Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/299

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EDMONDS ET AL. v HERBRANDSON ET AL.
273

vides that “the legislative assembly shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases, that is to say: * * * (3) Locating or changing county seats.” The provision of chapter 56 which it is claimed renders that act obnoxious to this constitutional inhibition is the proviso which reads as follows: “Provided, that nothing in this act shall permit the removal to or locating of the county seat of any county at a place not located upon a railroad, nor wherein the court house and jail now erected exceed in value the sum of $35,000.” It is undisputed that some of the counties of the state fall within the proviso, and that some of them fall without it, and within the regulation of the act. It is therefore apparent that by this proviso the legislature has classified counties for the purpose of determining under what law a relocation of the county seat can be obtained. The proviso excepts from the provision of chapter 56, counties with respect to which the circumstances are peculiar. These counties are either left under the provisions of § 565 of the Compiled Laws, or there is no statutory rule regulating or permitting the relocation of county seats therein. Which. ever of these two views we take, these counties are placed in a separate class by themselves; and the question which naturally suggests itself is whether this particular classification can be sustained under the authorities and the spirit of the constitutional prohibition against special legislation. This section of the constitution must have a reasonable construction. To say that no classification can be made under such an article would make it one of the most pernicious provisions ever embodied in the fundamental law of a state. It would paralyze the legislative will It would beget a worse evil than unlimited special legislation—the grouping together without homogeneity of the most incongruous objects under the scope of an all embracing law. On the other hand the classification may not be arbitrary. The legislature cannot finally settle the boundaries to be drawn. Such a view of the organic law would bring upon this court the just reproach that it had suffered the legislature to disregard a a constitutional barrier by relegating to it the question where that barrier should be set up. See Pell v. Newark, 40 N. J. Law 71-80; Appeal of Ayars, 122 Pa. St. 266, 16 Atl. Rep. 356.