Initiative & Referendum Institute v. Jaeger
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
241 F.3d 614 (2001)

- Written by Joe Cox, JD
Facts
North Dakota’s constitution allowed for ballot initiatives but was amended in 1979 to allow only state residents 18 years old or older to circulate initiative petitions. In 1987, a statute prohibited payment of petition circulators on a signature-based payment standard but did allow them to otherwise be paid. The 1987 statute had been passed due to issues in a 1986 initiative signature campaign, including students being paid for signing and names being taken from the phone book. In 1994, about 17,000 signatures were invalidated due to per-signature payments. A group of citizens and organizations including Initiative & Referendum Institute (collectively, the institute) (plaintiffs) filed suit for declaratory judgment seeking a ruling that the 1979 amendment and the 1987 statute were unconstitutional as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The institute posited that the residency requirement unduly chilled free-speech rights by making it harder to obtain initiative approval and by prohibiting nonresidents from political speech via participation in the petition process. The institute also argued that the prohibition against per-payment circulation fees chilled First Amendment free-speech rights and that the amendment and statute violated the Equal Protection Clause by treating citizens differently than lobbyists, despite a legislative stoppage on lobbyists from working on a contingency basis to secure specific outcomes. North Dakota Secretary of State Alvin Jaeger (defendant) defended the amendment and statute as being less than a severe burden on free speech and thus deserving of less than strict scrutiny in considering both the per-signature payment ban and the residency requirement. The state specifically argued that any free-speech implications, which were minimal because payment was not completely banned, were subject to the state’s interest in avoiding fraud. The state argued that likewise, the residency requirement inflicted minimum prejudice regarding free-speech concerns, as most initiatives passed the signature requirement easily and any North Dakota voter could circulate a petition. The trial court ruled for the state, and the institute appealed.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Heaney, J.)
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