A Sacramento County judge has ruled that state Attorney General Kamala Harris can block a proposed ballot measure calling for the killing of gay people, saying it is “patently unconstitutional on its face.”
In light of the ruling, the so-called Sodomite Suppression Act will not move forward to the signature-gathering phase and cannot be placed on a future ballot, the Los Angeles Times reported. The proposal, submitted by Huntington Beach attorney Matthew McLaughlin, sought to authorize the murder of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head” or “any other convenient method.”
“This proposed act is the product of bigotry, seeks to promote violence, is patently unconstitutional and has no place in a civil society,” Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a statement Tuesday, echoing remarks she has made in the past on the issue.
By law, Harris is to give all proposed ballot measures a formal name and summary before they advance to the signature-gathering process. Earlier this year, she filed an action for declaratory relief with the Sacramento County Superior Court, asking the court to let her in effect disregard McLaughlin’s proposal and stop it from advancing.
Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Raymond M. Cadei granted Harris’ request in a decision issued Monday. Requiring Harris to advance McLaughlin’s proposal to the signature-gathering phase “would be inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public and tend to mislead the electorate,” he wrote, according to The Times.
McLaughlin’s proposal tested the limits of the state’s normally liberal attitude on putting even the most extreme ideas on the ballot if enough signatures are collected, The Times reported.
For a fee of $200 McLaughlin submitted the proposal to Harris’ office in February. To get on the November 2016 ballot, he and supporters would have had to collect more than 365,000 signatures in 180 days, a high bar even for well-financed efforts.
—City News Service