HIGH COURT AGREES TO EXPEDITED SCHEDULE ON BALLOT QUESTIONS

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court decided Wednesday to speed up
its handling of an appeal on whether the initiative petitions on
raising the minimum wage and preventing frivolous lawsuits will be on
the November ballot.

Secretary of State Dean Heller, in his appeal to the court, claims the
two petitions are invalid because there is not an appropriate
certification on the petitions. He is challenging the decision of
District Judge Bill Maddox, who ruled these two should go before the
voters.

The Supreme Court has ordered Heller, represented by the state
attorney general's office, to submit his opening brief by Wednesday,
and it gives the backers of the petition seven days to respond. Then
the attorney general's office will have another seven days.

That brings the dispute right down to the deadline. County clerks and
registrars of voters say they need to know by Sept. 1 if the petitions
will be on the ballot so they can start printing the absentee and
sample ballots in time for the general election in November.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the Nevada State Medical
Association also said Wednesday they would join Heller in his appeal
to keep the two issues off the election ballot.

Both the chamber and the medical society had joined Heller in the
district court hearing before Maddox.

Danny Thompson, executive director of the Nevada State AFL-CIO, said
the Supreme Court did the right thing in expediting the appeal. He
said he was confident that Maddox "did the right thing for the working
people in Nevada" in putting the minimum wage issue on the ballot.

That wage initiative seeks to amend the Nevada Constitution to boost
the minimum wage by $1 an hour and by the cost of living up to 3
percent in years after it is effective. The other petition would
penalize lawyers that file frivolous suits and would prohibit limiting
the award of damages to a person who wins a tort suit.

In the ruling to put the two initiatives on the ballot after Heller's
office ruled they did not have enough signatures to qualify, Maddox
said a clause in the state Constitution used by the secretary of
state's office in its decision was "meaningless."

Thompson said as it stands now the two questions on minimum wage and
lawsuits will be on the ballot unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise.

In another court dispute involving an initiative petition, U.S.
District Judge James Mahan has set Aug. 13 on a hearing of a suit by
ACLU, the Marijuana Policy Project and the Committee to Regulate and
Control Marijuana, which wants to allow Nevadans to vote whether to
allow adults to possess one ounce of marijuana. The suit challenges a
section in the Nevada Constitution that requires an initiative
petition have 10 percent of the voters in 13 of the 17 counties to
sign the documents.

The petition, when the signatures were verified, qualified in only 12
of the 17 counties, according to the secretary of state's office.