Rachel La Corte with the AP updates her piece from Friday (noted here) about the impending lawsuit to throw out I-960's supermajority (and presumably, vote of the people) requirements for increasing taxes.
New details include that it will be filed today, that the lead plaintiff will be Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, that the defendant will be Lt. Governor Brad Owen, and that it will be filed directly in the Washington Supreme Court (presumably seeking a writ of mandamus against Owen, which is a weird procedural posture but it is the substance, not the process, of the court's decision that Brown is after).
To some, those were really the only details in doubt. Many believe the outcome of the suit is virtually certain, telegraphed as it was by the prior statements of the Supreme Court, including its decision last September sending I-960 to the ballot but only because the court does not as a general rule entertain constitutional challenges to ballot measures prior to election. Opinions by two of the justices (here and here) in a decision in November of last year cast further doubt to the continued validity of 601's tax provisions -- the same provisions I-960 essentially recodified.
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Jason Mercier at the Washington Policy Center blog points out something fishy in the parliamentary procedure laying the foundation for this lawsuit. He shows that after all, the Permanent Rules of the Senate, Rule 53, duly adopted for the 60th legislature on January 8, 2007 as Senate Resolution 8601 (and sponsored by Sen. Brown) thwarts the democratic principle that is supposed to be the impetus behind this lawsuit by establishing that all amendments to appropriation bills on the floor have to receive a supermajority vote.
Mercier points out that if lawmakers can add extra-constitutional conditions on the passage of legislation, it follows the people can as well through the right of initiative.
That, of course, will be one of the questions the court presumably asks itself. Is there a constitutional distinction in the legislature, or the people through initiative, attempting to impose durable extra-constitutional requirements on the passage of legislation, that is to say, requirements that are not contingent on the consent of the currently sitting legislature (like the resolution giving rise to the Senate Rules) but also operate to bind future legislatures?
