Attorney General Hardy Myers will appeal the ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals on behalf of voters who approved the measure in November. The measure's original backers also plan to appeal the ruling.

The appeals court normally takes more than a year to rule a case, though it likely will be lobbied to make this case a priority. In the Meantime, the Legislature also is mulling the possibility of rewriting the measure to make it legal and then sending it back to the voters for a revote--giving its detractors another chance to defeat it.

Measure 7 requires compensation to property owners for government action that restricts the use of their land and lowers their property value. As foretold in his decision to issue a preliminary injunction against its implementation in December, Lipscomb ruled that the measure violates two requirements for constitutional amendments.

First, Lipscomb says the measure changes the constitution without notifying voters, violating the "full text" requirement for constitutional amendments. Second, he says the measure makes multiple changes to the state's constitutional, which violates the "separate votes" rule that one measure can make only one change to the constitution unless the changes are "closely related."