## Facts

- Initiative sponsors filed a statewide initiative application titled “The Parental Involvement Initiative,” aimed at imposing parental involvement requirements for a minor’s abortion.
- The Lieutenant Governor certified the initiative application and adopted an Attorney General–drafted petition/ballot summary; petition booklets were circulated for signatures.
- Planned Parenthood of Alaska and an individual plaintiff sued for declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging (1) the initiative impermissibly attempted to enact or modify court rules and (2) the petition/ballot summary was misleading and violated statutory requirements for a true and impartial summary.
- The superior court found the initiative contained impermissible court-rule provisions and that the petition summary was misleading, but held the defects could be cured without restarting the petition process by severing the offending provisions and requiring a new summary.
- The case reached the Alaska Supreme Court on expedited, pre-election review in advance of the scheduled primary ballot.

## Issues

1. Whether provisions of the initiative impermissibly enacted or modified court rules in violation of constitutional limits on the initiative process.
2. Whether unconstitutional court-rule provisions could be severed while preserving the remainder of the initiative for the ballot.
3. Whether a misleading or deficient petition summary can be cured for purposes of the ballot summary without requiring petition recirculation and new signatures.
4. What standards govern initiative petition and ballot summaries, and whether the challenged summary satisfied those standards.

## Decision

- The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the superior court.
- The Court agreed that the initiative could not validly enact court rules through the initiative process.
- The Court held the invalid court-rule provisions were severable and did not require removing the initiative from the ballot.
- The Court held the misleading petition-summary defect could be cured by issuing a corrected ballot summary and did not require sponsors to recirculate petitions or gather new signatures.

## Legal Principles

- Statewide initiatives cannot constitutionally enact or modify court rules reserved to the judiciary or subject to special legislative supermajority requirements.
- Unconstitutional portions of an initiative may be severed if the remaining provisions can function as intended and the initiative’s central purpose is preserved.
- Initiative summaries must be “true and impartial” and avoid misleading tendencies, including by omission or unfair characterization.
- In pre-election challenges, courts focus on procedural and constitutional defects; an erroneous petition summary does not automatically invalidate signature gathering if the defect can be adequately cured (including through severance and a corrected ballot summary) without fundamentally misleading signers or voters.

## Conclusion

The court permitted the initiative to proceed to the ballot by severing unconstitutional court-rule provisions and authorizing a revised ballot summary, rejecting a categorical rule that a misleading petition summary always requires recirculation and new signatures.


Planned Parenthood of Alaska v. Campbell, 232 P.3d 725 (Alaska 2010)