Minnesotans firing back on gun ruling Conrad Defiebre Minneapolis Star Tribune July 18, 2004
* * * [Lucky] Rosenbloom, is a living emblem of a changing Minnesota culture: a black Republican who hawks personal protection training... . * * * [Law School Professor Joseph]Olson was a major lobbying force behind last year's enactment of the law, which makes handgun permits available to practically any adult who gets the required training and passes a criminal and mental health background check. * * * Now Olson is marshaling arguments for an appeal of Finley's finding that the measure violated a state constitutional requirement that each law passed by the Legislature embrace but a single subject expressed in its title. * * * Finley's decision focused on none of that, but rather on the constitutional consequences of the unusual parliamentary strategy that was used finally to break the legislative logjam. By large margins, the House twice passed an NRA-backed handgun bill that failed on a tie vote in the Senate, then was denied another floor vote by Senate DFL leaders. House leaders responded by using as a vehicle a technical bill for the Department of Natural Resources that had been passed unanimously by the Senate. First, the House attached a minor "bridge amendment" dealing with DNR-certified rifle safety training for hunters. Then came the much bigger amendment -- 26 pages of handgun policy revisions that dwarfed the original 10-page bill. With the bridge amendment in place, the move withstood a so-called germaneness challenge on the floor, a parliamentary safeguard against amendments that have nothing to do with the bill being debated. All of this was strategy to force an up-or-down Senate vote on the measure. Under legislative rules, senators could only concur with or reject the House amendments; after seven hours of debate they voted 37 to 30 to concur. Hours later, Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the bill into law. * * * Attorney General Mike Hatch has said he will appeal the ruling, beginning with seeking a stay of its effect while the appeal is pending. No motion for a stay was filed last week. Hatch spokeswoman Leslie Sandberg said Friday that it is expected this week. In the meantime, permits issued under the law remain valid, but new ones would be subject to the more restrictive former law that gave sheriffs and police chiefs broad discretion to grant or deny them. A case for appeal If Hatch's lawyers need any help with the case, all they have to do is call Olson, who teaches constitutional law at Hamline University. He said that in the past 25 years the state Supreme Court has invalidated only one law based on the single-subject clause: a prevailing wage provision stuck in an education bill. All other challenges have failed because bundling of issues is an inescapable element of legislative compromise, Olson said. "Amendments come out of the blue all the time," he said. "Stuff gets stuck in there that nobody thinks of. There was no one in the Legislature who didn't know what that bill was or at least had the opportunity to find out." By and large, Olson said, the high court has interpreted the single-subject clause extremely broadly to limit its intrusion on the authority of the legislative branch. In 1989, the court pronounced that no far-reaching legislative amendment would violate the Constitution "so long as a common thread connects it to the general subject of the original bill, even though the connection is a mere filament." For Olson, the handgun law has "a logical connection" to the DNR bill's provisions on hunter safety and recognition of other states' certificates. According to Finley, a key rationale for the single-subject clause was to prevent legislative "log-rolling," a process of putting together enough initiatives that can't pass individually but in concert can muster a majority. With the handgun ploy, Olson said, "there was no log-rolling. The bill had support for years on its own. The only reason for it was to let democracy work on the floor of the Senate." And, although the final bill wasn't heard in committee, he said, the policy was the subject of 10 House hearings and one in the Senate. "It was fully debated," Olson said. "There was no hiding the ball here." http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4880656.html *********************************************************************** Professor Joseph Olson Hamline University School of Law tel. (651) 523-2142 St. Paul, Minnesota 55104-1284 fax. (651) 523-2236 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof
