Does West Virginia's 2019 Senate Bill 451 (the Comprehensive Education Reform Bill) violate the West Virginia Constitution's rule that a bill can only address a single object?

Plain-English summary

In late January 2019, Senate President Mitch Carmichael asked Attorney General Patrick Morrisey whether the pending Comprehensive Education Reform Bill (Senate Bill 451) would survive a constitutional challenge under W. Va. Const. art. VI, § 30, which says no act "shall embrace more than one object, and that shall be expressed in the title."

The AG analyzed the question along the two tracks West Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals has used to apply that provision:

Track 1: Title sufficiency. The constitutional test, drawn from State ex rel. Walton v. Casey, asks whether the title "imparts enough information to one interested in the subject matter to provoke a reading of the act." A title can be either general (and trust the umbrella description to cover the parts) or specific (and list everything). SB 451 used the specific approach: a multi-page title that named the code sections it created, amended, re-enacted, and repealed, plus brief narrative descriptions of each change. The opinion concluded that title was constitutionally sufficient. The opinion also flagged a drafting risk: under C.C. Spike Copley Garage, when the Legislature uses an exhaustive specific title, omitting a material provision becomes "positively misleading." If SB 451 picked up new provisions during the legislative process, the title needed to track them.

Track 2: Common subject matter. Kincaid v. Mangum and Appalachian Power Co. v. State Tax Department lay out the three (potentially four) goals the single-object rule serves: (1) preventing combining diverse measures that could not pass on their own merits; (2) preventing unnoticed insertion of provisions; (3) fairly informing the public; and a possible (4) preserving the governor's veto from being diluted by riders. The opinion concluded SB 451 satisfied all of these. Its provisions, charter schools, teacher and school-personnel employment terms, public-education funding, attendance and class-size standards, all related to "the structure and administration of public education in the State." The bill also attracted heavy public attention, which cut against any "deceiving tactics" argument.

The opinion drew sharp distinctions from earlier successful challenges:

• State v. Haskins (1923) struck down a road-and-bridge bill that smuggled in a new criminal larceny provision, an off-topic add-on. SB 451's provisions all related to education.
• Kincaid v. Mangum (1993) struck down an omnibus bill that authorized rules from many different agencies covering many different subject areas. SB 451 had a single subject.
• C.C. Spike Copley Garage (1983) struck down a Public Service Commission overhaul whose specific title omitted a deregulation provision. SB 451's title was matched to its provisions, and the opinion warned the Legislature to keep it that way through amendments.

The conclusion: SB 451 "at least in its current form" would likely survive a single-object challenge.

Currency note

This opinion was issued in 2019. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here.

Common questions

Q: What does the single-object requirement actually say?
A: W. Va. Const. art. VI, § 30 says no act of the Legislature "shall embrace more than one object, and that shall be expressed in the title. But if any object shall be embraced in an act which is not so expressed, the act shall be void only as to so much thereof, as shall not be so expressed." It also forbids amending or reviving a law "by reference to its title only."

Q: Why does West Virginia have a single-object rule?
A: The opinion identifies the historical purposes from State ex rel. Graney v. Sims and State ex rel. Marockie v. Wagoner: give legislators and the public notice of what the act actually does, and prevent surreptitious insertion of provisions that could not stand on their own merits. Appalachian Power added a third (fair public notice) and flagged a possible fourth (preserving the gubernatorial veto).

Q: How is "object" defined?
A: Broadly. State v. Haskins (1923) called the "object" the "matter or thing forming the groundwork of the act," and said the act "may contain many parts germane to the title," all leading back to the "generic head." Courts construe titles "most liberally and comprehensively in order to give validity to all parts of the act."

Q: Is there a hard cap on length or number of provisions?
A: No. The opinion stresses that the test is not how long the bill is or how many provisions it includes. Haskins itself involved a "comprehensive statute" overhauling the entire road and bridge system, and the Court accepted that breadth. The problem in Haskins was an off-topic criminal provision, not the omnibus structure.

Q: When does an omnibus bill cross the line?
A: When the various pieces lack a "reasonable basis" to be grouped together (Kincaid), or when grouping them produces "logrolling," combining unrelated proposals so that legislators must accept the package to get any one of them. Kincaid v. Mangum struck down an omnibus rule-authorization bill that bundled rules from agencies across unrelated subject areas. SB 451 was different: every piece related to education.

Q: Why does the title matter so much when the bill itself is constitutional on its merits?
A: Because the framers of the West Virginia Constitution were specifically worried about deceptive titles. The Court's decisions read § 30 to require that the title actually describe the act, not just label it. A title that says "an act relating to taxation" cannot legally smuggle in unrelated changes, and a title that lists 40 specific statutory sections cannot omit a material 41st one.

Q: What's the Copley Garage trap the opinion warned about?
A: When the Legislature uses an exhaustive listing-style title, leaving a single material provision off the list becomes "positively misleading," even if the title is otherwise complete. SB 451 used that style, so the opinion cautioned that any amendments adding new provisions had to be reflected in the title. The Legislature could not rely on the existing title to cover new material.

Q: Did this opinion settle the constitutional question?
A: No. AG opinions are persuasive, not binding. The Court would still decide a real legal challenge. The opinion was the AG's prediction of how the Court would likely rule, framed in terms of the existing case law.

Background and statutory framework

W. Va. Const. art. VI, § 30 is the single-object provision, common to many state constitutions. It exists for two reasons that show up across the case law:

1. Notice. Legislators and the public should know from the title what the act does.
2. Anti-logrolling. Bundling unrelated proposals in one bill, so opponents of one piece must accept the others to get it, has been considered a form of legislative dishonesty since the 19th century.

The case law establishes:

• Object is broad. Haskins defined "object" as the "groundwork" of the bill, and titles get a liberal construction in favor of validity.
• Title test. Walton v. Casey and Graney v. Sims set the test: does the title give a reader interested in the subject enough information to provoke reading the act?
• General vs. specific titles. Northwest Disposal validated a general title that fairly captured granular changes within. Copley Garage invalidated a specific title that omitted a material provision.
• Common-subject test. Kincaid and Appalachian Power require a "reasonable basis" for grouping provisions and absence of logrolling.

SB 451 in its January 28, 2019 form, the version analyzed in the opinion, included charter-school authorization, teacher-employment changes, public-education funding adjustments, attendance and class-size standards, and other provisions all framed under "comprehensive education reform." The opinion's analysis explicitly applied to that version and warned the Legislature about preserving the title-content match through any amendments.

Citations and references

Constitutional and statutory authority:
- W. Va. Const. art. VI, § 30 (single-object requirement)
- W. Va. Code § 5-3-1 (AG opinions for state officers)

Cases:
- State v. Haskins, 92 W. Va. 632, 115 S.E. 720 (1923)
- State ex rel. Walton v. Casey, 179 W. Va. 485, 370 S.E.2d 141 (1988)
- State ex rel. Graney v. Sims, 144 W. Va. 72, 105 S.E.2d 886 (1958)
- State ex rel. Marockie v. Wagoner, 191 W. Va. 458, 446 S.E.2d 680 (1994)
- Nw. Disposal Co. v. W. Va. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 182 W. Va. 423, 388 S.E.2d 297 (1989)
- C.C. Spike Copley Garage v. W. Va. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 171 W. Va. 489, 300 S.E.2d 485 (1983)
- Kincaid v. Mangum, 189 W. Va. 404, 432 S.E.2d 74 (1993)
- Appalachian Power Co. v. State Tax Dep't, 195 W. Va. 573, 466 S.E.2d 424 (1995)

Source

• Landing page: https://ago.wv.gov/media/17706/download?inline
• Original PDF: https://ago.wv.gov/media/17706/download?inline

Original opinion text

State of West Virginia
Office of the Attorney General
Patrick Morrisey
Attorney General

(304) 558-2021
Fax (304) 558-0140

January 31, 2019

The Honorable Mitch Carmichael
Senate President
State Capitol Building 1, Room 227-M
1900 Kanawha Blvd. East
Charleston, WV 25305

Dear President Carmichael:

You have asked for an Opinion of the Attorney General concerning whether Senate Bill 451 satisfies the "single-object" requirement set forth in Article VI, § 30 of the West Virginia Constitution. This Opinion is issued pursuant to W. Va. Code § 5-3-1, which provides that "[i]t is . . . the duty of the attorney general to render to the president of the Senate . . . a written opinion or advice upon any questions . . . whenever he or she is requested in writing so to do." To the extent this Opinion relies on facts, it is based solely on the factual assertions in your correspondence with the Office of the Attorney General.

As you know, Senate Bill 451, which has been called the "Comprehensive Education Reform Bill," is currently pending in the Senate. The analysis in this opinion addresses the text of the bill as it existed when it was referred to the Committee of the Whole on January 28, 2019. This opinion addresses only the specific legal question you have raised, and neither considers nor takes a position on the merits of Senate Bill 451 as a matter of policy.

Your letter raises the following legal question:

Does Senate Bill 451 violate the "single-object" requirement contained in Article VI, § 30 of the West Virginia Constitution?

We conclude that Senate Bill 451 likely satisfies this constitutional requirement. The Supreme Court of Appeals has considered two types of challenges to legislation under this provision: whether the title provides fair and accurate notice of the changes a bill proposes, and whether the bill's sub-parts all have a common basis. These considerations safeguard the purposes of the broader "single-object" requirement to increase transparency and avoid deceptive legislative tactics. With respect to the title requirement, we conclude that a reviewing court would very likely find that Senate Bill 451's detailed title provides fair notice of the specific topics and statutory sections the bill addresses. Similarly, Senate Bill 451 would likely satisfy the common subject-matter requirement. The topics contained in Senate Bill 451 all relate to the general subject of education reform, and although we are not aware of cases where the Supreme Court of Appeals has expressly upheld acts similar to Senate Bill 451, the bill is different from laws that the Court has struck down in several material respects.

Discussion

As relevant here, Article VI, § 30 of the West Virginia Constitution provides that no legislation "shall embrace more than one object, and that shall be expressed in the title. But if any object shall be embraced in an act which is not so expressed, the act shall be void only as to so much thereof, as shall not be so expressed, and no law shall be revived, or amended, by reference to its title only; but the law revived, or the section amended, shall be inserted at large, in the new act." W. Va. Const. art. VI, § 30.

In one of the early cases analyzing this constitutional provision, the Supreme Court of Appeals explained that "[t]he 'object' of an act, as that word is used in section 30, art. 6, of the Constitution, means the matter or thing forming the groundwork of the act, which may contain many parts germane to the title, and which, when traced back, will lead the mind to the object as expressed in the title as the generic head." Syl. pt. 2, State v. Haskins, 92 W. Va. 632, 115 S.E. 720 (1923). This description, referring to the "groundwork" of a bill and a "generic head," indicates that "object" should be understood in fairly broad terms. This language from Haskins also expressly contemplates that a law may have "many parts" under the larger umbrella of the statute's "object." Id. Further, Haskins instructs that the single-object requirement is linked closely with a statute's title, and that courts should apply a presumption of validity to a law, aiming to construe an act's title "most liberally and comprehensively in order to give validity to all parts of the act." Id. at Syl. pt. 3.

Since Haskins, the Court has most often applied these general principles to assess the validity of a statute in terms of its title, although it has also indicated that an otherwise valid title cannot salvage a statute that contains provisions too unrelated or disconnected to be fairly considered the same "object." This letter will address the title and subject-matter requirements of the "single-object" requirement in turn.

First, Senate Bill 451 very likely satisfies the test for a constitutionally sufficient title. With respect to a statute's title, the Article VI, § 30 requirement is satisfied where the title "furnish[es] a 'pointer' to the challenged provision of the act." Syl. pt. 2, State ex rel. Walton v. Casey, 179 W. Va. 485, 370 S.E.2d 141 (1988). More specifically, the "test to be applied is whether the title imparts enough information to one interested in the subject matter to provoke a reading of the act." Id.; see also Syl. pt. 1, State ex rel. Graney v. Sims, 144 W. Va. 72, 105 S.E.2d 886 (1958) ("If the title of an act states its general theme or purpose and the substance is germane to the object expressed in the title, the title will be held sufficient."). This test advances Article VI, § 30's twin goals of "giv[ing] notice by way of the title of the contents of the act so that legislators and other interested parties may be informed of its purpose," and "prevent[ing] any attempt to surreptitiously insert in the body of the act matters foreign to its purpose which, if known, might fail to gain the consent of the majority." Id. at Syl. pt. 2.; see also Syl. pts. 5 & 6, State ex rel. Marockie v. Wagoner, 191 W. Va. 458, 446 S.E.2d 680 (1994).

Either a general or a specific title may satisfy this test. On the one hand, the Supreme Court of Appeals has held that a title passes constitutional muster where the title is general, yet fairly encompasses the particular legislative change at issue. As an example of this sort of title, the Court concluded that an act that announced in its title that it addressed numerous statutory sections "all relating generally to the collection of solid waste and litter" gave sufficient notice of its subject matter to include a provision affecting the regulation of the rates and fees of commercial solid waste facilities. Nw. Disposal Co. v. W. Va. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 182 W. Va. 423, 425-26, 388 S.E.2d 297, 299-300 (1989). On the other hand, where the Legislature takes a more granular approach by specifically listing the matters contained in the bill, it must list all material issues in order to avoid misleading the reader. See C.C. Spike Copley Garage v. W. Va. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 171 W. Va. 489, 491-92, 300 S.E.2d 485, 487-88 (1983). The Court applied this rule to invalidate a statute that sought to overhaul the Public Service Commission's authority and operating procedures because it included, but failed to place in the title, a provision deregulating the business of towing, hauling or carrying wrecked or disabled vehicles. Id. Although noting this was a "close case," id. at 490, 300 S.E.2d at 487, the Court ultimately concluded that omitting one or more provisions from a title "that is otherwise exhaustively informative is positively misleading." Id. at Syl. pt. 1.

Senate Bill 451 uses the second type of title, as its title is highly specific and spans multiple pages. Although it first sets forth a general description of the bill's purpose, "comprehensive education reform," it goes on to describe the code sections it creates, amends, re-enacts, and repeals, as well as provides a brief narrative description of those changes. It appears that Senate Bill 451's current title is sufficiently comprehensive to describe fairly each of the changes within the bill. Further, it appears that the title satisfied the Walton test by conveying "enough information to one interested in the subject matter to provoke a reading of the act." Syl. pt. 1, 179 W. Va. 485, 370 S.E.2d 141. Indeed, the best evidence the title complies with the "single-object" mandate may be the high degree of public attention the bill has garnered even at this relatively early stage in the legislative process. Nevertheless, the Legislature should use care as the bill is revised and amended to ensure that in its final form the title encompasses all substantive changes, to avoid the concern in Copley Garage of becoming misleading through omission.

Second, Senate Bill 451 would likely satisfy the constitutional requirement that its various sub-parts and provisions all relate to the same subject matter. As an initial matter, there is no per se bar against legislation through omnibus bills, like Senate Bill 451. Haskins involved a "comprehensive statute" designed to create a "complete system of laws governing the construction, reconstruction, maintenance, and repair of all public roads, ways, and bridges, and the regulation of traffic thereon." 92 W. Va. at 640, 115 S.E. at 723. The Court's concern was not the breadth of the legislation, but that including a new criminal provision strayed too far from the act's core subject matter, even though the challenged provision involved larceny of an automobile. Id. Similarly, in Copley the Court took no issue with the Legislature's decision to enact "an omnibus act," but with the fact that the act's title omitted any reference to the challenged provision. Syl. pt. 1, 171 W. Va. 489, 300 S.E.2d 485; see also Kincaid v. Mangum, 189 W. Va. 404, 432 S.E.2d 74 (1993) (striking down an omnibus bill that authorized legislative rules from multiple state agencies that encompassed a variety of subject areas).

The test is thus not the length of a particular bill or how many provisions it includes. Rather, the standard under Article VI, § 30 is whether "there is a reasonable basis for the grouping of various matters in a legislative bill," and whether that grouping will "lead to logrolling or other deceiving tactics." Kincaid, 189 W. Va. at 412, 432 S.E.2d at 82. This determination is context- and fact-specific, and there is "no accurate mechanical rule" for courts reviewing Article VI, § 30 challenges. Id. at 411, 432 S.E.2d at 81 (citation omitted). Two years after Kincaid was decided, however, the Court expanded its discussion in this area. In Appalachian Power Co. v. State Tax Department of West Virginia, Justice Cleckley wrote for the Court to explain that the Kincaid test should be interpreted as protecting at least three goals: (1) avoiding "combining into one bill several diverse measures which have no common basis" out of fear that each "could not receive a favorable vote on its merits"; (2) preventing "unintentional and unknowing passage of provisions" not included in the bill's title; and (3) "fairly appris[ing] the public of matters" in the bill and "prevent[ing] fraud and deception as to matters passed by the Legislature." 195 W. Va. 573, 584, 466 S.E.2d 424, 435 (1995). That decision also noted a potential "fourth justification" of avoiding "dilution of a governor's veto power" where "legislation is saddled with irrelevant riders." Id.

Taken together, Kincaid and Appalachian Power indicate that the requirement that bills address a common subject area is intended to avoid certain types of potential legislative gamesmanship, hiding provisions that could not stand on their own if all members of the Legislature were aware they are present in a bill, or combining a politically unpopular provision with a more popular measure relating to a different area of law. As discussed above, the first concern is very likely not present here, where Senate Bill 451 has garnered significant attention, and there is likely no plausible argument that "deceiving tactics" have kept material issues hidden from legislators and the public. Kincaid, 189 W. Va. at 412, 432 S.E.2d at 82. The second concern also likely has little weight. All of the provisions in Senate Bill 451 relate, in one way or another, to one general object: education reform. While it is true that the bill encompasses a variety of policy changes, creation of charter schools, changes to the terms and conditions of employment for teachers and other school personnel, new funding mechanisms for public education, and standards for attendance and class size, to name some prominent examples, they all relate to the structure and administration of public education in the State. The type of "logrolling" Art. VI, § 30 prohibits is thus not present here, where there is a "common basis" tying the elements together, Appalachian Power, 195 W. Va. 573, 584, 466 S.E.2d 424, 435 (1995), and a "reasonable basis for the grouping" of the admittedly large number of provisions the bill contains, Kincaid, 189 W. Va. at 412, 432 S.E.2d at 82. Further, Senate Bill 451 bears little similarity to the omnibus acts the Supreme Court of Appeals has invalidated in the past. It does not hide the creation of new crimes within a civil regulatory bill as in Haskins. Nor does it authorize legislative rules in a blanket bill as in Kincaid, with no concern for the agency from which the rules originated or the subject matter they addressed.

Particularly when combined with the "liberal[]" construction courts give statutes when confronted with Article VI, § 30 challenges in an effort to "give validity to all parts of the act," Syl. pt. 3, Haskins, 92 W. Va. 632, 115 S.E. 720, these principles indicate that Senate Bill 451, at least in its current form, would likely pass constitutional scrutiny over the single-object test. The bill relates to the general subject area of education reform, and although its provisions may have attracted considerable public attention and are currently the subject of significant legislative debate, a reviewing court would likely conclude that Senate Bill 451's provisions are fairly classified as relating to a single object, and that its title provides fair notice of the important issues at stake.

Sincerely,

Patrick Morrisey
Attorney General

Lindsay See
Solicitor General

Steven Travis
Deputy General Counsel