Court Rejects ‘Truth-in-Ads’ Ballot Measure

In the first ruling of its kind, a state appeals court on Monday struck down Proposition 105, a November, 1988, initiative requiring “truth in advertising” for ballot measures, hazardous products, health insurance and other areas.

The panel ruled 3 to 0 that the measure, known as the Public’s Right to Know Act, violated a state constitutional provision limiting initiatives to a single subject.

The varying components of the initiative, the court said, did not meet the required standard of being “functionally related” or “reasonably germane” to one another or the objects of a single legislative goal.

The ruling marked the first time a court has invalidated a voter-approved initiative since the single-subject requirement was first applied to initiatives in 1948.

The decision followed other recent rulings in which courts appear to be giving increasingly closer scrutiny to ballot measures. The state Supreme Court, for example, last year struck down a key provision of Proposition 115, the anti-crime initiative, as a constitutional “revision” that could be accomplished only through the Legislature or a constitutional convention.

An attorney for sponsors of the initiative expressed hope that the state Supreme Court would overturn Monday’s ruling and reinstate the initiative.

“The measure clearly is bound together by a common thread of requiring affirmative disclosure in advertising,” said Jim Rogers of Oakland, representing Consumers United for Reform. “The voters by a solid margin felt more disclosure was needed in these areas.”

If the court fails to salvage the initiative, Rogers said, the Legislature will be asked to enact the measure. However, lawmakers had previously rejected similar provisions before the initiative was introduced in 1988.

James R. Parrinello, an attorney for a coalition of business groups challenging the measure, voiced confidence the high court would leave the appeals court decision intact.

“The courts are beginning to look a little more carefully at the initiative process,” Parrinello said. “Most of the time they are going to defer to the measures . . . but once in a while there’ll be some, like this one, that are so far over the line that the courts will have to do something.”

A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which represents state officials named as defendants in the lawsuit, said the ruling would be studied, but declined further comment.

Proposition 105, passed by 54.5% of the vote, took effect in January, 1990. Aimed at protecting consumers from advertising “deceptions, half-truths and evasions,” the measure required:

* Businesses to issue warnings that certain hazardous products, like paints and solvents, should not be poured down drains or placed in trash.

* Insurers to disclose to the extent possible duplicate coverage in supplementary, so-called “Medi-gap” insurance policies for senior citizens.

* Officials and nursing homes to reveal more information about past health and safety violations.

* Ads for or against initiatives and referendums to identify their major sources of funding.

* Any corporation selling stock or securities in the state to reveal in its prospectus whether it does business with South Africa.

After the initiative’s passage, attorneys for the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Assn. filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court, challenging the constitutionality of the measure.

Superior Court Judge Ira A. Brown upheld the initiative, but the 1st District Court of Appeal struck it down Monday in an opinion by Appellate Justice Robert W. Merrill, joined by Justices Clinton W. White and Gary E. Strankman.

Merrill noted that in the past, the state Supreme Court twice upheld voter-approved anti-crime initiatives because their wide-ranging provisions all were related to the single subject of protecting actual or potential crime victims.

But the appeals court refused to accept backers’ contentions that Proposition 105 was similarly constitutional because all of its provisions related to “truth in advertising.”

“The object of providing the public with accurate information in advertising is so broad that a virtually unlimited array of provisions could be considered germane thereto and joined in this proposition, essentially obliterating the constitutional requirement,” Merrill wrote.

Reducing toxic pollution, protecting senior citizens, promoting nursing-home safety, preserving campaign integrity and fighting apartheid all were “well-intentioned objectives,” the court said. But they were not “reasonably related” to one another, as required by the single-subject rule, it said.

The decision came amid signs that courts throughout California are becoming more skeptical of ballot measures.

Last November, the state Supreme Court invalidated the campaign contribution limits included in Proposition 68, holding that it was superseded by a rival measure that had won more votes.

In other recent cases, the high court in 1987 struck down a wide-ranging budget implementation bill passed by the Legislature because it violated a constitutional requirement that state statutes contain only one subject. In 1988, a state Court of Appeal overturned an auto insurance initiative before it went to the voters on the grounds that it violated the single-subject rule.