V of the United States Constitution. In fact, the California State Legislature recently took action in this regard by approving a joint resolution calling upon Congress to convene a Constitutional convention for this very purpose." (Gov. Edmund G. Brown, Jr., letter to members of Cal. State Sen., July 15, 2014.) The Governor said he understood the motivation behind the bill because he, too, believes Citizens United was wrongly decided. "But," he wrote, "we should not make it a habit to clutter our ballots with nonbinding measures as citizens rightfully assume that their votes are meant to have legal effect. Nevertheless, given the Legislature's commitment on this issue, even to the point of calling for an unprecedented Article V Constitutional Convention, I am willing to allow this question to be placed before the voters. [¶] By allowing SB 1272 to become law
The Secretary of State designated the matter Proposition 49 and began preparing to place it on the ballot. Petitioners Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association et alia (Howard Jarvis) promptly filed a petition for writ of mandate seeking to prevent Proposition 49 from being placed on the ballot. After a divided Court of Appeal denied relief, Howard Jarvis filed the instant petition in this court. In August 2014, we issued an order to show cause and directed the Secretary of State to refrain from taking any further action to place Proposition 49 on the November 2014 ballot.
Our August 11, 2014 order to show cause quoted American Federation's explanation of why it is necessary to remove a dubious measure from the
After full briefing, the merits of Howard Jarvis's challenge to Proposition 49 are now before us. Although I disagree with the majority's resolution of the merits, I agree that we should decide them even though the question is technically moot. The Legislature needs to know whether it can pass a similar measure placing the same advisory question on a future ballot. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 497.)
In American Federation, supra, 36 Cal.3d 687, the question was whether the people, invoking the right of initiative, could place on the ballot an advisory measure urging the Legislature to apply to Congress to convene a constitutional convention to propose that the United States Constitution be amended to require a balanced federal budget. (Id. at pp. 690-691.) We held that the people could not do that because the advisory measure exceeded the scope of the initiative power. (Id. at p. 694.) The question now before us is whether the Legislature can place an advisory measure on the ballot when the people cannot do so themselves. Just as the merits of a balanced budget amendment were irrelevant to the holding in American Federation, so, too, the merits of overturning Citizens United, supra, 558 U.S. 310, are irrelevant to the issue here.
At the outset, I stress that I agree fully that the Legislature's lawmaking power is plenary. "Unlike the federal Constitution, which is a grant of power to Congress, the California Constitution is a limitation or restriction on the powers of the Legislature. [Citations.] Two important consequences flow from this fact. First, the entire law-making authority of the state, except the people's right of initiative and referendum, is vested in the Legislature, and that body may exercise any and all legislative powers which are not expressly
But this plenary lawmaking authority does not apply here. Proposition 49 does not make law. As the Governor explained, and as everyone agrees, it is merely an advisory measure that would have no legal effect even if passed. In one sense, Senate Bill 1272 is a law because it directs the advisory measure to be placed on the ballot. But the action it directs is legally meaningless. The Legislature's power to pass it cannot be based on its lawmaking authority. If the Legislature has the power to place an advisory measure on the ballot, it must be grounded on something else.
The Legislature also "has the power to engage in activity that is incidental or ancillary to its lawmaking functions." (The Zumbrun Law Firm v. California Legislature (2008) 165 Cal.App.4th 1603, 1614 [82 Cal.Rptr.3d 525], citing Parker v. Riley (1941) 18 Cal.2d 83, 89 [113 P.2d 873].) As we explained long ago, "[a] legislative assembly, when established, becomes vested with all the powers and privileges which are necessary and incidental to a free and unobstructed exercise of its appropriate functions. These powers and privileges are derived not from the Constitution; on the contrary, they arise from the very creation of a legislative body, and are founded upon the principle of self preservation. The Constitution is not a grant, but a restriction upon the power of the Legislature, and hence an express enumeration of legislative powers and privileges in the Constitution cannot be considered as the exclusion of others not named unless accompanied by negative terms. A legislative assembly has, therefore, all the powers and privileges which are necessary to enable it to exercise in all respects, in a free, intelligent and impartial manner, its appropriate functions, except so far as it may be restrained by the express provisions of the Constitution, or by some express law made unto itself, regulating and limiting the same." (Ex parte D. O. McCarthy (1866) 29 Cal. 395, 403 [listing several of these powers and privileges].) But these ancillary powers are not unlimited.
Often a limitation on the Legislature's power is implied rather than expressed in the Constitution. For example, the Legislature may not allow
The California Constitution itself so indicates. "All political power is inherent in the people." (Cal. Const., art. II, § 1.) "The legislative power of this State is vested in the California Legislature ..., but the people reserve to themselves the powers of initiative and referendum." (Cal. Const., art. IV, § 1.) "The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them." (Cal. Const., art. II, § 8, subd. (a).)
The Constitution provides three circumstances in which the Legislature must place matters on the ballot if the action the Legislature proposes is to take effect. First, the Legislature "may amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statute permits amendment or repeal without their approval." (Cal. Const., art. II, § 10, subd. (c).) Second, "Each measure providing for the preparation, issuance and sale of bonds of the State of California shall hereafter be submitted to the electors in the form of a bond act or statute." (Cal. Const., art. XVI, § 2, subd. (a), 2d par.) Third, the Legislature "may propose an amendment or revision of the Constitution" (Cal. Const., art. XVIII, § 1), but the "proposed amendment or revision shall be submitted to the electors and if approved by a majority of votes thereon takes effect the day after the election unless the measure provides otherwise" (Cal. Const., art. XVIII, § 4). Additionally, a different provision seems to imply that the Legislature may, if it chooses, place a "statute" on the ballot for the electorate to ratify. (Cal. Const., art. II, § 12.)
Because the California Constitution is a restriction on the Legislature's powers, not a grant of powers, designating these circumstances in which the Legislature may place matters on the ballot does not, by itself, necessarily mean the Legislature may not do so in other circumstances. But those circumstances are designed to protect the people's right to confirm an action the Legislature proposes, not to give the Legislature general access to the ballot. The overall constitutional scheme shows that the power of the ballot is reserved to the people, not the Legislature.
We further explained that "the reserved powers of initiative and referendum do not encompass all possible actions of a legislative body. Those powers are limited, under article II [of the California Constitution], to the adoption or rejection of `statutes.' ... [I]t does not include a resolution which merely expresses the wishes of the enacting body, whether that expression is purely precatory or serves as one step in a process which may lead to a federal constitutional amendment." (American Federation, supra, 36 Cal.3d at p. 708.) We summarized that the initiative "functions ... as a reserved legislative power, a method of enacting statutory law. The present initiative does not conform to that model." (Id. at p. 715.)
Viewing the constitutional provisions as a whole, it is clear that if this court had reached a different conclusion in American Federation, supra, 36 Cal.3d 687, and held, as the dissent had urged, that the advisory measure was a valid exercise of the initiative power, the Legislature would not have the power to place a measure like Proposition 49 on the ballot. That power would have been reserved to the people.
But it is incorrect to conclude that because the people cannot do it, the Legislature can. As we have said, "the power of the people through the statutory initiative is coextensive with the power of the Legislature." (Legislature v. Deukmejian (1983) 34 Cal.3d 658, 675 [194 Cal.Rptr. 781, 669 P.2d 17].) If the people cannot place a matter on the ballot, neither can the Legislature. The people can be heard directly only through the ballot, either by electing their representatives or by the initiative or referendum process. The specified circumstances in which the Legislature has recourse to the
Permitting the Legislature to place advisory measures on the ballot would allow it to greatly interfere with the people's reserved initiative rights. The Legislature could easily place an advisory measure on the ballot that would compete with an initiative measure. As one commentator explains, "voter confusion often results from the appearance on the ballot of competing ballot initiatives on the same subject, a tactic often used by opponents of the first initiative. Because savvy political actors know that voters frequently react to confusion by voting `no' on both measures, opponents of a particular initiative may work to qualify a competing measure in the hope that it will result either in both being defeated or in the more favorable competing measure being enacted instead of the initial proposal." (Garrett, Direct Democracy in Research Handbook on Public Choice and Public Law (Farber & O'Connell edits., 2010) p. 155.)
"Voter initiatives have been compared to a `"legislative battering ram"' because they `"may be used to tear through the exasperating tangle of the traditional legislative procedure and strike directly toward the desired end."' (Amador Valley Joint Union High Sch. Dist. v. State Bd. of Equalization (1978) 22 Cal.3d 208, 228 [149 Cal.Rptr. 239, 583 P.2d 1281].)" (Tuolumne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v. Superior Court (2014) 59 Cal.4th 1029, 1035 [175 Cal.Rptr.3d 601, 330 P.3d 912].) The Legislature might sometimes be hostile to the people's use of this battering ram and do what it can to defeat an initiative measure. Placing competing measures on the ballot might be one way to do that. No improper motives appear in this case, but the potential, and the temptation, for legislative interference with the people's power of initiative is real. "In light of the initiative power's significance in our democracy, courts have a duty `"to jealously guard this right of the people"'...." (Ibid.) The way to guard against legislative interference with the people's right of initiative is to leave the ballot for the people's use, not the Legislature's.
Citing California Constitution, article I, section 3, subdivision (a), which gives the "people ... the right to instruct their representatives," the Legislature suggests that placing an advisory measure on the ballot is a way for the people to provide this instruction. But the people themselves cannot place an advisory measure on the ballot. (American Federation, supra, 36 Cal.3d 687.) A constitutional right given the people cannot empower the Legislature to do something the people are prohibited from doing.
But the Legislature can, and already does, do all of this. Additionally, as Justice Liu observed in his concurring statement when this court issued the August 11, 2014 order to show cause in this case, "[i]f the Legislature wants to commission Gallup to do a poll on Citizens United," it may do so. Modern technology, including the Internet, with all of the interaction and exchange of information and views it facilitates, gives the Legislature ample ability to ascertain the electorate's wishes. It does not need recourse to the ballot to perform its proper function. The potential for interference with the people's reserved right of initiative greatly outweighs any marginal value an advisory measure might have to aid the Legislature's investigation into the electorate's wishes.
The majority confidently asserts that an advisory measure like this one would never compete or interfere with an initiative measure the people placed on the ballot. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 521, fn. 16.) Maybe, maybe not. I cannot predict what the Legislature might try to do in the future. Perhaps it will never test the accuracy of this assertion. Perhaps this is a one-time event, as the Governor urged. It appears, however, the majority would be willing to prevent a future advisory measure that does threaten to impede the people's right of initiative. But considering the validity of an advisory measure on a case-by-case basis would entangle the courts in legislative affairs far more than simply concluding the Legislature does not possess a nonlawmaking authority it does not need to function fully and effectively. With the constitutional exceptions, the Legislature does not need access to the ballot. But the ballot is the people's only way to legislate directly.
The Legislature also cites past occasions in which it placed advisory measures on the ballot — all but one more than a century ago, the most recent in the 1930's — as showing it has this power. But the Legislature's power to
The past precedent is also far from impressive. Two of the measures were driven by anti-Chinese immigration sentiment that was prevalent at the time. (See In re Chang (2015) 60 Cal.4th 1169 [185 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 344 P.3d 288].) In 1877, the Legislature asked the voters to indicate whether they were "`For Chinese Immigration'" or "`Against Chinese Immigration.'" (Stats. 1877, ch. 5, § 1, p. 3.) In 1891, the Legislature asked the voters whether they were for or against "`an educational qualification requiring every voter to be able to write his name and read any section of the Constitution in the English language.'" (Stats. 1891, ch. 113, § 1, p. 115.) This is hardly sterling precedent. Given the anti-Chinese immigration sentiment, it is unsurprising no one challenged the Legislature's authority to place the measures on the ballot.
Measures in 1891, 1909, and 1911 concerned the ultimate passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave the people the right to elect United States senators directly. (Stats. 1911, ch. 387, § 1, pp. 704-705; Stats. 1909, ch. 405, § 2, p. 691; Stats. 1891, ch. 48, § 1, pp. 46-47.) Indeed, the 1909 and 1911 measures merely anticipated the Seventeenth Amendment's ratification by allowing the voters to state who should serve as United States senators. Because the measures supported the electorate's direct voting right, it is unsurprising no one challenged them on this basis.
Finally, one month before the 1933 election, the Legislature placed advisory measures on the ballot asking two questions regarding whether it should divert money from the gasoline tax funds for specified purposes. (Stats. 1933, ch. 435, § 3, p. 1126.) The measures were defeated at the polls. (Stats. 1933, p. xc, Propositions Submitted to Vote of Electors, Special Election (June 27, 1933) Measured Defeated, Nos. 9, 10.) Because the measures were placed on the ballot only a month before the election and were then defeated, it is also unsurprising that no one challenged them.
Thus, the most recent of these advisory measures occurred over eight decades ago, long before the development of modern polling techniques, the Internet, and other methods of ascertaining the people's wishes in political matters. As Justice Liu aptly notes, "If anything, the paucity of historical examples, with none in the last 80 years, tends to cast doubt on the existence and validity of the power claimed here." (Conc. opn. of Liu, J., ante, at p. 572.)
Given all the other powers the Legislature has, including the right to investigate, it does not need the additional power to place advisory measures on the ballot in order to exercise its United States Constitution, article V authority. Depriving the Legislature of this power does not materially affect its ability to exercise this authority. Indeed, the Legislature has already applied to Congress regarding the precise subject Proposition 49 was to address. (Assem. J.Res. No. 1, Stats. 2014 (2013-2014 Reg. Sess.) res. ch. 77.)
For these reasons, I would hold the Legislature has no power to place an advisory measure like Proposition 49 on the ballot.
We have held that the people's initiative power does not extend to advisory measures proposing constitutional change. (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d at p. 694.) A legislative ballot measure inquiring about a federal constitutional matter, such as we address here, would never compete or interfere with any rival proposition that the people had the authority, under their initiative power as construed in Eu, to place on the ballot. There is no warrant to depart from the settled understanding that the Legislature has discretion to choose within reasonable bounds its means of investigation, without first having to demonstrate no alternative means exist. (See Parker v. Riley, supra, 18 Cal.2d at p. 91.)
The other Wisconsin referenda mentioned in the text above were posed at the April 1, 1969, election: to the question of state control and funding of vocational education (1969 Wis. Sess. Laws 1518), the voters answered no; to the question of water pollution control bonds (1969 Wis. Sess. Laws 1518), the voters answered yes; to the recreational lands question (1969 Wis. Sess. Laws 1518) the voters answered yes.
Advisory ballot policy measures have also been employed internationally. (See DuVivier, The United States as a Democratic Ideal? International Lessons in Referendum Democracy (2006) 79 Temp. L.Rev. 821, 847 [describing use in New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K.].)
City of Modesto, Measure J (Nov. 6, 2007, election): voters answered "`[b]y [d]istrict'" (2007 CEDA, city results, p. 23); City of Davis, Measure L (Nov. 7, 2007, election): voters answered yes (2006 CEDA, city results, p. 38); City of Lancaster, Measures A and B (Apr. 8, 2008, election): voters answered yes (2008 CEDA, city results, p. 26).
Likewise, other cities and counties have addressed local election rules: Should the city council call an election for the voters to decide whether the office of mayor should be elective, rather than appointed by the city council? (City of Moreno Valley, Measure O (Nov. 2, 2010, election): voters answered yes (2010 CEDA, city results, p. 31).) Should mailed ballots be used for all future general district elections? (San Bernardino County, Measure 1 (Aug. 30, 2011, election): voters answered yes (2011 CEDA, county results, p. 14).)
Other representative local matters addressed questions such as: Should city council members' compensation be increased 5 percent? (City of Burbank, Measure 1 (Apr. 10, 2001, election): voters answered yes (2001 CEDA, city results, p. 16).) Should the city replace its employees' existing defined-benefit retirement plan with a defined-contribution plan? (City of Pacific Grove, Measure Y (Nov. 4, 2008, election): voters answered yes (2008 CEDA, city results, p. 30).)
Other similar measures have addressed the following questions: Should existing separate fire and police department buildings be consolidated into a single new building? (City of Sausalito, Measure B (Mar. 5, 2002, election): the voters answered no (2002 CEDA, city results, p. 28).) Should certain areas of the county remain official unincorporated communities, or should they be incorporated into a separate city? (L.A. County, Measures A & B (Nov. 3, 2009, election): voters answered yes to the first and no to the second (2009 CEDA, county results, p. 14).) Should the city council adopt an ordinance requiring removal of landscaping in order to restore and maintain primary views from private homes? (City of Malibu, Measure E (Apr. 8, 2008, election): voters answered yes (2008 CEDA, city results, p. 26).) Prior to transfer of ownership of a toxic Superfund site, should the county demand the Department of the Navy meet certain conditions, including thorough study, funding for remediation costs, identification of funds to reimburse the community for any contamination, and actual completion of site cleanup? (Orange County, Measure B (Nov. 5, 2002, election): voters answered yes (2002 CEDA, county results, p. 18).) If the water district implements fluoridation for some local users, should the prorated costs be passed on to those who receive the treated water? (Humboldt County, Measure B (Feb. 5, 2008, election): voters answered no (2008 CEDA, county results, p. 15).)
Similar combined measures have asked: If voters approve a proposed measure increasing taxes, should those proceeds be used to fund only police and anti-gang operations, including drug resistance education and supervised after-school youth activities? (City of San Bernardino, Measure YY (Nov. 7, 2006, election): voters answered yes (2006 CEDA, city results, p. 31).) If voters approve a one-half cent sales tax increase, should half of the new revenues be spent "to restore services to the poor that have been cut due to State takeaways" and the other half on school programs "to restore educational services ... eliminated due to State takeaways"? (City of Richmond, Measure C (June 7, 2011, election): voters answered yes (2011 CEDA, city results, p. 16).) If a sales tax measure is extended, should the proceeds fund a streetcar system and flood protection improvements? (City of West Sacramento, Measure U (Nov. 4, 2008, election): voters answered yes (2008 CEDA, city results, p. 39).) If voters were to approve a sales tax increase, should the additional revenues be used primarily for maintaining the city's roadways? (City of El Paso de Robles, Measure F-12 (Nov. 6, 2012, election): the voters answered yes (2012 CEDA city results, p. 33).) If voters were to approve a half-cent sales tax increase, should the proceeds fund street repair, parks, libraries, after school programs, child and senior facilities, police and fire services, and reduction of utility and property tax assessments? (City of Whittier, Measure V (Nov. 5, 2002, election): voters answered yes (2002 CEDA, city results, p. 28).) If voters approved a utility tax increase from 10 to 12 percent, should that increased revenue fund "public safety services, including paramedic programs"? (City of Sierra Madre, Measure 12-2 (Apr. 10, 2012, election): voters answered yes (2012 CEDA, city results, p. 24).)
Concerning the general use of resolutions in California and nationwide, see, for example, Note, Legislative Notes and Reviews (1920) 14 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 672, 674 ("[d]uring the legislative sessions of 1919 over 300 resolutions and memorials were adopted [nationwide], of which 206 [were] of general public interest and 117 ... questions of local interest"; in 1919 alone numerous state legislatures, including California's, enacted resolutions concerning the League of Nations, "aliens" and immigrants, military personnel, education issues, women's suffrage, transportation issues, and commodity prices, etc.); Leckrone and Gollob, Telegrams to Washington: Using Memorials to Congress as a Measure of State Attention to the Federal Policy Agenda (2010) 42 St. & Local Gov't Rev. 235, 239-240 (finding that more than 3,900 substantive "memorials," or resolutions, were submitted by state legislatures to Congress from 1987 to 2006; the Cal. Legislature was the most active, with 542 during that period; and that nationwide, such measures were used to send signals to the federal government across a broad range of policy issues, especially those "topics traditionally reserved to Congress," including "defense and international relations and foreign aid" as well as "environment, health, and public lands [under] federal control"); Filindra and Kovács, Analyzing US State Legislative Resolutions on Immigrants and Immigration: The Role of Immigration Federalism (2012) 50 Int'l Migration 33, 36 (of 36 resolutions by state legislatures to Congress between 1993 and 2007 concerning immigration issues, California issued 25).
A similar point has been made concerning the effect of advisory measures in other countries. (DuVivier, The United States as a Democratic Ideal? International Lessons in Referendum Democracy, supra, 79 Temp. L.Rev. 821.) There the author observes: "[A]n advisory referendum often proves preferable to one that binds. First, it does not conflict with an existing system of government that requires legislative supremacy. For example, in the United Kingdom, the `notion of parliamentary sovereignty' dictates that Parliament cannot be formally bound by an advisory referendum. Consequently, an advisory referendum exerts pressure while simultaneously preserving the existing governance system. Second, an advisory process better reflects the reality that government actors must interpret and implement any measure. An advisory referendum allows a legislature flexibility to predict the outcome of a provision in a manner that reconciles possible conflicts and anticipates constitutional challenges in the courts." (Id., at p. 848, fns. omitted.)
On a related point, regarding the decision of this court in American Federation of Labor v. Eu (1984) 36 Cal.3d 687 [206 Cal.Rptr. 89, 686 P.2d 609] (AFL v. Eu), holding that the initiative provision of the California Constitution does not authorize the voters to place an advisory question on the ballot through an initiative measure, and which case is discussed in the majority opinion, Justice Liu's concurring opinion, and Justice Chin's dissenting opinion: I note that in AFL v. Eu no party brought to the court's attention the provision of the California Constitution explicitly granting the people "the right to instruct their representatives" or argued that in light of that constitutional right, the initiative provision of the California Constitution should be interpreted to permit the people to exercise their constitutional right to instruct their representatives through an advisory initiative measure. By contrast, when the question of the validity of a similar advisory initiative measure came before the Idaho Supreme Court after this court's decision in AFL v. Eu, the Idaho court held that the advisory measure could be submitted to the voters through the initiative process as an exercise of the people's state constitutional right to instruct. (Simpson v. Cenarrusa (1997) 130 Idaho 609 [944 P.2d 1372, 1377].) Because the present case does not involve an advisory initiative measure, nothing in the court's opinion should be viewed as speaking to this point.
First, as this opinion explains, every judicial decision that has addressed the issue, and every academic commentator that has spoken on the issue, has concluded that a state legislature generally has the authority to place advisory questions on the ballot. Justice Liu's concurring opinion cites no authority to support its contrary conclusion.
Second, the historical background of California's 1879 Constitution — the charter that, as amended, remains in place today — strongly demonstrates that the framers of the 1879 Constitution, as well as the California voters who adopted the proposed Constitution, understood that the California Constitution permits the Legislature to place an advisory question before the voters. That the subject matter of the particular advisory ballot measure at issue at that time happened to be discriminatory and offensive (see ante, pt. II.A., and conc. opn. of Liu, J., post, at p. 571) does not negate the fact that the Constitution's framers and the voters clearly viewed a legislatively initiated advisory ballot measure as a constitutionally permissible procedural mechanism. This procedural instrumentality or tool — an advisory ballot measure — is not by its nature invariably discriminatory or offensive.
Third, the concurring opinion's novel thesis — that by granting legislative authority to the Legislature, the 1849 Constitution (and the 1879 charter, as amended) deprived the state's electorate of the authority to vote on an advisory measure submitted by the Legislature (conc. opn. of Liu, J., post, at pp. 564-566) — flies in the face of literally scores of legislatively initiated advisory ballot measures that have been submitted to statewide voters, both in California and throughout the country from this nation's inception. The concurring opinion declines to pay any respect to this substantial "page of history."
Fourth, Justice Liu's concurring opinion posits that the Legislature might in the future employ advisory ballot measures to submit questions to the electorate in an inappropriate and disingenuous manner, that the voters would succumb to such tactics rather than penalize legislators who act improperly by voting them out of office, and that courts need to intervene by barring all such measures from the ballot. (Conc. opn. of Liu, J., post, at pp. 576-579.) As Justice Corrigan stresses in her own concurring opinion (conc. opn. of Corrigan, J., post, at p. 551.) Justice Sparks's opinion in Schabarum v. California Legislature, supra, 60 Cal.App.4th 1205, appropriately explains that separation of powers principles militate against any such judicial impulse to police the Legislature's exercise of its authority. Moreover, although advisory question ballot measures have long been employed nationally and locally, the concerns raised by hypothesized ballot questions set out in Justice Liu's concurring opinion have not materialized in practice.
Fifth, if, as Justice Liu's concurring opinion maintains, the vesting of legislative authority in a legislature inherently deprives the Legislature of the power to pose advisory questions to the electorate, it appears illogical for the concurring opinion to conclude that article V of the United States Constitution impliedly grants the Legislature that authority with respect to proposed federal constitutional amendments. Nothing in the language or history of article V purports to grant a state legislature such authority and the federal Constitution has never been interpreted to grant the federal legislature — Congress — the implied power to submit an advisory question to the electorate, either with respect to a proposed federal constitutional amendment or any other subject.
Finally, I question two additional statements in Justice Liu's concurring opinion. First, the concurring opinion states that there is no disagreement with the holding in AFL v. Eu, supra, 36 Cal.3d 687, 707-714, that the initiative provision of the California Constitution does not authorize the voters to place an advisory question on the ballot through an initiative measure. (Conc. opn. of Liu, J., post, at p. 572.) As observed ante, footnote 36, because this case does not involve the validity of an advisory initiative measure, the court's opinion cannot properly be viewed as expressing any view on that question. Second, the concurring opinion asserts that "the Legislature does not have general authority to submit statutes for voters to approve ...." (Conc. opn. of Liu, J., post, at p. 579.) The assertion on that point appears debatable, particularly in light of the language and history of article II, section 12 of the California Constitution, but the question whether the Legislature may place a proposed, nonadvisory statute on the ballot for the voters' approval or disapproval is also not before us in this case and the court's opinion does not address that question.
