Justices Ease Limits on Ballot Initiatives

The Supreme Court gave greater freedom Tuesday to those in California and several other states who want to change state laws through the ballot box.

On an 8-1 vote, the justices struck down the rules that require those gathering signatures to qualify initiatives for a state ballot to be registered voters in that state.

The ruling was denounced by California Secretary of State Bill Jones, who said that it “will further commercialize” the initiative process.

Along with California, the decision will affect at least 18 other states.

A decade ago, the court ruled that sponsors of initiatives had a right to pay people to gather signatures. On Tuesday, the justices went further and struck down Colorado regulations that, along with the registration proviso, required paid circulators to wear badges identifying themselves and to report their expenditures to the state.

The process of amending the laws through the ballot box involves “core political speech” and is protected by the Constitution from undue state regulation, the high court said.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in a rare solo dissent, faulted his colleagues for allowing “out-of-state persons and political dropouts” to play key roles in deciding what issues may go on a state ballot.

The ruling will probably lead to even more and costlier ballot campaigns in California, state officials said.

Jones predicted that the ruling would spawn national companies that go from state to state gathering signatures for ballot initiatives. And officials would have less authority to monitor the process and prevent fraud, he warned.

A century ago, the initiative process grew in the West as a form of grass-roots democracy. Political reformers saw direct ballot measures as a way to bypass state legislatures controlled by big-money interests. In California, that meant the owners of the Southern Pacific railroad.

These days, critics often complain, the initiative process has been taken over by big-money interests. Professional firms, given a few million dollars, can gather enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot. In 1996, for instance, $141,274,345 was spent in California on efforts to get 27 initiatives on the ballot in either the June primary or November general election, the Council of State Governments said in a brief filed with the court.

UCLA professor Daniel Hays Lowenstein, an expert on election law, said he is concerned that special interests, rather than the public interest, increasingly determine what goes before voters.

“I think the court is making a big mistake,” he said. “It is the state’s ballot, and I think the state ought to be able to control that.”

But just as with campaign funding, the justices lean strongly in favor of a free speech and free market view, rather than accepting the government’s claim that it needs to regulate the process.

In 1976, the court struck down most limits on campaign spending as a violation of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. It has resisted recent pleas to reconsider the matter.

In response to a wave of paid signature gatherers, Colorado officials added the new regulations. They were challenged by several grass-roots activists and a small public interest law firm.

The activists won before a federal judge in Colorado and the U.S. Court of Appeals. They made it a complete sweep Tuesday with their victory in the Supreme Court (Buckley vs. American Constitutional Law Foundation, 97-930).

On Monday, the high court refused to revive an Arizona measure that declared English the state’s official language and required its use in most government transactions. Without comment, the justices rejected an appeal (Arizonans for Official English vs. Arizona, 98-167) in which supporters of the voter-approved state constitutional amendment argued that the government has the right to control its own speech.

The Arizona Supreme Court had struck down the measure last April, saying that it violated rights of free speech.