Getting Amendment Certified for Legislature Is Difficult and Expensive

MN Staff
November 2002 Print Edition

Getting the Protection of Marriage Amendment certified for a vote by the citizens was neither easy nor cheap. The list is endless.

An office was rented in May 2000 with a staff, telephones, computers, etc.

An experienced constitutional lawyer was hired in the summer of 2001 to help write the Marriage Amendment so it would be approved by the Attorney General for the ballot. It was a certainty it would be challenged by the opponents. Not a word of the Amendment could be changed once it was submitted.

The Amendment had to be approved by Attorney General Tom Reilly as a proper subject for the ballot. Although the opponents met with him and his people many times and became very angry because he followed the law, he did follow the law and certify it as proper for the ballot.

57,100 signatures of voters had to be obtained with their names written clearly so that the clerk in each town or city could read them. They had to be written only on a petition for that particular town. There could not be any stray marks on the petition or the entire sheet was discarded. It was necessary and expensive to hire professional signature gatherers because of the blockers from the ACLU.

A suit was started by the opponents claiming that the Attorney General had made a mistake in certifying it. This meant much more expense and more lawyers.

The time to appeal the validity of the signatures had to expire before the Secretary could certify the Amendment to the Legislature.

The libel of the Boston Globe and its owner, the NYTimes, had to be answered.

After it was certified to the Legislature, the actions of the Legislature had to be monitored to ensure they were following the law. This was the only place where the spirit or the letter of the law was broken. They were required to send it to a Committee for hearings but Sen. Birmingham sent it to a different committee than Speaker Finneran in an attempt to eliminate it by arcane procedures. When apprised of the situation, the Speaker sent it to that same committee and eliminated the threat.

The Committee had to be monitored carefully to be sure they would hold a hearing.

Vast amounts of time had to be spent to monitor everything that was happening at the State House because the Legislature did not want to follow the law and still does not want to do so.

An enormous amount of time and money had to be spent on radio ads and other information to inform the public that the Legislature planned to throw it all in the trash can.

When they did throw it in the trash can, another vast amount of time had to be spent convincing the Governor that MCM was serious about observing her to see if she would have the courage to obey the law.

A suit was started to see if the SJC would revise its opinions on the subject to make them more accurate with no extraneous information. Now an appeal will be taken from the Single Justice's decision.