Florida Supreme Court rules on bundled amendments

Michelle Marchante/Editor-in-Chief

Florida’s Supreme Court has overturned a lower court’s ruling regarding three bundled amendments, ordering that they remain on the ballot in the upcoming midterm elections.

The ruling comes after former Florida Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead and former Elections Commissioner Robert J. Barnas sued the state for allowing the Constitution Revision Commission to place bundled amendments in this year’s ballot.

A bundle amendment will require voters to say “yes” or “no” to two or more topics that may or may not be related.

Their lawsuit alleged that the CRC violated the First Amendment and Section 101.161 (1) of the Florida Statutes when it placed “independent and unrelated proposals” together in Amendments 7, 9 and 11, according to their attorney Joseph Little.

Little told Student Media a week before the decision was made that his clients goal was to “prevent future revision commissions or the legislature from bundling so that the voters will have a fair chance to vote on matters pertaining to the amendment of the Constitution.”

This video discusses the controversy surrounding the bundled amendments in Florida’s 2018 midterm elections and the lawsuit that was occurring. A decision was reached Wednesday, Oct. 17. Video filmed and edited by Michelle Marchante/PantherNOW.

The Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday, Oct. 17, that Amendments, 7, 9 and 11 should remain on the ballot because unlike petition-driven proposed amendments, amendments placed on the ballot by the CRC are allowed to be bundled “because [the CRC’s] process embodies adequate safeguards to protect against logrolling and deception,” the court’s decision reads.

The CRC’s bundling power comes from Florida’s Constitution, the court continued, meaning they have the ability to amend the entire Constitution in one proposal, if they wanted to, therefore giving them the ability to bundle multiple proposals into one amendment.

However, Justice Barbara Pariente– the only justice to file an opinion– notes that even though she agreed to keep the amendments on the ballot, she does agree that combining popular and unpopular proposals into one amendment, even if it’s done by the CRC, is dangerous.

She also thinks that the CRC did not provide “adequate safeguards to protect against logrolling [placing a controversial proposal with one that is more favorable to get it approved]” because the CRC’s Style and Drafting Committee bundled the proposals after the CRC concluded its public hearings and did not request legal experts to review the legality of grouping. However, this is because there is no grouping standard, she wrote.

Brett Heuchan, the chairman of the CRC’s Style & Drafting Committee, released a statement back in May defending the committee’s bundling decision on the CRC’s website.

“According to election officials, long ballots create a disincentive to voting in the first place. Grouping some ideas together keeps the ballot from becoming too lengthy to complete. Both previous Constitution Revision Commissions, in 1978 and 1998, grouped ideas and did so with more regularity than we did…Grouping is not new and not controversial.”

However, Pariente said in her opinion that while the 1998 CRC did bundle amendments, they made sure that they “dealt with similar subjects and were bundled thematically.”

The Supreme Court found no basis that the First Amendment was violated by bundling proposals. It also disagreed with the circuit court’s ruling of misleading language, saying that Amendment 11 made it clear to voters that its purpose was to “remove discriminatory language related to real property rights.”

The court also noted that Anstead and Barnas incorrectly sued using a writ of quo warranto to challenge “the merits” of the proposed amendments when they should have used a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief.

A writ of quo warranto is used to question if a state officer or agency, in this case Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner, improperly exercised the power granted to them by the state.

Several other lawsuits have occurred regarding the various bundled amendments on this year’s ballot.

The state’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday, Sept. 7, that Amendment 8 should be struck off the ballot, after agreeing with the League of Women Voters that the amendments language did not explain accurately how it would “significantly alter the ability” of local school boards to oversee charter schools and create a pathway for the state to manage them, according to the court’s ruling. The bundled amendment also asked voters if they supported school board term limits and requiring civic education in public schools.

Amendment 6, 10 and 13 were also challenged but the court ruled that they should remain on the ballot.

 

Video filmed and edited by Michelle Marchante/PantherNOW

Feature Image courtesy of Google Earth

About the Author

Michelle Marchante
Michelle Marchante is the 2018-2019 Editor-in-Chief of PantherNOW. Majoring in broadcast journalism, she lives and breathes web, print, radio and TV news 24/7. You can connect with her on Twitter @TweetMichelleM