Consider This...

December 21, 2005

When the lottery was passed by the General Assembly earlier this year, the Common Sense Foundation was one of the main groups raising the alarm about the way in which it was passed.

Now we’re part of a lawsuit that challenges the lottery’s dangerous precedent.

Today the Common Sense Foundation , NC Fair Share, and community activist Willis Williams (all represented by the NC Justice Center ) filed a motion intervening as plaintiffs in the current lawsuit against state legislative and lottery leaders. The first lawsuit was filed last week by the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, a conservative legal think tank headed by former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr.

In the lawsuit, this array of left-wing and right-wing organizations accuses state leadership of flouting Constitutional requirements for revenue bills. State leaders have laughably tried to defend their actions by saying that the lottery bill is not a revenue bill, which is absurd—the lottery is all about revenue.

Some anti-lottery folks are saying that this lottery lawsuit has nothing to do with the lottery itself, but instead how it was passed. Clearly that’s not true; the problem is that the lottery is demonstrably bad policy, AND it was passed with blatant disregard for the state Constitution.

It’s time to challenge “business as usual” in Raleigh . This lawsuit should serve as a wake-up call for those who would ignore Constitutional requirements in order to make questionable public policy.