www.loubar.org 6 Louisville Bar Briefs derbycitylitho.com • duplicatorsales.net 1-800-633-8921 • 831 E. Broadway, Louisville, KY 40204 PRINT, CONNECT, SUCCEED Tailoring your Office Technology Solutions since 1959. Network Printers and Copiers Fleet and Managed Print Solutions Corporate Mailing Systems Computer Systems and Managed IT Document Management Professional Print PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE Voting “Yes” on Researching Kentucky Constitutional Amendments Kurt X. Metzmeier By the time that this article goes to print, the yard signs for the dueling campaigns to vote no or yes on Amendments 1 and 2 will be put away and replaced with holiday lights and inflatable Santas. (Savvy voters might store those signs for future campaigns to amend Kentucky’s constitution, as amendments have been the subject of hot political issues in recent years, proposing everything from a ban on abortions to this year’s charter schools amendment.) With such changes to the state constitution coming so frequently, it is not improbable that a lawyer might find themselves assisting the courts in interpreting these new fundamental laws on behalf of their clients. A 2020 amendment that created a victims Bill of Rights within the constitution has already been the subject of litigation. And lawyers encountering an issue related to a new constitutional amendment might think, how do I research that? Unlike most issues related to the Kentucky constitution, there are no debates and records of the delegates to the 1890-91 convention to examine to find the delegates’ intent in drafting the provision you are researching. Amending the Kentucky Constitution Section 256 lays out the mechanism for amending the constitution (without calling for a whole new constitutional convention). The process to amend the Kentucky constitution is somewhat like its federal counterpart. Whereas the founders of the U.S. Constitution required two-thirds of both houses of Congress to send an amendment to the legislatures of the states, three-fifths of voting members of each chamber of the Kentucky General Assembly are needed to put an amendment to the state constitution on the ballot. (This is the first time when, as a legal scholar, I have had to put my 3rd grade instruction in fractions to good use: two-thirds (or 10/15ths) is greater than three-fifths (9/15ths). Yay math!) And while that fractional difference makes the first step of amending the federal constitution slightly more difficult, the hardest part of the federal process is ratification: getting the required three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures to support anything is challeng- ing. Conversely, only a simple majority of Kentuckians voting affirmatively in a regular election enshrines a proposed amendment into the state constitution. There are some restrictions on the power of the legislature to place amend- ments on the ballot. First, the amendment can only be voted on in a year when the U.S. House of Representatives is elected, i.e., even-year general elections. Second, there must be 90 days between the final approval of an amendment and the election. Third, the legislature can only propose four amendments at a time. (Usually, they limit themselves to two.) Section 257 requires that the text of the amendment be published 90 days before the election. Moreover, the Kentucky Supreme Court in Westerfield v. Ward, 599 SW 3d 738 (2019) ruled that the voters must vote on the entire language of a proposed amend- ment, not a brief summary. Researching Amendments To research a recently amended section of the state constitution, first care- fully examine an annotated version of the section in the Kentucky Revised Statutes. Any case annotations you find can be useful, even if they are not directly on point, because the first appellate court to interpret an amend- ment is going to spend a little time discussing its history and context. Also look for annotations to law review and bar journal articles; they might even be written by persons involved in drafting or implementing the amendment. Next, research the documentary history of the amendment in the same way that one would trace the legislative history of statutes. Assuming that the amendment you are researching was passed in the 21st century, you should be able to learn a lot from the Kentucky Elizabeth Monarch MBA, CAI, CRI Auctioneer/Realtor 2023 KYR Realtor State President Lonnie Gann GRI, CAI Auctioneer/Realtor 502.551.1286 auctionsolutionsllc.com Real Estate & Auction Specialist Providing Real Estate & Auction Services: • Estate Liquidation • Senior Living Transitions • Divorce Property Settlements • Business Liquidation • Real and Personal Property Evaluation Serving all of Kentucky and Indiana (continued on next page)