{"id":25712,"date":"2016-06-23T23:53:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T04:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=25712"},"modified":"2016-06-23T23:53:02","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T04:53:02","slug":"how-to-interpret-away-the-home-rule-provision-in-4-easy-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2016\/06\/how-to-interpret-away-the-home-rule-provision-in-4-easy-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Interpret Away the Home Rule Provision (in 4 Easy Steps)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"homerule\"<\/a>Today the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Black v. City of Milwaukee, 2016 WI 47<\/a><\/em>, holding that a state law (Wis. Stat. 66.0502) that prohibits cities and other municipalities from imposing residency requirements on municipal employees does not contravene the Home Rule provision of the Wisconsin Constitution (Art. XI, sec. 3(1)).\u00a0 The result of the ruling is that the City of Milwaukee may no longer require city employees to reside within the City limits, with the resultant loss of significant tax revenue for Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

Reading the text of the Home Rule provision, one might reasonably question how the Wisconsin Supreme Court arrived at this conclusion.\u00a0 The relevant text of Art. XI states:<\/p>\n

Cities and villages organized pursuant to state law may determine their local affairs and government, subject only to this constitution and to such enactments of the legislature of statewide concern as with uniformity shall affect every city or every village.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, the Justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court have very helpfully demonstrated how the clear language of the Wisconsin Constitution can be interpreted away in four easy steps.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Give undue deference to the legislature\u2019s declaration that it doesn\u2019t want the Home Rule provision to apply.<\/p>\n

When it passed the state law in question, the legislature in Madison included a policy statement to the effect that the legislature considered the issue of residency requirements to be a matter of statewide concern.\u00a0 In the Black<\/em> opinion, a majority of the Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to give substantial deference to this simple declarative sentence.\u00a0 Accordingly, they\u00a0gave it \u201cgreat weight\u201d when determining whether Wis. Stat. sec. 66.0502 involved matters of statewide concern (see majority opinion, para. 30).<\/p>\n

In contrast, the lower court opinion by the Court of Appeals actually demanded that the plaintiffs produce evidence to support the contention that municipal residency requirements are matters of statewide concern.\u00a0 As the Court of Appeals pointed out, \u201dthe argument that residency requirements are a matter of statewide concern simply because the legislature said so is not persuasive because it is unsubstantiated\u201d (see Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, dissenting, para. 98).<\/p>\n

In effect, the reasoning of the Wisconsin Supreme Court has outsourced the question of the scope of the Home Rule provision to the legislature.\u00a0 While this sort of on\/off switch in regards to the text of the State Constitution may prove\u00a0very useful to the legislature,\u00a0I am not aware of any other portion of the Constitution that the legislature can simply declare inoperative.\u00a0 I predict that the power to turn off the Home Rule provision\u00a0will prove popular with Republican legislators\u00a0so long as they\u00a0have a majority.\u00a0 However, I also predict that at some point in the future Republicans will decide that it is wrong for the legislature to define the reach of\u00a0the Wisconsin Constitution, and declare instead that the judiciary should\u00a0judge\u00a0the scope of the\u00a0Constitution — a conversion that will most likely occur as soon as the Democrats re-take control of the legislature.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Interpret the policy issue in the case in the broadest possible terms, so that one can plausibly argue that the issue in the case is one concerning everyone in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Racine and Muskego have no interest in whether Milwaukee applies residency rules to its own city employees.\u00a0 In fact, no one outside of the universe of people who work for the City of Milwaukee is impacted by the residency rule at all.\u00a0 However, if the issue is not the substance of Milwaukee\u2019s residency rules, but instead is defined as the question of whether any city anywhere should be permitted to adopt residency rules, then all of a sudden it becomes a matter of statewide-concern.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the Home Rule provision is to prevent state-level government from dictating rules to local governments on matters of local concern.\u00a0 The state has no interest in who works for Milwaukee or in whether those persons must live in Milwaukee.\u00a0 Only by elevating the question to the macro level of whether residency rules should ever be permitted can one claim that the subject is a matter of concern in\u00a0Madison or Stevens Point.\u00a0 Indeed, at such a macro level, everything<\/em> is a matter of statewide concern.<\/p>\n

In other words, if the legislature can avoid the Home Rule provision by casting the issue in terms of whether a particular policy is good or bad, then the Home Rule provision will never apply to anything.\u00a0 Either the legislature should seize complete legislative control over a subject and impose uniform state-wide rules (i.e.,<\/em> take over the process of hiring all municipal employees and impose uniform rules for every city) or it should leave each municipality free to adopt its own rules.\u00a0 The \u201crule\u201d in Home Rule means the sovereign power of local governments to govern themselves.<\/p>\n

In this regard, Justice Rebecca Bradley is undoubtedly correct when she states \u201cTo conclude as the majority does, that analysis of the home rule amendment stops if the legislative enactment at issue addresses an issue primarily of statewide concern and that the uniformity requirement applies only to legislation concerning issues primarily of local concern, simply does not comport with the text of the amendment\u201d (para. 56).<\/p>\n

A general rule of thumb to remember:\u00a0if an interpretation of a constitutional text results in one provision of the constitution being left devoid of real meaning, then that interpretation is probably incorrect (see the Slaughter-House Cases,<\/em> 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873)).<\/p>\n

Step 3: Ask Justice Rebecca Bradley to stop writing concurrences that actually discuss the text and the legislative history of the Wisconsin Constitution, as it only makes the majority\u2019s determination to re-write the text more transparent, and it ultimately bolsters the arguments of the dissenting Justices.<\/p>\n

Step 4: Sit back and wait for the \u201cusual suspects\u201d in the media and the blogosphere to shower you with praise for your brilliant legal analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Black v. City of Milwaukee, 2016 WI 47, holding that a state law (Wis. Stat. 66.0502) that prohibits cities and other municipalities from imposing residency requirements on municipal employees does not contravene the Home Rule provision of the Wisconsin Constitution (Art. XI, sec. 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