Sebelius: Is the single-subject rule legal? It’s still an open question

(Steve Sebelius, Las Vegas Review-Journal) – Back in 2012, attorney Kermitt Waters mounted his most audacious legal attack on a law that restricts the ability of citizens to propose laws by initiative.

That law, known as the “single-subject rule,” says initiatives can only address a single issue. It was put in place in 2005 to prevent crafty special interests from trying to enact unpopular laws by wrapping them inside popular ones.

Waters drew up a barn burner of an initiative: It would have established a gross receipts tax, increased teacher salaries, eliminated property taxes for homeowners, fully funded the Millennium Scholarship, created a no-interest loan program for energy efficiency hardware, and more.

It definitely covered more than one subject. But why not? Waters noted in his legal briefs that the Legislature is also subject to a constitutional single-subject rule for its bills. And the bill that created the single-subject rule itself covered more than one subject!

“Under the Nevada standard, the single-subject rule is [sic] applied to the Legislature is interpreted broadly, but when citizens attempt to pass laws, the single-subject standard is interpreted narrowly and aggressively applied,” Waters complained. “It is not a coincidence that the single-subject standard is applied so aggressively when the challenges are filed by powerful political forces that dominate the Legislature.”

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