(The Center Square) – A recent ruling from the Washington State Supreme Court against a voter-approved initiative to protect natural gas as an energy choice could have wide reaching consequences for other initiatives and legislation, including the recently passed income tax law.
On Sept. 17, the Washington Supreme Court struck down Initiative 2066, the 2024 measure protecting residents’ access to natural gas.
In the 6-3 decision, the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Debra Stephens, ruled that I-2066 violated the state constitution’s single-subject clause.
The rule bars initiatives and legislation from combining unrelated policies into a single measure.
The state’s single-subject rule applies to legislative enactments as well as voter initiatives. If a challenge to the income tax legislation (SB 6346) reaches the court, justices may face questions over whether lawmakers adhered to the same standard applied to the natural gas measure.
I-2066 bundled natural gas access, building codes, utility rates, and Clean Air Act provisions into the initiative and the court said it could not determine if voters knew about all the different components.
“This decision, by setting a new standard on what a single subject is in creating law, that standard has to be applied consistently, whether it’s an initiative or legislation that’s backed by the legislature,” said Greg Lane, vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington, which backed I-2066.
Lane told The Center Square the Court has opened up a can of worms for lawmakers.
“If this is the new standard, there are a number of laws that the Legislature passed….that are out of compliance with this new standard for single subjects…..this is really going to hamstring the Legislature in passing legislation that’s going to now have to comply with this new standard,” said Lane.
The free market think tank Washington Policy Center agrees the ruling on I-2066 could have far reaching consequences, including for the recently passed income tax.
“ESSB 6346 is not just an income tax bill after all. Lawmakers folded in changes to the business and occupation tax, adjustments to the sales tax, an expansion of the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC), and a contribution to an early learning account, then sent the entire package out to a single vote,” wrote WPC’s Budget and Tax Policy Director Ryan Frost.
“Under the single-subject rule the Supreme Court just reaffirmed…these policies belonged in separate bills, standing or falling on their own terms,” wrote Frost.
Jim Walsh, who chairs the Washington State Republican Party, told The Center Square he’s wondering if the State Supreme Court will use the same thought process to kill the income tax repeal initiative, I-645, which will be on the Nov. 3 ballot.
“The State Supreme Court has set a bad precedent for how it’s going to treat initiatives, especially on anything that’s even remotely controversial. Obviously, we’re all thinking about the current initiative to repeal the state income tax.”
“Will the State Supreme Court use the same kind of lazy, legal logic to reverse the repeal?” Walsh asked.
“This bad ruling, with regard to natural gas choice….it makes us concerned that the State Supreme Court will do a similar thing and play the same kind of word games, with the initiative to repeal the state income tax.”
Many groups that fought against the natural gas law hailed the ruling earlier this month.
“Initiative 2066 was a classic example of logrolling – packing an initiative packaging a host of different issues that confuse voters in order to ram through unpopular reforms that the public would not support ,” said Dylan Plummer, Deputy Director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Heat Campaign in a press release.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling is a clear refutation of this cynical tactic by the fossil fuel industry to rollback a host of energy efficiency, clean air and climate policy with this misleading initiative.”
Attorneys who challenged the natural gas initiative also praised the court for striking down the measure due to multiple provisions.
“The Washington Supreme Court reaffirmed the basic constitutional requirement that a law-whether enacted by the Legislature or by initiative-cannot bundle distinct and unrelated policy changes into a single measure,” Pacifica Law Group attorneys Paul Lawrence and Kai Smith, who represented the coalition against I-2066, said in the release.
WPC’s Frost speculated that backers of I-645 may have intentionally crafted the initiative to focus only on repealing the income tax alone, while leaving tax relief measures written into SB 6346 intact, to avoid any conflict with the single-subject rules.
“Broadening the initiative’s scope to overturn the whole bill would have created a multi-subject measure, handing opponents like the public sector unions, who stand to gain the most from additional government spending, the exact same single-subject argument the court just wielded against I-2066,” wrote Frost.
Lane at BIAW said the State Supreme Court may not have realized the hornets nest they stirred with the ruling against I-2066.
“The court is inserting itself, I think, inappropriately, in the lawmaking process, whether or not that law is from an initiative by the people on the ballot, or whether it’s the legislature passing laws, they all have to apply now to this new standard,” Lane said.