A referendum that sought to provide a living wage to university Limited Term Employees, which was proposed by the Student Labor Action Coalition and passed Oct. 13, was ruled illegal by the Associated Students of Madison Student Judiciary Wednesday. This decision came about after ASM leaders Eric Varney, Janelle Wise, Eric Saar and Rachelle Stone filed a complaint with the Student Judiciary Oct. 25.
'In their complaint they said that the petition for the referendum didn't have the required amount of signatures to be placed on the ballot, they also claimed that it wasn't submitted within the deadlines,' stated UW-Madison senior Nicholas Fox, Chief Justice of the Student Judiciary. 'And finally, they claimed that the [Student Judiciary] did not give appropriate notice to the student body regarding the referendum.'
However, the Judiciary did not make their decisions based on these issues. According to Fox and Vice Chief Justice Nathaniel Romano, a UW-Madison senior, these issues were not even addressed by the Judiciary.
'Those were the original issues brought up, however a unanimous court said that those issues weren't even relevant to the case because the referendum in question had to deal with the segregated fee process,' Fox said.
According to the Judiciary justices, the Living Wages referendum was unconstitutional because of the ASM constitution and the Southworth Supreme Court case, decided in 2000. The case stated that processes in which funds are distributed are constitutional, provided the process is viewpoint neutral.
However, according to Romano, 'referenda are not viewpoint neutral.'
'[The] ASM constitution banned referenda that deal with funding issues,' Romano added. 'Since this [referendum] would restrict funding, we found it to be unconstitutional.'
Eric Varney, ASM chair and one of the driving forces behind legality of this referendum, felt that the issues he and others brought forth were still of importance to the decision made by the Judiciary.
'I think the points that we filed the suit on definitely had merit and should've been evaluated,' Varney said. 'Though we didn't bring that point up about Southworth, I don't think that would have been addressed had we not filed a suit at all.'
