I. Legislative Proceedings
{¶ 2} S.B. No. 18 was introduced and first considered in the Senate on January 30, 2003. As introduced, the bill proposed to revise only R.C.{¶ 3} On April 2, 2003, the House of Representatives ("the House") received Sub. S.B. No. 18 from the Senate and introduced and considered the bill for the first time. One day later, April 3, 2003, the House considered Sub. S.B. No. 18 for a second time and referred it to the House Committee on Municipal Government and Urban *3 Revitalization. The House and Senate Journals, the official records of the proceedings of the House and Senate, indicate no further legislative action was taken on Sub. S.B. No. 18 in either chamber until December 8, 2004, late in the lame duck session of the legislature and more than 20 months after the bill was referred to the House committee.
{¶ 4} On December 8, 2004, the House committee reported Sub. S.B. No. 18 back to the full House after adding several provisions that amended four existing statutes and created a new statute. Specifically, in addition to the existing revisions to R.C.
{¶ 5} After a minor amendment to the bill was approved on the House floor, the full House approved Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 the same day it was reported out of committee. At 1:30 a.m. on December 9, 2004, and shortly before the Senate adjourned its legislative session, the full Senate concurred in the bill as the House amended and approved it. Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 subsequently became law after the Governor filed it with the Secretary of State's office without his signature. *4
II. Constitutional Challenge in the Trial Court
{¶ 6} Pursuant to Civ. R. 57 and R.C.{¶ 7} After dismissing the General Assembly as a party, the trial court entered judgment on August 14, 2007 declaring Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 does not violate the uniformity clause, but violates the one-subject rule and three-consideration provision of Ohio's Constitution. Finding no section of the bill capable of being saved through severance, the court invalidated the entire bill as unconstitutional. On the state's motion, the court stayed its judgment pending the state's appeal to this court.
III. Assignments of Error
{¶ 8} On appeal, the state assigns the following errors:First Assignment of Error: The court erred in declaring that S.B. 18 is unconstitutional in its entirety, when no party to this *5 case has standing to challenge R.C.
3313.537 , R.C.303.02 and R.C.303.161 .Second Assignment of Error: The trial court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Plaintiffs on their claim that S.B. 18 violates the single subject clause.
Third Assignment of Error: The trial court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Plaintiffs on their claim that S.B. 18 violates the three considerations clause.
IV. Standing
{¶ 9} The state's first assignment of error asserts the trial court erred in striking as unconstitutional the bill's amendments to R.C. {¶ 10} A party must have standing to be entitled to have a court decide the merits of a dispute. Cuyahoga Cty. Bd. of Commrs. v.State,
{¶ 11} Accordingly, to have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a legislative enactment, a litigant must have a direct interest in the legislation of such a nature that the party's rights will be adversely affected by its enforcement. N. Canton v.Canton,
{¶ 12} Plaintiffs' amended complaint alleges that as a result of Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18, the members of the boards of trustees of plaintiff AMHA increased from five to six, a consequence that, as a matter of corporate governance, is undesirable because it increases the possibility of deadlocked votes of the board. The amended complaint additionally alleges the enacted bill substantially impairs the townships' ability to control their development and the character of their communities in accordance with their residents' desires because the bill strips townships of their ability to regulate population *7 density in residential areas for reasons of convenience, comfort, prosperity or general welfare and instead permits such regulation only for reasons of health and safety.
{¶ 13} The state concedes the amended complaint's allegations confer standing upon plaintiffs to challenge the bill's amendments to R.C.
{¶ 14} Plaintiffs, however, did not limit their constitutional challenge to one or more specific provisions of the bill. Rather, plaintiffs challenged the enactment of Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 in its entirety. Because they alleged injury resulting from the enactment of the legislation, they have a direct interest in the challenged legislation that is adverse to the legal interests of the state and gives rise to an actual controversy for the courts to decide. Moreover, they properly framed the issues and presented them with "the necessary adversarial zeal." Indeed, to deny plaintiffs standing would insulate legislation from one-subject constitutional scrutiny unless a coalition of plaintiffs could be assembled to cover the wide variety of subjects amassed in a single piece of legislation. The trial court did not err in determining plaintiffs have standing to challenge the constitutionality of Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 in its entirety. The state's first assignment of error is overruled. *8
V. One-Subject Rule
{¶ 15} The state's second assignment of error asserts the trial court erred in declaring that Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 violates the one-subject rule contained in Section {¶ 16} Section
{¶ 17} The Supreme Court of Ohio observed that "when there is an absence of common purpose or relationship between specific topics in an act and when there are no discernible practical, rational or legitimate reasons for combining the provisions in one act, there is a strong suggestion that the provisions were combined for tactical reasons,i.e., logrolling[,] * * * the very evil the one-subject rule was designed to prevent[.]" State ex rel. Dix v. Celeste (1984),
{¶ 18} A "manifestly gross and fraudulent violation" of Ohio's one-subject provision will cause an enactment to be invalidated.Nowak, supra, at syllabus, modifying Dix, supra, at syllabus. Because the constitutional provision is directed at disunity, not plurality, in subject matter, the "mere fact that a bill embraces more than one topic is not *9
fatal, as long as a common purpose or relationship exists between the topics." Sheward, at 496, citing Hoover, supra, at 6; Nowak, at ¶ 59;Dix, at 146; State ex rel. Hinkle v. Franklin Cty. Bd. of Elections
(1991),
{¶ 19} Ohio's judiciary is reluctant to interfere with the legislative process. The judiciary affords the General Assembly great latitude in enacting comprehensive legislation and indulges every presumption in favor of the constitutionality of legislative enactments. State ex rel.Ohio Civ. Serv. Employees Assn., AFSCME, Local 11, AFL-CIO v. State Emp.Relations Bd. ("SERB"),
{¶ 20} Assessing the appealed legislation within those parameters, we note Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 contains at least three topics: (1) an alteration in the composition of boards of trustees of metropolitan housing authorities situated in charter counties, (2) changes in the purposes and scope of county and township zoning regulations, and (3) the creation of a right for charter school students to participate in extracurricular activities at traditional public schools. The pivotal question is whether these topics share a common *10
purpose or relationship so that they unite to form a single subject for purposes of Section
{¶ 21} In the trial court, the state argued the common thread of "modifying local authority" ties the topics together. The trial court rejected the state's argument, stating it "constitutes an attempt to justify vastly different subjects with a standard that is far too vague, * * * as almost any bill will modify local authority at least to some degree." (Aug. 13, 2007 Decision, 8.) The trial court found such a "blatant disunity" between the various provisions of the bill that the bill violated the one-subject rule.
{¶ 22} On appeal, the state now posits that Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 does not constitute a manifestly gross and fraudulent violation of the one-subject rule because the bill as a whole relates to and shares the common topic of "the authority to regulate local housing." Specifically, the state asserts that "[w]hen the General Assembly introduced S.B. 18, and when it initially passed the Ohio Senate, the bill modified the authority to regulate local housing by amending the composition of certain metropolitan housing authorities under R.C.
{¶ 23} Even granting all due respect and deference to the General Assembly, we are compelled to conclude the state's argument stretches the one-subject concept too far, in effect rendering it meaningless. SeeSERB, at ||33, and Simmons-Harris, supra, at 16. Although, as the state contends, the bill is relatively short and limited in scope, a blatant disunity of subject matter exists in the bill. The bill's revisions to R.C.
{¶ 24} The record suggests no rational reason for combining such distinct provisions into one bill except that, when the bill contained only the proposed revisions to R.C.
{¶ 25} The state urges this court not to invalidate the bill in its entirety and proposes that we sever the offending unconstitutional portions of the bill in order to preserve portions of the bill that are constitutional and for which plaintiffs had standing to assert constitutional challenges. To the extent the state again argues that no portion of the bill should be deemed unconstitutional due to plaintiffs' lack of standing, their argument is without merit; plaintiffs had standing to challenge the bill in its entirety.
{¶ 26} As to the state's severance argument, the state correctly notes R.C.
{¶ 27} Here, however, severance cannot be applied to save any portion of Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 because we can discern no "primary" subject matter of the bill. The bill's original legislation pertaining to metropolitan housing authorities carried through all committee hearings but it languished in the House committee until the bill's five other provisions were added on December 8, 2004. Thus, approval of the original legislation appears to be so dependant upon the later amendments to the bill that the original legislation, revising R.C.
{¶ 28} Because severability is not an option in this case, we must hold Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 unconstitutional in toto due to its manifestly gross and fraudulent violation of the one-subject rule of Section 15(D), Article II of Ohio's Constitution. The state's second assignment of error is overruled. Moreover, because Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 is unconstitutional in its entirety under the one-subject rule, and no portion of the bill remains valid through severance, the state's final assignment of error is rendered moot.
{¶ 29} Having overruled the state's first two assignments of error, rendering moot the state's third assignment of error, we affirm the judgment of the trial court declaring Am. Sub. S.B. No. 18 unconstitutional, and consequently null and void, in its entirety.
Judgment affirmed.
McGRATH, P.J., and SADLER, J., concur.