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Albano v. Attorney General6/13/2002
lation of our Constitution. Mazzone v. Attorney Gen., supra at 528 ("Citizens may overrule a [court] decision based on State constitutional grounds, but may do so only by constitutional amendment").
The plaintiffs attempt to fit the petition within the exclusion by framing it as directed at the court's "jurisdiction" to hear marriage recognition and validation cases. Article 48 prohibits an initiative petition that "expressly confers or restricts a court's jurisdiction." Commonwealth v. Yee, 361 Mass. 533, 538 (1972). The measure proposed here, however, is not such a rule. It does not remove the courts' power to hear marriage, divorce , recognition, and validation actions when the parties are same-sex couples. It merely sets forward a substantive rule that the court must apply in individual cases. Cf. id. ("a statute making certain specified acts or omissions criminal . . . would not be included with the phrase 'powersáááá . . . of courts' because it does not relate to jurisdiction").
2. The relatedness requirement. The Attorney General must also determine that a petition contains only subjects "which are related or which are mutually dependent." Art. 48, The Initiative, Part II, §á3. The plaintiffs argue that the petition contains subjects that are neither related nor mutually dependent because it affects same-sex couples in many different contexts. In support of this position, the plaintiffs list various statutes that relate to the rights and responsibilities of marriage, including those laws that affect one's ability to inherit, to file taxes, to make medical decisions about a spouse, and to file wrongful death claims.
An initiative petition can address more than one subject if those subjects are related. Massachusetts Teachers Ass'n v. Secretary of the Commonwealth, 384 Mass. 209, 219 (1981). Subjects are related " f . . . one can identify a common purpose to which each subject of an initiative petition can reasonably be said to be germane . . . ." Opinion of the Justices, 422 Mass. 1212, 1220 (1996), quoting Massachusetts Teachers Ass'n v. Secretary of the Commonwealth, supra at 219-220. Here, the entire petition relates to the common purpose of restricting the benefits and incidents of marriage to opposite-sex couples. Although the plaintiffs list many statutes that may be affected should the measure be adopted, each statute affected creates a benefit or responsibility that arises from married status. A measure does not fail the relatedness requirement just because it affects more than one statute, as long as the provisions of the petition are related by a common purpose.
We have stated that the common purpose may not be "so broad as to render the 'related subjects' limitation meaningless." Massachusetts Teachers Ass'n v. Secretary of the Commonwealth, supra at 219. For example, we have said that the purpose of "[making] the Massachusetts government more accountable to the people" is "unacceptably broad." Opinion of the Justices, supra at 1220, 1221. However, the purpose of limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman is sufficiently narrow to meet art. 48's relatedness requirement.
3. Conclusion. We remand the case to the county court for entry of a declaration that the Attorney General's certification of the petition complies with the requirements of art. 48.
So ordered.
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