The ASUO Constitution Court responded to ASUO Senator Ryan Fritsen’s motion of clarification which asked why the court decided to hand four ballot measure decisions regarding OSPIRG financing to the University of Oregon administration instead of the court handling it.
Fritsen’s broke down his motion into five questions. The first question asked why the court decided that the four ballot measures needed a to implement federal law into their decision, and his second question asked why did the courts think that they could not interpret federal law.
In Fritsen’s third question, he asked how this decision is consistent with previous court rulings. He gives an example of last year when the court decided that it was allowed to interpret a U.S. Supreme Court’s decision for one of its cases. The fourth question asked what previous precedent leads the court to believe that if a measure involves federal law that it should be handed to the administration. The fifth and final question asked was what the court hope to achieve by setting this precedent.
Fritsen presented his motion to the court on Feb. 20, and the court responded five days later to all of his questions.
“The interpretation of this case at all is an issue that is outside of this Court’s discretion, but the reasoning is still consistent,” the constitution court wrote in response to Fritsen’s motion. “If the Court misapplies the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, the University could face legal consequences.”
In regards to Fritsen’s second question, the court stated that they didn’t feel it was proper for students who haven’t passed the Oregon bar exam to be interpreting laws outside of the ASUO constitution. In response to the court interpreting U.S. Supreme Court law in a previous case, the court did take some fault on its previous actions.
“When the Court issued its decisions it operated from an incorrect understanding of its scope,” the court wrote. “The Court had interpreted Article 2 § 3 of the ASUO Constitution, which states that ‘(n)o agency or program of the ASUO shall make any rule or take any action abridging the privileges and immunities of any person or program under the Constitution and laws of the United States or the State of Oregon,’ to mean that it could, in fact, interpret state and federal law. The University Administration’s response following the issuance has since confirmed the appropriate purview of the Court.”
In Fritsen’s fourth question regarding why federal law needs to be handled by the administration, the court said that the administration has established that due to previous situations, the administration are the only ones who are allowed to deal with matters of federal or state law. The court’s final answer to Fritsen echoed the same sentiments that were mentioned in its fourth answer.
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