High court agrees to expedited schedule on ballot questions

Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 | 10:03 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court decided Wednesday to speed up its handling of an appeal on whether the initiative petitions on raising the minimum wage and preventing frivolous lawsuits will be on the November ballot.

Secretary of State Dean Heller, in his appeal to the court, claims the two petitions are invalid because there is not an appropriate certification on the petitions. He is challenging the decision of District Judge Bill Maddox, who ruled these two should go before the voters.

The Supreme Court has ordered Heller, represented by the state attorney general's office, to submit his opening brief by Wednesday, and it gives the backers of the petition seven days to respond. Then the attorney general's office will have another seven days.

That brings the dispute right down to the deadline. County clerks and registrars of voters say they need to know by Sept. 1 if the petitions will be on the ballot so they can start printing the absentee and sample ballots in time for the general election in November.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the Nevada State Medical Association also said Wednesday they would join Heller in his appeal to keep the two issues off the election ballot.

Both the chamber and the medical society had joined Heller in the district court hearing before Maddox.

Danny Thompson, executive director of the Nevada State AFL-CIO, said the Supreme Court did the right thing in expediting the appeal. He said he was confident that Maddox "did the right thing for the working people in Nevada" in putting the minimum wage issue on the ballot.

That wage initiative seeks to amend the Nevada Constitution to boost the minimum wage by $1 an hour and by the cost of living up to 3 percent in years after it is effective. The other petition would penalize lawyers that file frivolous suits and would prohibit limiting the award of damages to a person who wins a tort suit.

In the ruling to put the two initiatives on the ballot after Heller's office ruled they did not have enough signatures to qualify, Maddox said a clause in the state Constitution used by the secretary of state's office in its decision was "meaningless."

Thompson said as it stands now the two questions on minimum wage and lawsuits will be on the ballot unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise.

In another court dispute involving an initiative petition, U.S. District Judge James Mahan has set Aug. 13 on a hearing of a suit by ACLU, the Marijuana Policy Project and the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, which wants to allow Nevadans to vote whether to allow adults to possess one ounce of marijuana. The suit challenges a section in the Nevada Constitution that requires an initiative petition have 10 percent of the voters in 13 of the 17 counties to sign the documents.

The petition, when the signatures were verified, qualified in only 12 of the 17 counties, according to the secretary of state's office.