CON

ISSUE:
Whether or not the SuperHuman Registration Act (SRA) that requires all metahumans to register
all their personal information with the government constitutional.

FACTS :

In the past ten (10) years, there has been an apparent exponential increase in the number of
Metahumans around the world. According to recent surveys at least 1,500 of them are in the
Philippines alone. Metahumans are natural persons who possess superhuman abilities whose
origins include, but are not limited to natural or induced mutation, cybernetic enhancements, and
alien origin, mystical or supernatural origin.

Some Metahumans voluntarily assists in various law enforcement for the prevention and
fighting of crimes involving other humans, act as first responders in the events of catastrophe or
calamity but some prefer to work alone. It has become customary for Metahumans to perform
their heroic deeds in costume to maintain the secrecy of their identity. While some have
criticized these acts of vigilantism, other have welcomed them and felt safer.

However sometime in 2019 a skirmish between metahumans caused damaged to a school

which also resulted to hundreds injured and a death toll of twenty-three. The events that
transpired did not have anyone held accountable thus to address the issues raised by the existence
of the metahumans the Superhuman Registration Act was passed requiring all metahumans to
register all their personal information with the government. The act required that metahumans
surrender their real names to the government but not the public. The state shall likewise maintain
a database of the records of all these metahumans. In addition, all metahumans may only perform
activities that require them to use their special skills that directly affect third persons, upon
approval by a governing board. They are likewise prohibited from assisting law enforcement or
act as first responders unless they are duly deputized by the corresponding law enforcement or
government agency. It enabled the government to monitor all powered individuals and was
drafted to facilitate the government’s licensing and/or employment of individuals who were
actively using their powers. The powered individual had to fulfill some requirements or meet
some criteria before they were allowed to fully use their abilities and gain legal authorization to
continue to use their abilities to fight crime.
HELD:

In its promulgations the SuperHuman Registration Act (SRA) is being argued as a valid
exercise of Police Power. However, the statute can be interpreted as a legislation with an intent
to discriminate metahuman, rather than to protect, therefore it is not a legitimate exercise of
police power.

Police power under our Constitution draws on two principles, "use that which is yours so as not
to injure others", and "the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law" to justify restriction
of individual liberties in order to protect the general welfare. There are certain constitutional
restraints on police power, such as laws must apply equally to all under like circumstances.
government interferences with individual rights must be reasonable - they must have a clear
relation to some legitimate legislative purpose. Beyond those outer limits... most courts stayed
out of the way of state police power, another is by limiting the ability of states to infringe upon
implied constitutional rights and by demanding a stricter standard of reasonability, but
regulation of police power remains fairly minimal. The promulgation of Superhuman
Registration Act requiring all metahumans to register all their personal information with the
government affect the rights of an individual when those rights conflict with the promotion and
maintenance of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of the public. The doctrine called
"balance of interests," to determine whether a state has the right to exercise its implied police
powers although that exercise may be in conflict with the law, either statutory or constitutional.
The court has held, in these instances, that if a state does enact legislation for the
protection and maintenance of the health, safety, or welfare of its citizens, such laws "fall within
the most traditional concept of the state's police power."

The burden on other factors, was found to be too cumbersome a requirement although it
had been enacted in behalf of the safety of its citizens. Periodically, states have had to deal with
matters involving private concepts of health in contention with the public's health. The private
concerns of the parent who may feel that only he or she has a right to decide what medical
treatment the child should have or the convictions of a person who feels that medication is an
infringement on his or her religious practice are matters that do come to state courts from time to
time. Again, the court usually finds that the public's right to health tends to outweigh private or
individual concerns. In general, the state tend to uphold laws exercising what it considers bona
fide concerns for the public's well-being which includes metahuman, on the ground that the
legislature has the discretion to discern public need and to enact legislation in protection of the
public interest.

When it comes to the power of states over their people, the issue has always been
shrouded in doubt. For, though the Constitution provides a list of specific limitations on state
powers along with an enumeration of certain rights, it does not provide any written list of state
powers or even a general statement as to their scope. The Constitution is, or at least to some
appears to be, all but silent on the question of the proper scope of what is called the police power
of the state. Some have contended tended that the state, being a government of "general powers,"
may do all that is not expressly prohibited by the express provisions of the Constitution. Others
contend that, because governments with unlimited power are a form of tyranny, some limits to
the powers of states must be identified. One response to this is that state governments are limited,
but only by their own state constitutions. Of course, these are not the only limits on state powers.
Everyone concedes that even powers authorized by state constitutions are limited by the express
prohibitions on state powers. Some metahuman prefer to keep their real identities secret and to
remain anonymous, but the state through this legislation will not allow this kind of practice, yes
it is the right of the state to know the identity of all its citizenry, but such information has the
potential to be used for other purposes than intended. It violates the person’s right to privacy as
there are no safeguards in the provisions of the act that can assure the metahumans that their
information will not be exposed to the public which can cause discrimination.

Because this is the legislative, those who make the laws that are to govern the people
should not be able to change the laws that govern them. Putting these laws over the lawmakers in
writing serves to lock them in, and this "lock in" function would be defeated if those who make
or enforce laws interpret the writing, are free on their own to change it to something different
that they prefer. In short, for a written constitution to perform the principal function for which it
is put in the form of writing, its meaning must remain the same until it is properly changed. And
it is improper for it to be changed by the very people it is supposed to bind. Police power was
sufficient, in a sense, because it sought only to place some sort of label on the powers that
remained with the state. The police power was what the states had left when such determinations
had been made. It did not make even the most basic conceptual distinctions among the
fundamental types of governmental power, and so defining the police power as coextensive with
sovereignty meant that police subsumed the powers of taxation and eminent domain. Regulation
is the sources of state authority in its exercise of sovereign power, government must take care of
people which includes the general welfare, safety, and health of its citizenry, regulating
superhuman is one of these, by maintaining a database of the records of all these metahumans
and limiting the performance of their activities according to their special skills that directly
affects third person.