High court dismisses tax case

The state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously dismissed a case brought by the top Senate Democrat seeking to throw out voter-approved laws that require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes.

The court, led by Justice Mary Fairhurst, said the challenge brought by Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, was a political question involving the Legislature, and not to be answered by the courts.

“Intervention of this court into an intrahouse dispute over a parliamentary ruling to compel the president of the Senate to perform a discretionary duty would be a grave violation of separation of powers,” Fairhurst wrote.

Brown had argued that Washington’s “supermajority” tax-vote rule is unconstitutional because it effectively alters the state constitution’s provision that lawmakers need a simple majority to pass laws.

The supermajority law was passed by initiative, but Brown argued that a constitutional amendment – much more difficult to pass – is needed to alter the Legislature’s voting powers.

The two-thirds vote requirement on taxes was approved in 1993’s Initiative 601 and broadened in 2007’s I-960. In the past, lawmakers have amended and even suspended the two-thirds provision at times.

A majority of the Legislature can amend an initiative two years after it is passed by voters.

The court declined to weigh in on whether the law was constitutional, saying it traditionally has not considered internal legislative functions surrounding the passage of a bill.

“Just as the Legislature may not go beyond the decree of the court when a decision is fair on its face, the judiciary will not look beyond the final record of the Legislature when an enactment is facially valid, even when the proceedings are challenged as unconstitutional,” Fairhurst wrote.

Brown said she was disappointed the court did not take up the constitutionality of the law, which she says “unnecessarily ties the hands of the Legislature.”

“I wanted to have the constitutionality clarified. I would be content with whatever the decision would be on the constitutionality,” Brown said, adding that Thursday’s ruling leaves “an open question.”

Brown said she has no plans to challenge the measure again in court, but she thinks it’s important that the constitutional issues are eventually addressed.

“I still would love to see the constitutionality of this clarified by our state Supreme Court,” she said. “But I’m beginning to think that may not occur.”

The lawsuit was technically against Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, who is the Senate’s presiding officer, over a parliamentary ruling he made last March. Owen ruled that a proposed $10 million liquor tax increase, which got a simple majority vote of 25-21, had failed because it did not get supermajority support.

The court said Owen “acted properly” by refusing to decide the constitutionality of the law as Brown had asked him to do on the Senate floor.

Many lawmakers, particularly Democrats, dislike the two-thirds vote requirement’s infringement on their powers, and the liquor tax proposal was widely seen as a ploy by Brown to challenge the supermajority law’s constitutional footing.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature is facing a projected deficit of about $8 billion through 2011, and Democrats are currently working on their budget proposal that will be released later this month.

Brown said the legal challenge was not pursued to seek a green light for lawmakers to raise taxes.

“Any major revenue option would have been presented to the voters, no matter how the court ruled,” she said.

Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, said the ruling was a “win for the people of Washington.”

“Their approval of Initiative 960 told the Legislature that they wanted it to show restraint when raising taxes, and they wanted more transparency when it came to knowing how much legislation would take out of their pockets,” he said in a prepared statement.