Idaho Supreme Court weighs new strict ballot initiatives law

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho’s highest court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that pits the rights of voters to enact and repeal laws against the power of the state Legislature to shape how ballot initiative efforts are carried out.

A new law making it harder to get initiatives on the ballot is the country’s strictest, attorney Deborah Ferguson told the court, making grassroots initiatives a practical impossibility in the state. Ferguson, who is representing Reclaim Idaho, a citizens group that successfully passed an initiative to expand Medicaid coverage in 2018, said the requirements make “direct democracy a dead letter in Idaho.”

But Deputy Attorney General Megan Larrondo, representing the state, said there is no proof that the new rules make ballot initiatives impossible. Instead, she said, the legislation served the legitimate purpose of ensuring that a proposal has broad support, including from people in every region of the state, before it goes on the ballot.

Both Reclaim Idaho and a group called the Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution, represented by retired deputy Idaho attorney general Michael Gilmore, filed lawsuits over the new law. The lawsuits were combined for oral argument before the Idaho Supreme Court.

Idaho’s Constitution has allowed initiatives and referendums as a check on the Legislature since 1912. For decades the only requirement for getting an initiative on the ballot was that enough registered voters signed the petition to equal 10 percent of the votes cast in the previous general election.

But in recent years, lawmakers have increasingly worked to make it more difficult to qualify initiatives for the ballot. After a successful referendum canceled lawmaker-approved changes to education, the Legislature in 2013 changed the rules to require signatures from 6% of registered voters in each of 18 legislative districts.

In 2018, however, Reclaim Idaho’s initiative to expand Medicaid access qualified for the ballot and then won broad support from voters, forcing a statewide policy change that many lawmakers had long opposed. In response to the Medicaid expansion, Republicans in the House and Senate in 2019 tried to make the initiative process nearly impossible so they could head off future measures such as raising the minimum wage and legalizing marijuana. Little vetoed that legislation out of concern a federal court might overturn the law and dictate Idaho’s initiative process.

But a federal judge in June 2020 dismissed a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s ballot initiative process as modified in 2013 as unconstitutional, and that ruling appeared to clear the way for lawmakers to pass increasingly stringent rules this year.

The new law requires signature-gatherers to get 6% of registered voters in each of Idaho’s 35 legislative districts within a span of 18 months. Opponents say the new rules give one district veto power over the initiative process.

“This does not create the inclusion of rural voters,” as lawmakers have maintained, Ferguson said, but instead leaves the “fox guarding the henhouse” by removing one of the checks and balances that voters maintain over the Legislature.

Larrondo, meanwhile, said the 1912 constitutional amendments that gave voters the right to seek referenda also gave the Legislature the right to shape the initiative process. She said the Legislature’s ability to modify the initiative process serves as a check on the public.

“It’s not a question of trusting or not trusting the people not to trample the minority,” Larrondo said. “... There has to be a check on the will of the majority.”

Idaho’s Legislature has long been a Republican stronghold, and currently has 86 Republican and 19 Democratic lawmakers.

The Idaho Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks.