Mississippi Supreme Court Strikes Down Medical Marijuana Initiative: Read It For Yourself
Mississippi Supreme Court. Photo by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0
What a mess. The Mississippi Supreme Court not only killed a medical marijuana ballot initiative that passed with overwhelming support, but effectively killed the states ballot initiative process at the same time.
The Mississippi Supreme Court on Friday struck down a medical marijuana initiative that was approved by voters in November — and the ruling is likely to doom other voter initiatives in the state as well.
In a 6-3 ruling, the state’s high court held the medical marijuana initiative that passed with 73 percent of the vote in November had to be struck down because of an odd flaw in the state constitution’s voter initiative process.
Passed in the 1990s, the measure called for a percentage of signatures to come from each of the state’s five congressional districts to get on the ballot. But, the judges noted, the state lost one of those congressional districts thanks to the 2000 U.S. Census, and now only has four districts.
Opponents of the ballot measure argued “that four (the number of districts) multiplied by twenty (the maximum percentage of signatures that may come from any one congressional district) equals only eighty.”
“Therefore, Petitioners assert, it would have been impossible for the petition seeking to place Initiative 65 on the ballot to be properly certified,” the judges noted — and agreed.
“Whether with intent, by oversight, or for some other reason, the drafters” of the provision “wrote a ballot-initiative process that cannot work in a world where Mississippi has fewer than five representatives in Congress. To work in today’s reality, it will need amending—something that lies beyond the power of the Supreme Court,” Justice Josiah Coleman wrote in the majority decision.
Three judges dissented, and said their colleagues effectively did amend the constitution by “stepping completely outside of Mississippi law” in order “to employ an interpretation that not only amends but judicially kills Mississippi’s citizen initiative process.”
“[T]hrough its actions, not only is this particular initiative dead, but so is Mississippi’s citizen initiative process,” Justice James Maxwell wrote in his dissent.
Read the Mississippi Supreme Court for yourself here:
Mississippi Supreme Court
So one of the many casualties of this is an initiative that was brewing to force a full election recite on the new state flag. Many of the citizens and who supported that also opposed the medical marijuana initiative, but apparently didn’t think the court would shoot that foot off while shooting off the other foot.
Given that the amendment that created the initiative process was passed 30 years ago there is the potential to undue a whole lot of what folks believe is settled law.Report
For the first 13 years the process would have worked as designed. Mississippi lost their 5th district in 2003.
It’s just “settled law” created in the last 18 years… so… yeah.Report
A scene from 2 years in the future:
“Can we please go back and accept the deal we rejected 2 years ago?”Report
I expect to see more of this from Republicans, as they look for ways to establish minority rule.Report
I’m looking forward to Biden signing the law that makes Mississippi’s decision moot.Report
Wow, my point is like, totally refuted.Report
I was agreeing with your point. If anything, I wanted to reiterate how there are quite a few people interested in minority rule.Report
Because, you knew, interpreting “five districts” as “all of them” would be A*C*T*I*V*I*S*M.Report
Perhaps my time as a legislative staffer biases me, but it is not the courts’ job to correct bad drafting. And “five districts”, when it is well known that the number of districts can change, and that such changes are outside of the state’s control, is terrible drafting.Report
Exactly. It’s the legislature’s job to fix this, which they can. There’s a misperception out there that every decision is the final word. The reality is that legislatures react to the courts all the time. The interplay is part of the system.Report
Which they won’t, any more than the Congress “fixed” the VRA. (Quotes because it wasn’t broken.) The system breaks down when one party operates in nothing but bad faith.Report
That’s more of an outcome based gripe than a comment about the system.Report
“This system only provides bad outcomes.”
“Stop being so results-oriented!”Report
Yes. No good outcome has ever come out of the American legal system. Hats off, you win.Report
But its also true that the court isn’t bound to such literal interpretations. This decision was a choice they freely made.Report
Interpretation has limits. There’s a long line of SCOTUS precedents slapping down lower courts, federal and state, for trying to interpret a number as meaning something else. The particular piece of the Mississippi constitution in question says one-fifth. It’s stupid, but it’s absolutely clear.
It’s not within the courts’ purview to say, “No, one-quarter is the correct value.”Report
Is it within the court’s purview to say, “This is what the drafters originally intended”?Report
Perhaps when there’s ambiguity. In this case, when the legislature wrote the amendment 30 years ago there were lots of ways to use “divided by the number of Congressional districts” instead. At that time, Mississippi had gone from eight districts down to five within living memory. There have been only four districts for going on 20 years and I haven’t seen anyone pointing at the legislature even attempting to refer a change to the voters.
Convince me that despite all that, and Mississippi’s long history of flawed initiative provisions, that the legislature didn’t damned well mean one-fifth, knowing that in ten years, twenty at the outside, strict application of the formula meant this initiative provision would be dead too.Report
So, it was the intention of the legislature that if the number of divisions changes, that the entire law become void?
Or are we saying that the original intent doesn’t matter, since the law was ambiguous on what happens if the number of districts changes?
See, I think you’re assuming a rigor that doesn’t exist.
That, somehow precedent and legal theory demanded this ruling and would allow no other, when we’ve seen multiple interpretations of legislation and constitutions which freely interpret the “original intent” as allowing varying outcomes.
This opinion was…an opinion, which could have easily gone the other way, had two other justices made a different choice.Report
It is very common for Congress to write laws that will require themselves to come riding to the rescue when stuff breaks. The “ceiling” on how much debt the gov can issue is one example that comes up a lot.
This being a sneaky sunset law to prevent the voters from being able to go around the State Congress makes a fair amount of sense.Report
Want to make this even stranger? As of 2016, Mississippi state statute defines five Congressional districts. Apparently the districts used for the actual federal election were drawn by a federal court. Defendants in the medical marijuana case argued that the five districts defined by the state are the set that should be used for the signature requirements, and under those the collected signatures were fine.
To Philip H’s point here somewhere about Mississippi probably losing another seat in 2030, in 2019 Mississippi passed a law saying if they lose a seat, the remaining Representatives will all be elected at-large.
Now I’m going to have to go read the actual opinion.Report
Having read the opinion now…
The dissenting justices do not argue that one-fifth should be replaced by one-quarter. They argue that congressional districts should be interpreted to mean the five districts defined in state law at the time the initiative provision in the state constitution was passed. That federal reapportionment and district lines drawn by federal judges* do not affect the initiative provision. That changes in population amongst those five districts do not matter. None of the nine support what I have inferred your position to be. Does that change your thinking at all? (Serious question, not snark.)
* It appears that the last time the Mississippi state legislature drew district lines, rather than a federal court doing it, was 1991 or earlier, and they have never (since the current constitution was adopted in 1890) drawn a district map that had less than five districts. A five-district state law definition remains on the books.Report
I’m not making a claim based on legal theory since that is beyond my ability.
What I’m arguing is that the majority opinion was a choice they made to prioritize a literal reading of the text, above a reasonable interpretation of intent.
They could have followed the logic of the minority opinion, or an argument applying the proportion to the remaining districts, or any other theory, all of which have every bit as much supporting logic.
But for Republican jurists, the will of the people is only valid when it suits the will of Republicans. Otherwise they feel at liberty to use any pretext to strike it down.Report
That’s cool. Now, given what you want as a precedent, which numbers in the Constitution are you willing to let the SCOTUS change? Two-thirds? Three-quarters? Given that it may not be our side that gets to decide what happens then?Report
What difference does it make, the rule we establish?
See, that’s the thing. You’re arguing like this is some abstract legal theory where everyone is playing by the same rules and respects the outcome.
We aren’t.
The Republicans aren’t interested in the rules, just power.
Given this, the only possible way to preserve the Constitution is for the American voters to never again let any Republican near the levers of power.Report
There were two theories that attracted any votes. None of the judges were willing to go with changing 20% to 25%.
That implies by the standards of the law, it’s simply not done.Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_BillReport
No, it’s rejection of the Calvin-Ball theory of jurisprudence.Report
As recently as 1930 (within living memory of the time the law was created), Mississippi had 8 districts. In 1960 they had 6.
This law is well designed for a state that has 5 or more districts. At 4 it fails.Report
Given current out migration rates we will be down to 3 in another ten years. So the fix is simply to state something about equal distribution among the districts.Report
Philip, as a Mississippian, do you know whether the 20% rule was put into effect to prevent things getting on the ballot that had overwhelming support in, shall we say, districts of a certain composition but not as much support in districts of, oh, different demographics?Report
Before my time. I suspect there is some of that, plus a healthy dose of north state – south state rivalry.Report