Somerville Legislators Sued for Violating Constitutional Duty

[dominic-santos.livejournal.com]

Representatives Denise Provost, Carl Sciortino, and Tim Toomey, and Senators Jarrett Barrios and Pat Jehlen were sued today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts "for violating the constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens by intentionally refusing to vote on a citizen initiative amendment on the definition of marriage," according to a press release issued by Vote on Marriage, the initiative petition campaign seeking to define marriage in Massachusetts as the union between a man and a woman.
 

The Vote on Marriage press release is available here.

A PDF of the Complaint is available here.

Selected initiative petitions that would have never been voted on if past State Legislatures disregarded their Constitutional duty like our fine legislators from Somerville:

1938 - Initiative to provide free public taxicab stands in cities and towns.
1950 - Initiative to establish the Massachusetts State Lottery.
1976 - Initiative to prohibit to possession, ownership, or sale of any weapon from which a shot or bullet can be discharged and which has a barrel length of less than 16 inches.
1976 - Initiative to require every beverage container to have a refund value of $.05 and to ban containers with flip-tops.
1980 - Initiative to limit local property taxes (a.k.a. Proposition 2 1/2).

Comments

[dominic-santos.livejournal.com]

Ok...so the amendment even if passed by the Legislature and the people would be unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia. For a discussion of the Loving case, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia).

Now to answer your question. If the "nut group" had met all the requirements for an initiative petition to amend the Constitution, I would still the condemn the Legislature for adjourning without a vote. As you know, they could simply vote and vote it down.

Ron, you must understand that our democracy is not always pretty. We must be slow to discriminate against views which we do not agree with, because we do not want to feel the same discrimination when an issue we agree with is going through the same process.

[ron_newman]

I'm not entirely comfortable with the Legislature's action (or in this case, inaction) but I also don't see any merit whatsoever in the federal lawsuit. And I do think all six of the Somerville legislators are acting in what they see as the best interest of their constituencies. The people of Somerville have consistently supported gay marriage.

[ron_newman]

"all six" should read "all five". Unfortunately it is not possible to edit and correct a comment.

[cos]

Note that in this case they haven't met all the requirements. At least two procedural flaws occurred before the legislature got this petition:

1. Despite unquestionable evidence of massive fraud in the signature gathering, all signatures were certified without an investigation. We have no idea how many valid signatures there really were, but we do know that very large numbers of fraudulent signatures were certified.

2. Despite a constitutional prohibition against using the initiative petition route for amendments whose main purpose is to counter a court decision, Attorney General Riley declared that this one was okay and let it go forward.

If the legislature fails to vote on it, that will be the third, and least serious, of the three procedural violations.

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

These are the same morons that paid a company to get signatures? and it was the same folks who were collecting signatures for selling wine in stores at the same time?

If you pay a company for signatures won't you nearly allways get the required signatures? Does it all come down to price?

[elements.livejournal.com]

I wish those two points were making it into the media coverage around the legislature's decision more. IMHO the legislature is simply helping to correct the flawed processes that allowed the initiative petition ever to get this far. Since they can't vote to de-certify something Reilly certified, they have to use another procedure.