The Single-Subject Rule and the 2024 Minnesota Legislative Session

            

The 1400 page plus omnibus bill that the Minnesota Legislature passed in the closing days of the session is likely unconstitutional. The reason is that it violated the single subject rule. of the Minnesota Constitution.

           Article four, section 17 of the Minnesota Constitution declares “that no law shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.” This clause refers to the single subject rule, which is similar across other state constitutions in the United States. The single subject clauses were adopted in the nineteenth century; the purpose of them was to address what some people call it legislative mischief. Specifically, they were meant to address situations where legislation was jammed together in one bill forcing individuals to vote for provisions in the bill that they might not otherwise support because they wanted other provisions.

            The single subject rule is in many ways an anti-logrolling measure. But it is more than that. It is as the Minnesota Supreme Court said in the leading case on this clause, Associated Builders v. Ventura, the purpose of the clause is to address mischief and abuses of legislative power and to make it possible for the public to know what the legislature is doing by forcing legislation to conform to its title and not use trickery to hide or embed legislation under some generic or vague title.. It is all about transparency and openness in government and to prevent corruption.

            If we look at what was contained in this big omnibus tax bill, it perfectly fits the description of what the single subject rule was meant to prevent. It calls for the creation of new State Patrol headquarters; for health plans to cover abortion; and to regulate straw purchases and binary triggers with guns. It addresses traffic light cameras, motorcycles, and a host of other revenue and policy provisions.  These are hardly topics that address a single subject.

            The Democrats in the House by their own admission put all these provisions together out of frustration that the Republicans were slowing down the process.  The Democrats wanted to short circuit Republican debate. They jammed all these provisions together in an effort to get it passed and do so quickly as the clock was running out in the session.

            The DFL justifies this action to overcome or counter Republican dilatory tactics. For some, the argument would be that were the Republicans in the same position they would have done the same thing. Perhaps they would have but it does not make what the Democrats did correct or constitutional.

            It may be about power politics. It may be all about winner-take-all politics but it's certainly not good legislating. It also sets up for the Republicans to do exactly the same thing. If and when they eventually take control again.  It sets bad precedent and does nothing to dampen the inflamed polarization of politics in Minnesota. All of these reasons are the reasons why single subject rules were adapted.

            In Associated Builders versus Ventura, the Minnesota Supreme Court debated what to do when there's a violation of a single subject clause. One argument would be just to excise off a topic that was not related to the title. Justice Paul Anderson argued instead that the Court should invalidate everything that was in the bill. It is not the job of the court to pick and choose what is the main versus ancillary subject.  Moreover, by allowing some of the provisions to become law it still rewarded the legislature for its bad behavior.  Voiding the entire statute would send the appropriate signal to the legislature that it needs to adhere to this constitutional provision.

            Since the Associated Builders case the Minnesota Supreme Court has not vigorously enforced the single subject rule. However, if there was ever a case  or  a situation where the court should do so, this is the one.  Should someone challenge this 1400 page legislation past precedent suggests this law is unconstitutional. However, one wonders if a majority- appointed Minnesota Supreme Court will enforce such a rule against a DFL controlled legislature.

Polarization may phase out of American politics as younger generations shift

This blog originally appeared in the Conversation. 

The sharp increase in political polarization in America over the past 50 years has been driven in part by how different generations think about politics. But the rise of younger generations to political power may actually erase the deep social divisions associated with polarization.

That’s one of the strong possibilities for the future suggested by the diverse array of findings of our research, including editing a collection of the most current work on how different generations of Americans participate in public life.

For the past 30 years, baby boomers (those born roughly between 1946 and 1964) and members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1925 and 1945) have driven and defined American politics. For the most part, the Silent Generation and the older baby boomers were the core of the Republican Party. And the younger baby boomers, along with many Gen Xers (born roughly between 1965 and 1981), formed the core of the Democratic Party.

Millennials (born between 1982 and 1995) and Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2013) lean liberal and are more likely to vote for Democrats. They were key contributors to Democratic election wins in 2018, 2020 and 2022, especially in swing states.

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Based on our research, presented in “Generational Politics in the United States: From the Silents to Gen Z and Beyond,” earlier generations – the Silents, baby boomers and Gen X – are more divided than millennials and Gen Z.

We expect that in the future, highly partisan members of the Silent, boomer and Gen X generations will exit and no longer be part of American political life. They will be replaced by millennials and Gen Zers, who are less likely to define themselves as strong Republicans or Democrats. The greater consensus among young people today may lessen polarization.

This 1989 photo of a bipartisan group of members of Congress alongside President George H.W. Bush shows a moment of collegiality despite party differences. Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images

5 decades of change

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the vast majority of Americans had views roughly in the political center, with smaller numbers of people holding notably right-leaning or left-leaning opinions. In general, most voters had a broad consensus on policy issues. The Democratic and Republican parties were also broadly centrist. During this time period, Congress passed the Great Society programs, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act and the Clean Air Act with bipartisan support.

But over the past 50 years, fewer and fewer Americans have identified themselves as aligned with the political center, and more have described themselves as on the right or the left, either as liberals or conservatives. This has led to increasing differences between the political parties, with the Democrats to the left of center and the Republicans to the right.

Members of Congress now are more likely to stick with their political party when voting, rather than vote for legislation supported by the other party. Recent passage of legislation linking Ukraine aid with support of Israel has been described as “rare cooperation among the parties.”

This polarization has many causes, including the influence of special-interest money on lawmakers and parties and society’s increased economic inequality. But our research highlights the role that new and changing generations can play in future shifts in American politics.

American politics is the constant cycle of generations entering and exiting the political arena. Even more, variation in the social and political environment during each generation’s formative years notably affects the attitudes and behaviors each generation will subsequently adopt.

For instance, the youngest generation is used to a 24-hour online news cycle and has experience with contested elections. Changes in generational attitudes today hold the potential to lessen current levels of polarization.

Generations have different characteristics

When we look across the past century, our research finds profound differences in the demographics and political views of the generations today.

The millennials and Gen Zers are the most racially and demographically diverse generations in American history. They are the least religious, which means they are less likely than their elders to say they follow a religion, to believe in a biblical god and to pray.

Additionally, these younger generations are more likely to self-identify as liberal. As we and others explain in several chapters of our book, surveys show they are more liberal on a whole range of issues regarding social matters, the economy, immigration and climate change.

Millennials and Gen Zers also vote more Democratic than older generations. And there is some evidence to support the expectation that their governing style as elected officials emphasizes issues that millennial citizens care about. For example, a set of millennial mayors who held office at various times from 2004 to 2024 focused on traditional economic concerns but also added social justice perspectives to the mix.

There may be a way to bridge some of the nation’s political gaps – wait. Andrii Yalanskyi/iStock/Getty Images Plus

A new political center?

The consensus on political views among members of these younger generations means there is potential for decreasing polarization. This would be a key change in American politics, we believe for the better.

But there are other possible scenarios. As the old saying goes, demographics are not always destiny. There are thorny methodological questions involved in pinning down the impact of generations.

Politically, young Republican men can be conservative on social issues. And consensus among young Democrats could be challenged by events such as campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Overall, however, generational shifts portend the possibility of decreasing polarization.

How the Corporate University Created and Destroyed Diversity

This blog originally appeared in Counterpunch. 

The Supreme Court did not kill diversity. Higher education did it to itself. It has done it slowly and methodically over the last few years, as the corporate university created and then destroyed diversity as part of its business plan to attract students and make itself more relevant to American capitalism.

Many thought that the US Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended affirmative action, pronounced the death knell for diversity in higher education. The reality is that colleges produce the seeds for its destruction. Typifying this undermining  of diversity is a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article highlighting how many colleges are now advertising to students that they are  a school where everybody is just like you.

How did all this happen?

The history of higher education in America has always faced a contradiction.  On the one hand, universities have preached diversity as intellectual openness to new ideas, while excluding or segregating women, the poor, those of certain religions,  and people of color. Yet from the 1960s, partly as a result of the civil rights movement and of changing demographics in America, universities gave lip service to demographic diversity.   This resulted in affirmative action programs providing special consideration for women and individuals of color.

In the landmark 1978  Regents of California  v. Bakke, the Supreme Court ruled that while racial quotas were unconstitutional, the use of race could be considered as an effort to try to promote diversity. From that decision on, schools struggled with what it means to be diverse, how to promote it, and really, who would be the beneficiaries of it.  But for the corporate university, diversity rested less on a concept of fairness and equity than it did on both a way to expand its customer base and use the concept as a marketing tool to achieve that.

Who won from diversity?  In part because of the failures of K-12 to deliver an adequate and equitable education for students of color, the pipeline to college was racially constricted.  The main beneficiaries of affirmative action became middle class white females. Recruiting them allowed schools to “check the box” for diversity. Over the course of the last 50 years, higher education has transformed from being a male-dominated  to a female-dominated institution, with some numbers suggesting that more than 60% of those enrolled in colleges and universities are now female.   That has come at the expense of persons of color, whose numbers continue to dwindle, or at least remain stagnate, especially at some of the elite schools such as Harvard.

At the same time, the corporate university in its effort to boost enrollment and to define a niche for itself, has increasingly pitched its message to its students that it is a school that will specialize to the  particular needs of students in the same way businesses market to locate customers and maximize profits.  This narrowing of the focus of higher education comes at the same time that schools are deemphasizing liberal arts education. Liberal arts, at its best, was about exposing students to new and contrasting ideas. It was intellectual diversity that went beyond gender and skin color.

But liberal arts is expensive. It requires universities to staff a variety of courses and programs that are not necessarily high profit producing even though they are important for intellectual diversity. The narrowing of the perspectives of higher education has morphed into intellectual safeness and narrowness, protecting both conservative and liberal students from opposing ideas from which they disagree.

The result is that the real diversity that college universities are supposed to stand for—exposure to new ideas, different perspectives, and different people—has gradually eroded.

The business plan of the corporate university in its effort to save money has narrowed the intellectual scope and diversity of both the ideas that it offers and the students that it caters to.  The future of higher education increasingly looks much like the past of higher education.

Campus Protests and the Corporate University

 

This blog originally appeared in Counterpunch.

The murder of the four students who protested the Vietnam War at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, was a tragedy.  The suppression of student protests on campuses across the United States in the spring of 2024 is a farce. The latter points to how little college administrators and politicians have learned when it comes to students’ speech, thinking that repression is the solution for dissent and disagreement.

The student protests of the 1960s were born of political anger. Students were unable to vote. They lacked a political voice in American elections and politics, and they lacked a voice in the governance of their schools. They demanded a seat at the table, the right to be heard and some control over the institutions that literally dictated their lives. Their demands for a voice were met with force and repression much in the same way that the civil rights demonstrators who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge  were.

College administrators first ignored student demands.  Then they sought to break up the demonstrations with campus police.  Politicians such as Governor Reagan in California, and Governor Rhodes in Ohio responded even more forcefully. They, along with President Richard Nixon, sought to capitalize on the protests politically and personally. They made political careers by running against challenges to authority, campaigning  as law and order candidates, claiming to speak for the silent majority, and labeling those who dissented as un-American.

A show of force was their solution across college campuses in America.  Eventually they called out the National Guard. The tragic result culminated in Kent State. Four Dead in Ohio as sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Colleges and politicians should have learned the lessons of this mistake.  The lesson should have been that student voices matter, that students have a right to express their views, and  force is not a way to stifle or to address differences of opinion.

They should have also learned that universities are supposed to be socially responsible. They are or have become political institutions, not private corporations. They are socially responsible in the sense that they have responsibility to act ethically and act consistent with their values. Their values include free and open inquiry, disagreement, and debate.  They need to be responsible to their stakeholders, including their students, and they need to live up to the democratic ideals and values that they are supposed to be fostering.

But what we learned in the 1960s was that schools were also hotbeds of hypocrisy. That was the source of much of the campus unrest and protest in the 1960s.  Instead of fixing the hypocrisy, living  up to their values, and respecting student demands, higher education turned corporate.  Over a fifty year period schools thought they had learned how to address the dissent on campus. They adopted even more of a corporate structure, seeking a top down mechanism for trying to control curriculum, faculty, and students. They adopted speech and civility codes as a way not to encourage debate but as a tool to discourage views that they do not want to hear.

The corporate university turned itself into a  private good, forcing students to borrow tens of thousands of dollars and thereby discipline their behavior by the demands of the economic marketplace.  Moreover, the corporate university  created its own problem by not being neutral when it came to a diversity of viewpoints, favoring some as opposed to others. It created not a tolerance but an intolerance of certain types of speech. Moreover, as universities have become even more corporate they have built lofty endowments whose investments are oftentimes questionable and which gives donors  outsized influence upon  what administrators and professors can do.

Much in the same way that the students of the 60s criticized universities for the defense contracts they took and how universities furthered the Vietnam War, students today criticize endowments for supporting causes and issues of which they do not support.  They have legitimate grievances against both the US government’s support for a war they do not endorse, and also against universities  whom they see as complicit. They demand a voice, call for disinvestment, or simply want to express their disagreement.

Yet again politicians such as Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are denouncing the protests, calling for the National Guard to quell student  speech.  Yet again a sitting president seems unable or unwilling to  listen to the students.  Yet again another war will impact a presidential campaign.

This is more than a tragedy.  It is a farce.