You may have seen that the Washington Supreme Court found unconstitutional a citizen initiative to reduce or eliminate motor vehicle taxes for major transportation projects. The opinion is here: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/983208.PDF I wanted to highlight a few things. A THREAD 1/

The effort to significantly reduce motor vehicle taxes by citizen initiative is a decades-long effort led by the notorious Tim Eyman. His prior efforts led to a ton of litigation and the court ultimately holding the prior initiative was also unconstitutional. 2/

Here, the court held 9-0 that the initiative violated the single subject req't of the Wash Constitution. Under long established case law, all subdivisions must be rationally related to the general subject of the initiative. 3/

Here the court held that subject was reducing motor vehicle taxes and fees. The court agreed with the challengers that one section in particular, the section which required past bonds to be retired, defeased, or refinanced, was not related to the general subject. 4/

It held that was an unconstitutional second subject, thus invalidating the initiative. Interestingly, there's no severability analysis, perhaps because of part two of the opinion. 5/

In the second part of the opinion, the court held 8-1 that the initiative violated the subject-in-title requirement and was thus unconstitutionally deceptive. A title does not need to index the contents of the the bill or give all the details of the bill. 6/

It does, however, need to give enough notice that would lead to an inquiry into the details of the act. And the material representations in the title cannot be misleading or false. 7/

Here the title said the measure would "limit annual motor-vehicle-license fees to $30, except voter-approved charges." The problem for the initiative was that it actually eliminated past voter-approved charges. 8/

The court noted that the average informed lay voter would not think this measure would eliminate prior voter-approved charges given the caveat in the title that specifically excepted voter-approved charges. 9/

The court held this title was deceptive and misleading and therefore unconstitutional. 10/