Girod v. Kroger

Petitioners sought review of the Attorney General's certified ballot title for Initiative Petition 26 (2012), arguing that the ballot title did not satisfy the requirements of ORS 250.035(2). Initiative Petition 26 would amend a number of statutory provisions pertaining to the commercial harvest and sale of fish caught in Oregon waters. As the Supreme Court noted in reviewing the ballot title for a different initiative petition concerning commercial fishing, those statutes "exist[ed] as part of a complex web of laws," including an interstate compact between Oregon and Washington, statutes and regulations of both states, federal law, treaties with Native American tribes, and various court orders. Upon review, the Supreme Court found that the initiative's caption overstated the effect of the proposed measure by asserting that it would eliminate "non-tribal commercial fishing." Petitioners argued, and the Attorney General did not appear to disagree, that some commercial fishing -- of some species, in some Oregon waters, using some gear -- has occurred or was then occurring and that it would not be prohibited by Initiative Petition 26. Accordingly, the reference in the caption to the "elimination" of non-tribal commercial fishing needed to be changed. The caption also referred to only the Columbia River, thus understating the scope of the proposed measure, which would ban non-tribal commercial gillnetting of all fish in all Oregon "inland waters." That description, too, needed to be changed. The Court did not address petitioners' other challenges to the caption, and remanded the matter back to the Attorney General for modification. View "Girod v. Kroger" on Justia Law