JEFFERSON CITY — Republican Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway's office is representing the state in two cases to defend Secretary of State Denny Hoskins' decision to refuse to put two measures on the ballot.
One of them would freeze a gerrymandered congressional map from taking effect and force a statewide vote on it in November. The other, Amendment 6, would prohibit the Missouri General Assembly from ever attempting to weaken citizen initiative power and require 80% approval from members of both the House and Senate in order for lawmakers to overturn what voters have already passed.
The Missouri Supreme Court will hear both of these cases this coming Wednesday.
"I cannot think of a state where the voters are drawing congressional districts directly. And frankly, from a practical perspective, I don't know how it would be done," Hanaway said Thursday in a one-on-one interview with KOMU 8 News.
Missouri's effort to gerrymander its congressional map & change the initiative petition processMissouri GOP leaders are pushing to gerrymander Missouri's congressional map and change how voter-approved measures become laws.
Hanaway, whose solicitor general, Louis Capozzi, is leading the legal team arguing both cases in court, argued that the Missouri Constitution only explicitly allows the state legislature to draw congressional district maps. Thus, she supported Hoskins's decision not to certify more than 300,000 signatures People Not Politicians Missouri, a political campaign committee, submitted to his office in an effort to stop the gerrymandered map from taking effect unless it passes through a statewide vote of the people.
Part of the Missouri Constitution grants citizens the right to use a referendum to force a statewide vote on "any act of the general assembly." There are some exceptions for laws involving immediate public safety concerns, some spending bills, and public schools, but there is no exception in the constitution prohibiting citizens from using a referendum on congressional maps.
There is, however, also no provision explicitly granting citizens this authority.
"We think the specific trumps the general and the court agreed with us," Hanaway said.
Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green sided with the state last week in both the congressional map and Amendment 6 cases. The groups trying to put both on the ballot, People Not Politicians Missouri and Respect Missouri Voters, respectively, both appealed the circuit judge's decision.
"I think the most important argument that we made in the Amendment 6 case is that it is a fundamental constitutional provision that one legislature can't bind the next," Hanaway said. "What this initiative petition seeks to do is to bind the Missouri General Assembly forever."
Hanaway and her attorneys have argued that Amendment 6 would violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee clause, which ensures citizens are afforded a Republican form of government, where they elect representatives who draft and pass legislation.
In Cole County court on Aug. 18, an attorney representing Respect Missouri Voters said it is not up to Hanaway or Hoskins to decide whether Missouri is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Instead, he argued that the attorney general and secretary of state are overstepping their bounds by preliminarily refusing to certify an initiative with enough petitions to qualify for the ballot.
Hanaway's attorneys and Hoskins have also argued that Amendment 6 violates Missouri's "single-subject" rule, where ballot measures may only encompass one overall topic.
Amendment 4, which Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected earlier this month, included language that would have drastically increased the degree of difficulty for Missouri citizens to amend the Constitution through citizen initiatives. But, it also included a line that would have banned "foreign adversaries" from contributing money to support ballot measures.
Additionally, Amendment 3, which will be on the Nov. 3 ballot, primarily includes the question of whether to restrict access to abortion in most cases again. But it also includes a line at the bottom of the ballot language that would "prohibit gender transition procedures for minors."
When questioned how both of those would qualify as a single subject, and how Hanaway thought Supreme Court judges would interpret Amendment 6 differently, Hanaway pointed to how judges had already litigated the ballot language for Amendments 3 and 4, and they will as part of the upcoming case on Amendment 6.
The Supreme Court is taking up both cases next week on Wednesday. They have been moving rapidly through the courts, as the November ballot has to be finalized by Sept. 8.
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