[media-credit name=’DEREK MONTGOMERY/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Concluding weeks of controversy over the Student Labor Action Committee-introduced living-wage referendum, the Student Judiciary unanimously ruled the proposal illegal based upon viewpoint-neutrality violations Wednesday.

Associated Students of Madison Chair Eric Varney and other members filed suit with the judiciary, citing constitutional and bylaw violations made during the process of introducing the referendum on the fall elections ballot before it was passed. They contested the measure as illegal and therefore ineligible for implementation into the student government's bylaws.

"Ultimately, I think it makes the process more democratic," Varney, who did not act in his elected position in filing the suit, said. "I think it just shows the flaws with the referendum."

The referendum was initially aimed at prohibiting the Student Services Finance Committee, the financial branch of ASM, from considering auxiliary budget proposals from the Memorial Union and various other University of Wisconsin services unless they paid all employees a wage slightly more than $10 per hour. However, after university officials interpreted the measure as only binding to the SSFC and not relevant to their own processes, the referendum, in effect, excluded the committee from its own process.

The suit claimed the referendum was neither backed by an obligatory petition signed by at least 500 students nor consecutive vote by the student council, and the Student Judiciary had not properly notified students of it. But the full court opted not to consider those issues, instead deeming the referendum a neutrality violation of ASM financial processes based on a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth.

Nick Fox, the chief justice and presiding judge in the case, said that based on the previous court decision, referenda are not viewpoint-neutral and constitutionally ineligible of affecting ASM financial processes.

"There was a much more pressing issue which we were able to rule upon without getting into the other merits," he said. "Since the process is not viewpoint-neutral … the referendum itself was unconstitutional."

Fox added because ASM financial processes manage student segregated-fee funding, all decisions must be made free of any personal agenda.

SLAC member and one of the largest proponents of the referendum, Ashok Kumar, said the judiciary's interpretation of the situation may be substantiated, but the fact the case was held in full court — making the decision final and impervious to an appeals process — and did not consider the actual arguments presented is questionable.

"That was never brought on to the court, so we never had a chance to research it or defend it," Kumar said.

As a party with influence in the case, SLAC members are materially affected by the decision and would otherwise be free to appeal it if they wished.

Meanwhile, Fox said regardless of the decision, the judiciary "definitely" expected an appeal of the case and decided to hear it in a full court the first time around to prevent the case from dragging on.

"Because of the unique constitutional issues involved, it was now advantageous to leave it as a full court rather than a panel and then full court," he said.

Yet Kumar said because the judiciary was the actual plaintiff in the case, the Southworth clause may have been used as a lever to relegate fault for the unaddressed process violations — specifically, their obligation to reasonably notify the student body of the referendum before it went to a vote.

"Student Judiciary has a record of not finding fault in itself," he said. "It's very self-serving of the Student Judiciary to completely dodge their violations to the student body."

Kumar added because the judiciary could face serious, yet unprecedented, consequences for violating the referenda process, their handling of the case "makes perfect sense."

Though whether or not the judiciary adequately notified students would have to be decided in court, Fox said there may have been some process violations.

"In my opinion, I would say the Student Judiciary did not give members of ASM any type of reasonable or adequate notice of the referendum," Fox said.

As the apparent victor in the case, Varney described SLAC's approach to the referendum as "sneaky," but said the judiciary's was even more reprehensible.

"I blame it more on the Student Judiciary because that's their job," he said. "[Student Judiciary] was kind of ignorant about it. They blatantly violated the ASM constitution by not notifying people."