Senior Counsel Neal Quenzer contributed a Case Comment for the July 2023 issue of the Massachusetts Law Review, published by the Massachusetts Bar Association.
The Case Comment discusses four recent Massachusetts ballot questions, highlighting decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court that addressed whether the proposed questions satisfied the relatedness requirement of Article 48 of the Amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution. The relatedness requirement aims to ensure that each ballot question contains only "related subjects."
The cases covered in the Case Comment include:
- Anderson v. Attorney General: A case concerning a proposed constitutional amendment to impose an income surtax on high earners for education and transportation funding. The relatedness requirement did not apply to this question since the amendment was initiated by the legislature. The court held that the attorney general's summary of the amendment was constitutionally sufficient to permit the question to be placed on the ballot.
- Clark v. Attorney General and Committee to Protect Access to Quality Dental Care v. Secretary of the Commonwealth: These cases involved a petition related to regulating dental benefit plans. The court held that the various provisions within the measure were sufficiently related to one another, and that the secretary of the commonwealth and the court were essentially powerless to change the statement prepared by the proponents, to be distributed by the secretary to the voters, in support of the measure.
- Colpack v. Attorney General: This case concerned a petition to regulate licensing of alcohol sales, and the court again held that the various provisions of the measure were sufficiently related to qualify for the ballot.
- El Koussa v. Attorney General: A case involving a proposed new chapter defining the relationship between app-based rideshare and delivery networks and their drivers. The court found one specific subsection of the measure potentially unrelated to the common purpose of the other parts of the chapter, thereby making the provisions unrelated and disqualifying the petition from the ballot.
The Case Comment identifies some concerns about the court's recent approach to analyzing relatedness issues and how this may impact future ballot question cases. It notes the increase in relatedness challenges in recent years and the potential for differences between the attorney general and the court regarding relatedness determinations.
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