from The News Service of Florida
In a striking rebuke to the Legislature, the state’s highest court on Tuesday whacked three lawmaker-orchestrated amendments from the November ballot, including proposals asking voters to block parts of the federal health care law and to preserve legislators’ ability to draw legislative districts in a certain way.
Another rejected amendment dealt with new property tax exemptions.
In three lengthy opinions, the seven-member Supreme Court rejected the Republican-led Legislature’s proposed ballot measures, ruling all of them were misleading.
The court left on the ballot two other redistricting-related amendments that were put before voters through the petition process. Those two amendments, 5 and 6, aim to prevent lawmakers from drawing districts that will favor themselves or their party, which legislators had argued was nearly impossible.
Amendments 5 and 6 had been challenged by two members of Congress. Amendment 7, the legislatively written amendment removed from the ballot by the court on Tuesday, was a response to Amendments 5 and 6.
The court’s decisions drew anger from an array of GOP lawmakers who decried “activist judges” for overstepping the court’s bounds.
While careful to say he has respect for the judicial branch, incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon said the court’s rulings themselves were constitutionally suspect.
“It’s terribly disappointing to have the work of the legislative branch demolished by a co-equal branch of government, especially when there’s no express authority in the Constitution for their doing so,” said Cannon, who was the losing lawyer in the case over Amendment 7, having personally argued it before the court.
Cannon’s Senate counterpart, Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos, was one of the most outspoken backers of Amendment 7.
“They’re clearly trying to legislate from the bench” said Haridopolos (R-Merritt Island), who chaired hearings on Amendments 5 and 6 that led lawmakers to create Amendment 7. “I believe in equal branches of government. It sounds to me like the court thinks it is more equal than the other branches.”
The Legislature’s redistricting proposal pitted lawmakers against a group called FairDistrictsFlorida that drafted Amendments 5 and 6, which if passed in November will require districts to be drawn in a way so as not to favor political parties or legislative incumbents.
U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat, and Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, had sued to get Amendments 5 and 6 thrown off the ballot, saying they threatened minority interests by not allowing districts to be drawn to favor certain types of candidates.
The Supreme Court’s 22-page 5-2 decision said the Legislature’s proposed amendment could allow lawmakers to nullify a constitutional requirement that districts to be geographically contiguous, but didn’t make that clear to voters.
“This is a matter that should have been clearly and unambiguously stated in the ballot language,” the court wrote. “Failing this clear explanation, the voters will be unaware of the valuable right - the right to have districts composed of contiguous territory - which may be lost if the amendment is adopted.”
Justices Charles Canady and Ricky Polston, who were the two dissenting votes, completely disagreed with their colleagues’ argument that the contiguous requirement could be overridden, with Canady writing that the amendment would not “nullify, dilute, or alter this provision of the Florida Constitution.”
“Florida voters will now have a clear chance to vote yes on Amendments 5 and 6 on Nov. 2 and place rules into the Florida Constitution for politicians to follow when they draw the district lines,” said Ellen Freidin, campaign chairwoman for FairDistrictsFlorida.
“These rules will stop politicians from drawing districts to favor themselves and will put the political power back into the hands of the people - where it belongs,” she said
In its ruling on Amendment 3 on property tax exemptions, the court agreed with Circuit Judge John Cooper that the average voter could easily be misled by the ballot title and summary, which was riddled with seeming contradictions and incongruities as to who qualified for the additional exemption.
Cooper ruled the measure’s ballot title and summary didn’t mention a Jan. 1, 2010, effective date, the absence of which could lead voters to incorrectly assume they were eligible for additional homestead exemption benefits. The proposal, which would offer qualified buyers an additional homestead exemption benefit, was crafted by lawmakers in 2009 to boost home sales.
Because of the omission, “voters may be misled into believing they qualify for the additional exemption when they do not, or conversely believe they do not qualify when they do,” the court wrote in the 5-2 opinion upholding Cooper. Polston and Canady dissented.
Amendment 9 grew out of Republican opposition to the Obama administration’s health care overhaul. The amendment would have tried to prevent Floridians from being compelled to participate in any health care system and sought to protect residents who want to opt out of a new federal requirement that they eventually buy health insurance or face penalties.
Circuit Judge James Shelfer killed that proposal, and the Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision with Canady and Polston again dissenting, agreed that the ballot proposal did not pass constitutional muster and that the summary voters would see was a classic example of “flying under false colors.” The court also dismissed an idea by Attorney General Bill McCollum to put the entire amendment on the ballot to clear up any confusion.
“This Court does not have the authority to substitute the language that three-fifths of the members of the Legislature have voted to place on the ballot,” the majority wrote.
Rep. Scott Plakon (R-Longwood), who sponsored the health care amendment in the House said the opinion smelled of “judicial activism” and that it was “judges playing politics.” He also said that he would refile the amendment during the next legislative session and try to put it on the November 2012 ballot.
“This is far from over,” he said.