Oregon Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Walkout-Related Election Ban

The Oregon State Capitol building in Salem, Ore., circa 1960. Harvey Meston/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Oral arguments before the Oregon Supreme Court on Dec. 14 focused on semantics as five Republican state senators sought to delay the sanctions pending against them for boycotting this year’s legislative session.

The senators are hoping for a quick resolution of their challenge to a new state law that could bar them from running for reelection after they staged a six-week walkout of the 2022 legislative session.

The walkout, which aimed to stymie legislation over gun rights as well as abortion and transgender issues, put them at odds with Ballot Measure 113. 

Passed with 68 percent of the vote in November 2022, the constitutional amendment disqualifies Oregon lawmakers from seeking reelection at the end of their terms if they accumulate 10 or more unexcused absences during a legislative session.

The measure is intended to prevent tactics such as walkouts, which both parties have used repeatedly since 1971 to deny the two-thirds quorum needed to vote on legislation in the state.

In August, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade ruled that the senators would be disqualified from the 2024 ballot.

“It is clear voters intended Measure 113 to disqualify legislators from running for reelection if they had 10 or more unexcused absences in a legislative session,” wrote Ms. Griffin-Valade. “My decision honors the voters’ intent by enforcing the measure the way it was commonly understood when Oregonians added it to our state constitution.”

But in a legal challenge to Ms. Griffin-Valade’s ruling, the senators argue that the way the amendment is written means they can seek another term.

The constitutional amendment says a lawmaker is not allowed to run for the term following the election after the member’s current term is completed. Since a senator’s term ends in January while elections are held the previous November, the senators argue the penalty doesn’t take effect immediately, but instead, after they’ve served another term.

Each of the five senators is planning to run for office in 2024 and has until March 12 to get their name on the ballot.

The senators initially filed the case with the Oregon Court of Appeals, but attorneys for the senators and state Department of Justice lawyers representing Ms. Griffin-Valade agreed to skip the appeals court and go straight to the state Supreme Court in order to expedite a decision.

Parsing the Language

John DiLorenzo, a lawyer representing the Republican legislators before the Supreme Court, argued that lawmakers who have surpassed the 10-absence threshold are permitted to run in one more election because of bungled language that drafters included in the measure.

He maintained that the new law wasn’t clearly written, and that it applies not to the next term but the one after that. If his argument prevails, it would allow the senators to run in November 2024 because the election would come two months before the end of their current term.

Dustin Buehler, an attorney representing the secretary of state, agreed that the wording of the measure in the constitution is ambiguous. 

“This is clunky. This is inelegant,” he concurred, as the debate focused on an “unclear antecedent” in the ballot measure.

“I’m sure the drafter wishes they could get a mulligan,” Mr. Buehler continued. “But there are all sorts of laws that are poorly written” but still enforced, he argued.

He urged the judges to overlook the poor sentence construction.

Instead, he argued that the ballot measure should be enacted based on what voters “believed” the measure would do.

“The ballot title caption, which appeared literally right above the ‘Yes’ and ’No' bubbles that voters filled in on their ballot, was unambiguously clear,” Mr. Buehler said.

Chief Justice Meagan Flynn agreed that the grammar was an issue, but told Mr. DiLorenzo that she couldn’t understand how his interpretation of the measure could reflect that of the voters who approved the ballot measure.

“My first reaction is exactly yours, but then I ask myself, ‘How did so many people read it differently, including those who could have challenged the meaning that was being attributed to those words?’” Justice Flynn asked.

The judges did not issue a ruling after the one-hour hearing or say exactly when they would do so. 

“The court is aware of the need for timeliness, and the goal is to [issue a ruling] well before the March 12 deadline to file for office,” Todd Sprague of the Oregon Judicial Department wrote to The Epoch Times.

Meanwhile, the senators lost an argument earlier this week in federal court. 

A motion for preliminary injunction brought by Sens. Brian Boquist and Dennis Linthicum, two of the senators who participated in the legislative walkout, aimed to strike the measure in its entirety. Their complaint argued that prohibiting lawmakers from seeking reelection due to their legislative tactics violates their First Amendment free speech protections.

U.S. District Judge Ann L. Aiken on Dec 13 ruled in that case that legislative walkouts do not count as constitutionally protected free speech.