UW-Madison's Student Judiciary failed the student body by not informing a student organization that their attempted activism was unconstitutional.
The Student Labor Action Coalition gained approval from the Student Judiciary in October to put a referendum on an Associated Students of Madison ballot that asked students to allocate a portion of their segregated fees to raise wages of certain university employees. The referendum passed overwhelmingly, but the method of questioning'a referendum'was unconstitutional because it is inherently not viewpoint-neutral.
In accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Board of Regents of the UW System v. Southworth, all allocable funds must be distributed in a viewpoint-neutral manner. Unfortunately, the Student Judiciary interpreted the SLAC proposal as one that could affect both non-allocable and allocable funds'??stopping SLAC in its tracks.
The Student Judiciary is supposed to review every referendum before it is placed on the ballot. In this case, it failed to do so correctly, becoming a rubber stamp for an unconstitutional referendum. The result has been unnecessary confusion and organizational chaos within ASM.
If every referendum that involved funding were unconstitutional, then almost all referenda would be illegal. The Student Judiciary has allowed exemptions to this rule''extreme' cases.
The vagueness of what referenda would qualify for this exemption is problematic. According to Student Judiciary chair Nick Fox, extreme cases are when a group has no other recourse to accomplishing their goals other than a referendum.
The majority of groups who attempt to place referenda on the ballot are not well versed in the intricacies of ASM, and subsequently are not aware of the other methods they can take with ASM to accomplish the same goal. In SLAC's case, they were simply not aware of the broader implication their living wage referendum would have with ASM and SSFC.
It is our belief that the Student Judiciary needs to develop an explicit litmus test for use when deciding whether or not a student referendum is lawful. These guidelines will help direct the future course of student referenda and assist student organizations in making efficient decisions.
