A street in Boise, Idaho, on March 4. Three weeks later, Gov. Brad Little issued a statewide stay-at-home order to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. (AP)
The Invest in Idaho initiative would ask voters on Nov. 3 to raise the top income tax rate to 9.925% from 6.925% on individuals, trusts and estates with taxable income of $250,000 or more, and on married couples with $500,000 or more of taxable income, and hike the corporate income tax rate to 8% from 6.925%.
BIG NEWS: We, the petitioners of Reclaim Idaho, have filed a federal lawsuit on the grounds that our constitutional rights were violated when Governor Little and Secretary of State Denney failed to provide safe methods for signature gathering during the pandemic. (thread) #idpol
— Luke Mayville (@lukemayville) June 8, 2020
"The right of Idaho citizens to initiate legislation is an historic and fundamental one," the campaign said in a brief filed Saturday. "The pandemic created an unprecedented crisis, but orders and decisions made by Idaho state officials violated Reclaim Idaho's First Amendment rights."
According to court documents, the campaign has gathered about 30,000 of the 55,057 signatures required to place the question on the Nov. 3 ballot. The campaign told the court that it was on target to fulfill the signature requirement when the pandemic hit, saying it was ahead of the pace of its 2018 Medicaid expansion ballot drive. If approved, the income tax increases would take effect Jan. 1, and it is estimated that they would raise $170 million annually for education.
Reclaim Idaho asked the court for an extra 48 days — the time between the governor's March 13 state-of-emergency declaration and the April 30 signature deadline — to complete its signature-gathering efforts and for permission for the campaign to obtain electronic signatures.
The campaign said it had contracted with DocuSign, a leading company that allows electronic signing of legal documents, which it argued would save the state the time and effort of designing a secure system to accept electronic signatures. Additionally, the brief noted that Idaho's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act
, which says certain electronic signatures are legally binding, has been on the books for 20 years.Reclaim Idaho argued that the facts of the dispute met the two-part test in the Ninth Circuit's 2012 decision in Angle v. Miller
. That ruling held that a burden on an initiative drive is severe if the proponent was "reasonably diligent," and the restrictions "significantly inhibit" the ability to place the question on the ballot, according to the brief.Initiative campaigns around the country have sued to gather online signatures after the onset of the coronavirus, which causes the respiratory illness COVID-19, with varying degrees of success. Courts in Arizona and Montana have denied similar requests, while Massachusetts officials have agreed to allow electronic signatures. A federal judge in Ohio also permitted a campaign to gather signatures online, although that ruling is temporarily stayed on appeal.
Luke Mayville, co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, told Law360 on Monday that the campaign believes its efforts hew closer to the pattern of the Angle case than those in the states where courts rejected the campaigns' bids for flexibility in their signature gathering. Mayville said that the campaign turned to the courts only after state officials denied their requests to gather electronic signatures and that it had done a lot of legwork for the state in already contracting with DocuSign.
"We believe we more than satisfied the rule for diligence," Mayville said. "We had built a great deal of momentum when the pandemic started, and we believe that the state government has the ability to allow us to finish what we started."
The brief acknowledged that the state would have a reduced timeline of about four months to review the petition and the signatures if the court were to grant it the relief it is seeking.
"That may not be ideal, but it is sufficient," the brief said.
Chad Houck, a spokesman for Denney, told Law360 that the office doesn't comment on pending litigation.
A representative of Little did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Reclaim Idaho is represented by Deborah Ferguson and Craig Durham of Ferguson Durham PLLC.
Counsel information for Denney and Little was not immediately available.
The case is Reclaim Idaho et al. v. Bradley Little et al., case number 1:20-cv-00268, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
--Editing by Robert Rudinger.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.