Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves predictably has come to the defense of his counterpart in the House, Speaker Philip Gunn, in trying to negate one of the few remaining counterweights to Republican domination in the Legislature.
Reeves sees no problem with Gunn’s ploy to deny Democrats their right to have bills read aloud at an understandable speed. Democrats have used the constitutional provision to slow down the Republican Party from ramming legislation through the Capitol.
Reeves, in a “friend of the court” brief, is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to bow out from judging the merits of the lawsuit filed by a Democratic House member against Gunn.
The lieutenant governor, who likes to use a heavy hand himself, says the court has a constitutional obligation to refrain from injecting itself into internal disagreements within the legislative branch. To officiate these disputes, Reeves argues, would violate the separation of powers doctrine that keeps one branch of government from becoming too dominant over the other two.
The problem with Reeves’ argument, though, is that this is not some disagreement about an internal legislative rule. Rather, it is a disagreement about what the state Constitution demands.
When the document was written in 1890, the drafters included a provision that said any member of the Legislature could demand that a bill be read aloud. Although the writers of the constitution probably never envisioned that this provision would later become a filibustering tactic, obviously they meant such an oral reading to be intelligible so that lawmakers who were illiterate or had impaired vision would know precisely what they were voting on.
Gunn defied that clear intent this past legislative session by ordering the House’s computer-operated reader to be turned up to “chipmunk” speed, spitting out the words so fast that they were undecipherable to the human ear.
One of the principal duties of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constitution, and that is exactly what this lawsuit asks it to do.
Is Gunn complying with the letter and the spirit of the constitution? The justices have a duty to answer that question.
If Republicans want to argue that this part of the Constitution is anachronistic, fine. It probably is greatly outdated. In that case, they should go about getting the reading requirement removed from the Constitution by putting the question to a referendum of the people.
But to use gamesmanship to defy the intent of the Constitution, as spelled out in its current form, should not be allowed. The courts are the only avenue to stop such a strategy.
The Supreme Court should dismiss Reeves’ argument, hear this lawsuit and hopefully put some restraint on a party whose leaders are rapidly moving closer to letting its supermajority power go to its head.
