In this diversity action, petitioner seeks damages for the
alleged wrongful death in Louisiana of her illegitimate son. The
trial court granted respondents' motion for summary judgment on the
ground that, under Louisiana law, a mother had no right of action
for the death of her illegitimate son. The Court of Appeals
affirmed.
Held: The Louisiana wrongful death statute, as
construed to bar recovery for damages to the parent of an
illegitimate child while allowing such recovery to the parent of a
legitimate child, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, there being no rational basis for the
distinction.
Levy v. Louisiana, ante, p.
391 U. S. 68. Pp.
391 U. S.
74-76.
379 F.2d 545, reversed.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This suit was brought in the Federal District Court under the
head of diversity jurisdiction to recover for a wrongful death
suffered in an automobile accident in Louisiana. The plaintiff, a
Texas domiciliary, was the mother of the victim, her illegitimate
son. Had the Texas wrongful death statute [
Footnote 1] been applicable, it would, as construed,
have authorized the action. [
Footnote 2] But summary
Page 391 U. S. 74
judgment was granted on the ground that, under Louisiana law,
[
Footnote 3] the mother had no
right of action for the death of her illegitimate son. The Court of
Appeals affirmed, rejecting the claim that the discrimination
violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
379 F.2d 545. We granted the petition for a writ of certiorari, 389
U.S. 969, in order to hear the case along with
Levy v.
Louisiana, ante, p.
391 U. S. 68.
Louisiana follows a curious course in its sanctions against
illegitimacy. A common law wife is allowed to sue under the
Louisiana wrongful death statute. [
Footnote 4] When a married woman gives birth to an
illegitimate child, he is, with a few exceptions, conclusively
presumed to be legitimate. [
Footnote 5] Louisiana makes no distinction between
legitimate children and illegitimate children where incest is
concerned. [
Footnote 6] A
mother may inherit from an illegitimate
Page 391 U. S. 75
child whom she has acknowledged and vice versa. [
Footnote 7] If the illegitimate son had a
horse that was killed by the defendant and then died himself, his
mother would have a right to sue for the loss of that property.
[
Footnote 8] If the
illegitimate son were killed in an industrial accident at his place
of employment, the mother would be eligible for recovery under the
Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Act, if she were a dependent of
his. [
Footnote 9] Yet it is
argued that, since the legislature is dealing with "sin," it can
deal with it selectively, and is not compelled to adopt
comprehensive or even consistent measures.
See McLaughlin v.
Florida, 379 U. S. 184,
379 U. S. 191.
In this sense, the present case is different from the
Levy
case, where, by mere accident of birth, the innocent, although
illegitimate, child was made a "nonperson" by the legislature when
it came to recovery of damages for the wrongful death of his
mother.
Yet we see no possible rational basis (
Morey v. Doud,
354 U. S. 457,
354 U. S.
465-466) for assuming that, if the natural mother is
allowed recovery for the wrongful death of her illegitimate child,
the cause of illegitimacy will be served. It would, indeed, be
far-fetched to assume that women have illegitimate children so that
they can be compensated in damages for their death. A law which
creates an open season on illegitimates in the area of automobile
accidents gives a windfall to tortfeasors. But it hardly has a
causal connection with the "sin," which is, we are told, the
historic reason for the creation of the disability. To say that the
test of equal protection should be the "legal", rather than the
biological, relationship is to avoid
Page 391 U. S. 76
the issue. For the Equal Protection Clause necessarily limits
the authority of a State to draw such "legal" lines as it
chooses.
Opening the courts to suits of this kind may conceivably be a
temptation to some to assert motherhood fraudulently. That problem,
however, concerns burden of proof. Where the claimant is plainly
the mother, the State denies equal protection of the laws to
withhold relief merely because the child, wrongfully killed, was
born to her out of wedlock.
Reversed.
[
Footnote 1]
Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. Art. 4675 (1952).
[
Footnote 2]
The Court of Appeals so indicated in this case. 379 F.2d at 546,
n. 2.
See Galveston, H. & S.A. R. Co. v. Walker, 48
Tex.Civ.App. 52, 106 S.W. 705 (1907).
[
Footnote 3]
The applicable statutory provision is set out in
Levy v.
Louisiana, ante at
391 U. S. 69, n.
1. As the Court of Appeals noted, Article 2315 of the Louisiana
Civil Code, providing for wrongful death recovery, gives a cause of
action to "the surviving father and mother of the deceased, or
either of them. . . ." The statute does not state "legitimate"
father or "legitimate" mother, but the Louisiana courts have held
that a decedent must be legitimate in order for an ascendant or
sibling to recover for his death.
Youchican v. Texas & P.
R. Co., 147 La. 1080, 86 So. 551 (1920);
Buie v.
Hester, 147 So. 2d 733 (Ct.App. La.1962).
See also Green
v. New Orleans, S. & G.I. R. Co., 141 La. 120, 74 So. 717
(1917);
Jackson v. Lindlom, 84 So. 2d 101
(Ct.App.La.1955).
See also Vaughan v. Dalton-Lard Lumber
Co., 119 La. 61, 43 So. 926 (1907).
[
Footnote 4]
Chivers v. Couch Motor Lines, 159 So. 2d 544
(Ct.App.La.1964).
[
Footnote 5]
La.Civ.Code Ann. Art. 184 (1952).
See Lambert v.
Lambert, 164 So. 2d 661 (Ct.App.La.1964);
Harris v.
Illinois Central R. Co., 220 F.2d 734 (C.A. 5th Cir.1955);
cf. Lewis v. Powell, 178 So. 2d 769 (Ct.App.La.1965).
[
Footnote 6]
La.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 14:78 (1952).
[
Footnote 7]
La.Civ.Code Ann. Arts. 918, 922 (1952).
[
Footnote 8]
La.Civ.Code Ann. Arts. 2315, 922 (1952 and Supp. 1967).
[
Footnote 9]
La.Rev.Stat.Ann. §§ 23:1231, 23:1252, 23:1253 (1964);
Thompson v. Vestal Lumber & Mfg. Co., 208 La. 83, 119,
22 So. 2d 842, 854 (1945);
see Note, 20 Tulane L.Rev. 145
(1945).
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE
STEWART join, dissenting.
*
These decisions can only be classed as constitutional
curiosities.
At common law, no person had a legally cognizable interest in
the wrongful death of another person, and no person could inherit
the personal right of another to recover for tortious injuries to
his body. [
Footnote 2/1] By
statute, Louisiana has created both rights in favor of certain
classes of persons. The question in these cases is whether the way
in which Louisiana has defined the classes of persons who may
recover is constitutionally permissible. The Court has reached a
negative answer to this question by a process that can only be
described as brute force.
One important reason why recovery for wrongful death had
everywhere to await statutory delineation is that the interest one
person has in the life of another is inherently intractable. Rather
than hear offers of proof of love and affection and economic
dependence from every person who might think or claim that the bell
had
Page 391 U. S. 77
tolled for him, the courts stayed their hands pending
legislative action. Legislatures, responding to the same
diffuseness of interests, generally defined classes of proper
plaintiffs by highly arbitrary lines based on family relationships,
excluding issues concerning the actual effect of the death on the
plaintiff. [
Footnote 2/2]
Louisiana has followed the traditional pattern. There, the
actions lie in favor of the surviving spouse and children of the
deceased, if any; if none, then in favor of the surviving parents
of the deceased, if any; if none, then in favor of the deceased's
brothers and sisters, if any; if none, then no action lies.
According to this scheme, a grown man may sue for the wrongful
death of parents he did not love, [
Footnote 2/3] even if the death relieves
Page 391 U. S. 78
him of a great economic burden or entitles him to a large
inheritance. But an employee who loses a job because of the death
of his employer has no cause of action, and a minor child cared for
by neighbors or relatives "as if he were their own son" does not
therefore have a right to sue for their death. [
Footnote 2/4] Perhaps most dramatic, a surviving
parent, for example, of a Louisiana deceased may sue if and only if
there is no surviving spouse or child: it does not matter who loved
or depended on whom, or what the economic situation of any survivor
may be, or even whether the spouse or child elects to sue.
[
Footnote 2/5] In short, the whole
scheme of the Louisiana wrongful death statute, which is similar in
this respect to that of most other States, makes everything the
Court says about affection and nurture and dependence altogether
irrelevant. The only question in any case is whether the plaintiff
falls within the classes of persons to whom the
Page 391 U. S. 79
State has accorded a right of action for the death of
another.
Louisiana has chosen, as have most other States in one respect
or another, to define these classes of proper plaintiffs in terms
of their legal, rather than their biological, relation to the
deceased. A man may recover for the death of his wife, whether he
loved her or not, but may not recover for the death of his
paramour. [
Footnote 2/6] A child
may recover for the death of his adopted parents. An illegitimate
may recover for the wrongful death of a parent who has taken a few
hours to acknowledge him formally, but not for the death of a
person who he claims is his parent but who has not acknowledged
him. [
Footnote 2/7] A parent may
recover for the death of an illegitimate child he has acknowledged,
but not for the death of an illegitimate child whom he did not
bother to acknowledge until the possibility of tort recovery
arose.
The Court today, for some reason which I am at a loss to
understand, rules that the State must base its arbitrary definition
of the plaintiff class on biological, rather than legal,
relationships. Exactly how this makes the Louisiana scheme even
marginally more "rational" is not
Page 391 U. S. 80
clear, for neither a biological relationship nor legal
acknowledgment is indicative of the love or economic dependence
that may exist between two persons. It is, frankly, preposterous to
suggest that the State has made illegitimates into "nonpersons," or
that, by analogy with what Louisiana has done here, it might deny
illegitimates constitutional rights or the benefits of doing
business in corporate form. [
Footnote
2/8] The rights at issue here stem from the existence of a
family relationship, and the State has decided only that it will
not recognize the family relationship unless the formalities of
marriage, or of the acknowledgment of children by the parent in
question, have been complied with.
There is obvious Justification for this decision. If it be
conceded, as I assume it is, that the State has power to provide
that people who choose to live together should go through the
formalities of marriage and, in default, that people who bear
children should acknowledge them, it is logical to enforce these
requirements by declaring that the general class of rights that are
dependent upon family relationships shall be accorded only when the
formalities as well as the biology of those relationships are
present. Moreover, and for many of the same reasons why a State is
empowered to require formalities in the first place, a State may
choose to simplify a particular proceeding by reliance on formal
papers, rather than a contest of proof. [
Footnote 2/9] That suits for wrongful death,
Page 391 U. S. 81
actions to determine the heirs of intestates, and the like,
must, as a constitutional matter, deal with every claim of
biological paternity or maternity on its merits is an exceedingly
odd proposition.
The Equal Protection Clause states a complex and difficult
principle. Certain classifications are "inherently suspect," which
I take to mean that any reliance upon them in differentiating legal
rights requires very strong affirmative justification. The
difference between a child who has been formally acknowledged and
one who has not is hardly one of these. Other classifications are
impermissible because they bear no intelligible proper relation to
the consequences that are made to flow from them. This does not
mean that any classification this Court thinks could be better
drawn is unconstitutional. But even if the power of this Court to
improve
Page 391 U. S. 82
on the lines that Congress and the States have drawn were very
much broader than I consider it to be, I could not understand why a
State which base's the right to recover for wrongful death strictly
on family relationships could not demand that those relationships
be formalized.
I would affirm the decisions of the state court and the Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
* This opinion applies also to No. 508,
Levy v. Louisiana,
ante, p.
391 U. S. 68.
[
Footnote 2/1]
See Van Beeck v. Sabine Towing Co., 300 U.
S. 342,
300 U. S.
344-345, and cases there cited.
[
Footnote 2/2]
An English statute, Lord Campbell's Act, 9 & 10 Vict., c. 93
(1846), "has served as the model for similar acts in most of the
states in this country." F. Tiffany, Death By Wrongful Act 5 (2d
ed., 1913). The statute provided that the action "shall be for the
Benefit of the Wife, Husband, Parent, and Child. . . ." It is
noteworthy that English and Canadian courts held the words "child"
and "parent" to exclude illegitimate relationships.
Dickinson
v. North Eastern R. Co., 2 Hurl. & Colt. 735, 9 L.T.R.
(N.S.) 299;
Gibson v. Midland R. Co., 2 Ont. 658. A recent
comprehensive survey of American law in the field comments
that,
"[i]f there is a general rule today, it is probably that the
word 'child' or 'children,' when used in a statute pertaining to
wrongful death beneficiaries, refers to a legitimate child or
legitimate children, and thus only legitimates can recover for the
wrongful death of their parents. This is merely an application of
the principle that statutes patterned after Lord Campbell's Act
which use the word 'kin' mean legitimate kin, and that, where such
statutes say 'father' or 'mother,' 'children,' 'brothers' or
'sisters,' they mean only legitimate father, mother, children,
brothers or sisters."
S. Speiser, Recovery for Wrongful Death 587 (1966).
[
Footnote 2/3]
He may even, like Shakespeare's Edmund, have spent his life
contriving treachery against his family. Supposing that the Bard
had any views on the law of legitimacy, they might more easily be
discerned from Edmund's character than from the words he utters in
defense of the only thing he cares for, himself.
[
Footnote 2/4]
Numerous Louisiana cases, reflecting the difficulty of
attempting to determine the "real" interest of one person in the
death of another, have insisted upon strict conformity to the
required statutory relationship, and stated that the statute may
not be extended by interpretation to analogous cases.
E.g.,
Bradley v. Swift & Co., 167 La. 249, 119 So. 37 (1928). As
it happens, this Court has had occasion to recognize Louisiana's
interest in strict construction.
See Mobile Life Ins. Co. v.
Brame, 95 U. S. 754,
holding that an insurance company, having paid the insurance after
the wrongful death of its insured, had no cause of action against
the tortfeasor under Louisiana law.
[
Footnote 2/5]
see, e.g., Burthlong v. Huber, 4 So. 2d 480;
Doucet
v. Travelers Ins. Co., 91 F. Supp. 864. The Court speaks in
Levy of tortfeasors going free. However, the deceased in
that case left a legitimate parent. Under the Court's opinion, the
right of legitimate and perhaps dependent parents to sue will
henceforth be cut off by the mere existence of an illegitimate
child, though the child be a self-supporting adult, and though the
child elect not to sue. Incidentally, the burden of proving the
nonexistence of such a child will be on the plaintiff parent.
Trahan v. Southern Pacific Co., 209 F. Supp. 334.
[
Footnote 2/6]
Vaughan v. Dalton-Lard Lumber Co., 119 La. 61, 43 So.
926 (1907). At the same time, a wife may recover for the death of a
man to whom she is lawfully married, although she is not dependent
on him for support and, indeed, is living adulterously with someone
else.
Jones v. Massachusetts Bonding & Ins. Co., 55
So. 2d 88.
[
Footnote 2/7]
In
Thompson v. Vestal Lumber & Mfg. Co., 16 So. 2d
594, 596,
aff'd, 208 La. 83, 22 So. 2d 842 (1944), the
court stated:
"Children referred to in this law [the wrongful death statute]
include only those who are the issue of lawful wedlock or who,
being illegitimate, have been acknowledged or legitimated pursuant
to methods expressly established by law."
Article 203 of the Louisiana Civil Code provides that children
may be acknowledged by a declaration, by either or both parents,
executed in the presence of a notary public and two witnesses.
[
Footnote 2/8]
A more obvious analogy from the law of corporations than the
rather far-fetched example the Court has suggested is the
elementary rule that the benefits of doing business in corporate
form may be denied, to the willful, the negligent, and the innocent
alike, if the formalities of incorporation have not been properly
complied with.
[
Footnote 2/9]
Even where liability arises under a federal statute defining
rights in terms of a family relationship to the deceased, federal
courts have generally looked to the law and the formalities of the
appropriate State. In
Seaboard Air Line v. Kenney,
240 U. S. 489,
arising under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 35 Stat. 65, as
amended, 36 Stat. 291, this Court relied upon the North Carolina
determination that the "next of kin" of an illegitimate deceased
were his half siblings, rather than his father. In
De Sylva v.
Ballentine, 351 U. S. 570,
arising under the Copyright Act, 61 Stat. 652, 17 U.S.C. § 1
et
seq., we held that the word "children" in § 24 of that federal
statute should be defined by reference to California law;
California law provided that an illegitimate who had been
acknowledged in writing by his father could inherit from him; since
the illegitimate involved in
De Sylva had been
acknowledged, we held he was included within the statutory term.
Two Justices, concurring in the unanimous result, argued that it
was not proper to look to state law for a definition of the federal
statutory term "children." Nowhere, however, was it suggested that
we look to the Constitution. In
Bell v. Tug Shrike, 332
F.2d 330, the Fourth Circuit looked to Virginia law to determine
whether the plaintiff was a "widow" entitled to bring suit under
the Jones Act, 41 Stat. 1007, 46 U.S.C. § 688. Plaintiff had
"married" her "husband" at a time when he was already married.
Although the preexisting marriage was later dissolved by divorce,
after which plaintiff continued to live with the "husband,"
Virginia does not recognize common law marriages. Consequently,
plaintiff was held not to be a "widow." There was no suggestion
that equal protection was in any way involved.