Massachusetts Beer and Wine in Food Stores Initiative (2020)

Massachusetts Beer and Wine in Food Stores Initiative
Election date November 3, 2020
Topic Business regulation
Status Not on the ballot
Type State statute	Origin Citizens
List of Massachusetts measuresMassachusetts Question 1Massachusetts Question 2Submit

The Massachusetts Beer and Wine in Food Stores Initiative (#19-14) was not on the ballot in Massachusetts as an indirect initiated state statute on November 3, 2020.

The measure would have allowed food stores to sell beer and wine.

Text of measure

Ballot summary

The final ballot summary for the measure was as follows. Click [show] to expand the summary.

Initiative 19-14 ballot summary

“ This proposed law would create a license allowing food stores to sell wine and beer for off premises consumption, progressively increase and then eliminate the limit on the number of licenses for the sale of alcoholic beverages consumed off-premises that any one retailer could own or control, and require food stores and other retailers selling alcohol for consumption off-premises to implement certain age-verification policies to prevent the sale of alcohol to customers under age 21. Beginning in December 2020, local licensing authorities could grant a food store license, which would allow food stores to sell wine and malt beverages to be consumed off the premises. A “food store” would include retail stores whose primary business is selling food for consumption off the premises, but it would not include a warehouse club. Local licensing authorities would have the discretion to determine the number of food store licenses they issue and that number would be in addition to the other types of licenses currently issued for the sale of alcoholic beverages. The proposed law would also change the statewide limits on the number of licenses for the sale of alcoholic beverages for off-premises consumption that any one retailer could own or control: from 9 to 12 licenses in 2021; to 15 in 2022; and to 18 in 2023. On January 1, 2024, this limit on the number of commonly owned or controlled licenses would be eliminated. Under the proposed law, beginning in December 2020, food stores and other retailers selling alcoholic beverages for consumption off the premises would be required to ask for identification to verify the age of all customers purchasing alcohol. Permissible forms of identification would include driver’s licenses, liquor purchase identification cards, passports, military identification cards, and other forms of identification that a retailer could verify as valid and authentic. Beginning in 2022, the proposed law would require retailers to use a barcode scanner or comparable technology to verify identification. At that time, the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission could allow for alternative measures of age verification. The proposed law would require the Commission to employ at least one investigator for every 250 licenses granted for the sale of alcoholic beverages to be consumed off the premises. The proposed law would create a separate fund consisting of certain fees collected by the Commission under this proposed law, certain alcohol excise taxes, and certain fines collected for the violation of rules governing the sale of alcohol. The collected funds would, subject to appropriation, go to the Commission for implementing the proposed law and enforcing the state Liquor Control Act in general. ”

Full text

The full text of the measure is available here.

Sponsors

The initiative was proposed by Cumberland Farms, a Westborough-based company with 200 stores in Massachusetts.

Path to the ballot

See also: Laws governing the initiative process in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, the number of signatures required to qualify an indirect initiated state statute for the ballot is equal to 3.5 percent of the votes cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election. No more than one-quarter of the verified signatures on any petition can come from a single county. The process for initiated state statutes in Massachusetts is indirect, which means the legislature has a chance to approve initiatives with successful petitions directly without the measure going to the voters. A first round of signatures equal to 3 percent of the votes cast for governor is required to put an initiative before the legislature. A second round of signatures equal to 0.5 percent of the votes cast for governor in the last election is required to put the measure on the ballot if the legislature rejects or declines to act on a proposed initiated statute. Signatures for initiated statutes in Massachusetts are collected in two circulation periods. The first period runs from the third Wednesday in September to two weeks prior to the first Wednesday in December, a period of nine weeks. If the proposed law is not adopted by the first Wednesday of May, petitioners then have until the first Wednesday of July (eight weeks) to request additional petition forms and submit the second round of signatures.

The requirements to get an initiated state statute certified for the 2020 ballot:

• Signatures required (first round): 80,239 signatures
• Signatures required (second round): 13,374 signatures
• Deadline (first round): The deadline to submit the first round of signatures to the secretary of state was December 4, 2019. Signatures needed to be submitted to local registrars by November 20, 2019.
• Deadline (second round): The deadline to submit the second round of signatures was July 1, 2020.

If enough signatures are submitted in the first round, the legislature must act on a successful petition by the first Wednesday of May. The measure only goes on the ballot if the legislature does not pass it and if the second round of signatures is successfully collected.

Details about this initiative

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• The initiative was cleared to circulate on September 4, 2019.
• The sponsors of the initiative reported collecting and submitting 130,000 signatures by the December 4, 2019 deadline. Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin verified that 99,879 signatures were valid. The legislature has until May 5, 2020, to pass the ballot measure, or petitioners may gather a second round of signatures to place it on the 2020 ballot.
• On April 26, 2020, the campaigns supporting Massachusetts "Right to Repair" Initiative, Massachusetts Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative, Massachusetts Nursing Homes Medicaid Ratemaking Initiative, and Massachusetts Beer and Wine in Food Stores Initiative filed a suit jointly against Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin seeking permission to gather the 13,347 signatures needed by July 1 electronically. Petitioners argued, "Without immediate relief from this Court, Petitioners and all other ballot proponents similarly situated will face an unduly burdensome Catch-22: either risk their health and the health of voters to satisfy unjustifiable and unachievable ballot restrictions and participate in democracy or protect their health and give up their fundamental right to access the ballot."
  • On April 29, 2020, all four campaigns and Secretary Galvin agreed to a resolution that allows the campaigns to gather the second round of 13,347 signatures by distributing the petitions online to be electronically signed or printed and mailed back to the respective campaign.
• Since the General Court failed to act on the initiative by May 5, 2020, an additional 13,347 signatures were required by July 1, 2020.
• On June 28, 2020, Cumberland Farms announced that it was suspending its efforts to place the initiative on the 2020 ballot. Matt Durand, chairman of the ballot question committee and the head of public policy at Cumberland Farms, said, "It’s become clear that leading an eight-figure ballot measure campaign is not a prudent course of action at this particular moment in history. Make no mistake: the issue of safe and fair competition in the beverage alcohol marketplace remains a top legislative priority for Cumberland Farms and other food stores, just as it remains an important question of public policy for this Commonwealth." Cumberland Farms said it would try to put the initiative on the 2022 ballot.

To learn more about how the coronavirus pandemic impacted ballot measure campaigns, see the following: Changes to ballot measure campaigns, procedures, and policies in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020-2022

Lawsuit

  

Lawsuit overview
Issue: Whether the ballot language is misleading; whether the measure violates Section 1 of Article LXXIV of the Massachusetts Constitution, which requires initiatives to concern only topics "which are related or which are mutually dependent."
Court: Filed in Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County
Ruling: Ruled in favor of defendants, allowing a vote on the measure
Plaintiff(s): Benjamin Locke Weiner, Ronald T. Maloney, Jr., Cynthia Newell, Sean Barry, Tina M. Messina, Maximilian Pano Haivanis, and Steven Schechterle	Defendant(s): Maura Healey (D), the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; William F. Galvin (D), secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Plaintiff argument: The language of the ballot initiative concerns four distinct questions. It fails to comply with initiative rules established in the Massachusetts Constitution.	Defendant argument: The ballot language meets all constitutional requirements and was therefore certified to gather signatures to appear on the 2020 ballot.

  Source: Massachusetts Appellate Courts

On November 25, 2019, Benjamin Locke Weiner, Ronald T. Maloney, Jr., Cynthia Newell, Sean Barry, Tina M. Messina, Maximilian Pano Haivanis, and Steven Schechterle filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and William F. Gavin, secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, claiming that the Massachusetts Beer and Wine in Food Stores Initiative should not have been certified to circulate because it violated the subject matter rules established in the Massachusetts Constitution. The plaintiffs argued in their complaint that the initiative concerned the following four distinct questions:

• Excluding spirits, should wine and beer be sold at an unlimited number of locations in municipalities as long as the retailer also sells food?
• Should a single retailer be authorized to obtain an unlimited number of licenses to sell beer, wine, and spirits across the state and local jurisdictions?
• Should all alcohol retailers require proof of identification no matter a person's appearance? Who decides what type of identification is valid?
• Should a portion of the funds raised by the excise tax on alcohol be moved from the general fund to a special fund for the operation of the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission?

The plaintiffs argued that these distinct questions violate Section 1 of Article LXXIV of the Massachusetts Constitution, which requires initiatives to concern only topics "which are related or which are mutually dependent." This rule is less restrictive than the full single-subject rule employed in many states.

On May 26, 2020, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of the defendants arguing that the four parts of the ballot question are related and can be voted on as one question. The court wrote, "The age-verification and enforcement provisions are thus operationally related to the other provisions of the measure. We are persuaded that Initiative Petition 19-14 sets forth a unified statement of policy and is sufficiently coherent to permit a "yes" or "no" vote." The question will appear on ballots as approved by the Secretary of State.

See also

2020 measures

• 2020 ballot measures
• Business regulation on the ballot
• Alcohol on the ballot

Massachusetts

• Massachusetts ballot measures
• Massachusetts ballot measure laws

News and analysis

• Ballot measure lawsuits
• Ballot measure readability
• Ballot measure polls

External links

• Massachusetts filed initiative petitions
• Initiative 19-14 full text