PORTLAND, Ore. — The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled against a group of Republican state senators who challenged Measure 113 in court after Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade invoked the law to bar them from running for reelection this year.
Measure 113 disqualifies state senators and representatives from holding office in the next term if they rack up more than 10 unexcused absences in a single legislative session. The constitutional amendment was intended to curb the increasingly frequent problem of legislative walkouts in Salem, and Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved it in 2022.
But Senate Republicans quickly defied the measure and staged a record-breaking six-week walkout during the 2023 session, primarily aimed at blocking a bill to strengthen protections for abortion and gender-affirming health care. Nine Republicans and one independent hit the limit for unexcused absences by the time the Senate reconvened at the end of the session.
Griffin-Valade announced in August that she intended to enforce Measure 113 and disqualify any senators who hit the limit during the walkout. Republicans vowed to continue running their campaigns for 2024 and pledged to fight the decision in court, including by contesting the meaning of the language of the law.
The group argued that the measure's exact wording — 10 or more unexcused absences "shall disqualify the member from holding office as a Senator or Representative for the term following the election after the member's current term is completed" — technically meant that the disqualification should happen in 2028, not 2024, because the 2024 election itself will be held before the end of the senators' current terms.
Griffin-Valade argued that Oregon courts have traditionally held that voter-approved ballot measures must be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the intent of the voters, and that based on the description in the voters' pamphlet and media coverage leading up to the 2022 election, voters would have understood the measure to apply to the immediate next term.
The parties sought to fast-track the case to the Oregon Supreme Court in order to provide clarity before the March 12 deadline for candidates to file to appear on the 2024 ballot. The court agreed to take up the case in October.
In a media release Thursday morning, the court announced that it had unanimously upheld Griffin-Valade's decision. The court concluded that the exact wording of the measure was ambiguous enough to support both sides' interpretations of the meaning, but Griffin-Valade's judgement won out because of the intent of the voters.
"If we were required to choose between petitioners' and the secretary's interpretations based on the text alone, petitioners would have a strong argument that their reading is the better one," the court wrote in its opinion. "But we do not review the text in a void. We instead seek to understand how voters would have understood the text in the light of the other materials that accompanied it. And those other materials expressly and uniformly informed voters that the amendment would apply to a legislator's immediate next terms of office, indicating that the voters so understood and intended that meaning."
Griffin-Valade repeated her argument about voter intent in a statement released Thursday morning acknowledging the ruling.
"I've said from the beginning my intention was to support the will of the voters," she said. "It was clear to me that voters intended for legislators with a certain number of absences in a legislative session to be immediately disqualified from seeking reelection. I’m thankful to the Oregon Supreme Court for providing clarity on how to implement Measure 113."
Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp and Republican senators Suzanne Weber and Daniel Bonham, all of whom were among the group that challenged Griffin-Valade's decision, issued a news release Thursday acknowledging the ruling and asserting that the court "sided with Democrats."
"We obviously disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling. But more importantly, we are deeply disturbed by the chilling impact this decision will have to crush dissent," Knopp said.
In an interview with KGW, Knopp said the walkouts were worth it as they got Democrats to negotiate.
"We think it was a victory on principle and most of our members if you talk to them say they would do it again, I think they all would, quite frankly," he said.
Knopp said he doesn't plan on appealing the ruling, but walkouts are still possible and the court's decision doesn't take that political tool away.
"The public does want some check and balance as it relates to a party’s ability to do whatever they want, I think Republicans are a principled bunch and if something comes up in the future, I think there’s a strong possibility [a walkout] could happen again," He said.
What happens next?
The ruling has no immediate impact in terms of the lawmakers seated for the upcoming 2024 legislative session, because all 10 of the senators who walked out for at least 10 days last year are serving terms that run through either the end of 2024 or the end of 2026.
However, it does mean that all 10 of those senators are disqualified from running for a new term either this year or in 2026, depending on when their current term ends. The impacted senators are:
- Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles
- Brian Boquist, I-Polk and Yamhill Counties
- Lynn Findley, R-Vale
- Bill Hansell, R-Athena
- Cedric Hayden, R-Fall Creek
- Tim Knopp, R-Bend
- Dennis Linthicum, R-Klamath Falls
- Art Robinson, R-Cave Junction
- Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer
- Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook
Boquist, Linthicum, Knopp, Findley, Hansel and Robinson would all have been up for reelection this year. Hansell and Findley have both announced that they will retire at the end of their current terms, but Knopp, Linthicum and Robinson all filed to run in 2024 on the first possible day last year. Boquist does not appear to have filed as of Feb. 1, according to Secretary of State records.
In effect, Republicans are now forced to replace most Senate members within the next three years.
Tung Yin, a Lewis & Clark law professor, told KGW that an appeal of the Oregon Supreme Court's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court feels like a tall task, all things considered, and the court's decision adds more legal weight to items like the voters' pamphlet and ballot title for future cases.
"The idea that you might look outside the actual language [of the ballot measure] is not controversial, some justices support that," Yin said. "It's probably a pretty good argument to say the voters weren't tricked. Let's face it, what are voters really reading more, the actual [text] of the ballot measure itself, or the handy explanation that's put out."
This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.