## Facts

- Louisiana statutes created the Louisiana Rice Promotion Board and the Louisiana Rice Research Board and authorized the Commissioner of Agriculture to collect a per-hundredweight assessment on rice produced in Louisiana (up to three cents) to fund rice promotion and research.
- The statutes made the assessment contingent on periodic referenda of rice producers and originally permitted refunds upon request.
- Amendments allowed producers, by majority vote in a referendum, to abolish the statutory refund provisions; a 1992 referendum approved assessments and abolished refunds.
- Louisiana rice producers challenged the statutory scheme, alleging it allowed a private, economically interested group (rice producers) to decide by vote whether the State would collect assessments and whether refunds would be available.

## Issues

1. Whether the Legislature unconstitutionally delegated legislative assessment authority to private rice producers by conditioning the imposition, continuation, or revocation of state-collected assessments on producer referenda.
2. Whether allowing producers to abolish refund rights by private vote, without sufficient legislative standards and control, violates separation-of-powers and non-delegation principles.
3. If unconstitutional, whether the invalidity is limited to the refund-abolition provisions or requires invalidation of La. R.S. 3:3534 and La. R.S. 3:3544 in their entirety.

## Decision

- The Louisiana Supreme Court held La. R.S. 3:3534 and La. R.S. 3:3544 facially unconstitutional.
- The court found the Legislature improperly transferred assessment power to a defined group of private voters who could impose, maintain, or revoke the assessment and determine refund availability through private elections.
- The court affirmed the district court’s judgment but amended it to declare the entirety of La. R.S. 3:3534 and La. R.S. 3:3544 unconstitutional, not only the refund-abolition portions.

## Legal Principles

- The Legislature may not transfer core policy-making or assessment (tax-like) authority to private parties.
- Contingent legislation is permissible only when the Legislature establishes the policy and the contingency concerns an external fact; private voting that substitutes for legislative decision-making on whether a public exaction exists is impermissible.
- Delegations affecting public exactions require meaningful legislative standards, control, and oversight; leaving key terms and continued existence of an assessment to private, economically interested voters violates non-delegation and separation-of-powers limits.
- When an unconstitutional private-delegation mechanism governs both the existence and terms of an assessment scheme, partial severance is improper if the defect permeates the statutory provisions at issue.

## Conclusion

The Louisiana Supreme Court invalidated the rice assessment provisions because they allowed private rice producers, through referenda, to decide whether a state-collected assessment would exist and whether refunds would be available, amounting to an unconstitutional delegation of legislative assessment authority; the court affirmed as amended to strike the statutes in full.


Krielow v. La. Dep’t of Agric. & Forestry, 125 So. 3d 384 (La. 2013)