Decedent, who died as a result of injuries received during the
course of his employment, had maintained a household with four
legitimate minor children, one unacknowledged minor child, and
petitioner, to whom he was not married. His wife had been committed
to a mental hospital. A second illegitimate child was born
posthumously. Under Louisiana's workmen's compensation law
unacknowledged illegitimate children are not within the class of
"children," but are relegated to the lesser status of "other
dependents," and may recover only if there are not enough surviving
dependents in the preceding classes to exhaust the maximum
benefits. The four legitimate children were awarded the maximum
allowable compensation, and the two illegitimate children received
nothing. The Louisiana courts sustained the statutory scheme,
holding that
Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U. S.
68, was not controlling.
Held: Louisiana's denial of equal recovery rights to
the dependent unacknowledged illegitimate children violates the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as the
inferior classification of these dependent children bears no
significant relationship to the recognized purposes of recovery
that workmen's compensation statutes were designed to serve.
Levy v. Louisiana, supra, followed;
Labine v.
Vincent, 401 U. S. 532,
distinguished. Pp.
406 U. S.
167-176.
257 La. 424,
242
So. 2d 567, reversed and remanded.
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER,
C.J., and DOUGLAS, BRENNAN, STEWART, WHITE, and MARSHALL, JJ.,
joined. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result,
post, p.
406 U. S. 176.
REHNQUIST, J., filed a dissenting opinion,
post, p.
406 U. S.
177.
Page 406 U. S. 165
MR. JUSTICE POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question before us, on writ of certiorari to the Supreme
Court of Louisiana, [
Footnote
1] concerns the right of dependent unacknowledged, illegitimate
children to recover under Louisiana workmen's compensation laws
benefits for the death of their natural father on an equal footing
with his dependent legitimate children. We hold that Louisiana's
denial of equal recovery rights to dependent unacknowledged
illegitimates violates the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment.
Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U. S.
68 (1968);
Glona v. American Guarantee &
Liability Insurance Co., 391 U. S. 73
(1968).
On June 22, 1967, Henry Clyde Stokes died in Louisiana of
injuries received during the course of his employment the previous
day. At the time of his death, Stokes resided and maintained a
household with one Willie Mae Weber, to whom he was not married.
Living in the household were four legitimate minor children, born
of the marriage between Stokes and Adlay Jones Stokes, who was at
the time committed to a mental hospital. Also living in the home
was one unacknowledged illegitimate child born of the relationship
between Stokes and Willie Mae Weber. A second illegitimate child of
Stokes and Weber was born posthumously.
On June 29, 1967, Stokes' four legitimate children, through
their maternal grandmother as guardian, filed a claim for their
father's death under Louisiana's workmen's
Page 406 U. S. 166
compensation law. [
Footnote
2] The defendant employer and its insurer impleaded Willie Mae
Weber, who appeared and claimed compensation benefits for the two
illegitimate children.
Meanwhile, the four legitimate children had brought another suit
for their father's death against a third-party tortfeasor, which
was settled for an amount in excess of the maximum benefits
allowable under workmen's compensation. The illegitimate children
did not share in this settlement. Subsequently, the employer
Page 406 U. S. 167
in the initial action requested the extinguishment of all
parties' workmen's compensation claims by reason of the tort
settlement.
The trial judge awarded the four legitimate children the maximum
allowable amount of compensation and declared their entitlement had
been satisfied from the tort suit settlement. Consequently, the
four legitimate children dismissed their workmen's compensation
claim. Judgment was also awarded to Stokes' two illegitimate
offspring to the extent that maximum compensation benefits were not
exhausted by the four legitimate children. Since such benefits had
been entirely exhausted by the amount of the tort settlement, in
which only the four dependent legitimate offspring participated,
the two dependent illegitimate children received nothing.
I
For purposes of recovery under workmen's compensation, Louisiana
law defines children to include
"only legitimate children, stepchildren, posthumous children,
adopted children, and illegitimate children acknowledged under the
provisions of Civil Code Articles 203, 204, and 205. [
Footnote 3]"
Thus, legitimate children and acknowledged illegitimates
Page 406 U. S. 168
may recover on an equal basis. Unacknowledged illegitimate
children, however, are relegated to the lesser status of "other
dependents" under § 1232(8) of the workmen's compensation statute,
[
Footnote 4] and may recover
only if there are not enough surviving dependents in the
preceding classifications to exhaust the maximum allowable benefit.
Both the Louisiana Court of Appeal [
Footnote 5] and a divided Louisiana Supreme Court
[
Footnote 6] sustained these
statutes over petitioner's constitutional objections, holding that
our decision in
Levy, supra, was not controlling.
We disagree. In
Levy, the Court held invalid as denying
equal protection of the laws, a Louisiana statute which barred an
illegitimate child from recovering for the wrongful death of its
mother when such recoveries by legitimate children were authorized.
The Court there decided that the fact of a child's birth out of
wedlock bore no reasonable relation to the purpose of wrongful
death statutes, which compensate children for the death of a
mother. As the Court said in
Levy:
"Legitimacy or illegitimacy of birth has no relation to the
nature of the wrong allegedly inflicted on the mother. These
children, though illegitimate, were dependent on her; she cared for
them and nurtured them; they were indeed hers in the biological and
in the spiritual sense; in her death, they suffered wrong in the
sense that any dependent would."
Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. at
391 U. S.
72.
Page 406 U. S. 169
The court below sought to distinguish
Levy as involving
a statute which absolutely excluded all illegitimates from
recovery, whereas, in the compensation statute in the instant case,
acknowledged illegitimates may recover equally with legitimate
children and
"the unacknowledged illegitimate child is not denied a right to
recover compensation, he being merely relegated to a less favorable
position as are other dependent relatives such as parents. . .
."
Stokes v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 257 La. 424,
433-434,
242
So. 2d 567, 570 (1970). The Louisiana Supreme Court likewise
characterized
Levy as a tort action where the tortfeasor
escaped liability on the fortuity of the potential claimant's
illegitimacy, whereas, in the present action, full compensation was
rendered, and "no tortfeasor goes free because of the law."
Id. at 434, 242 So. 2d at 570.
We do not think
Levy can be disposed of by such finely
carved distinctions. The Court in Levy was not so much concerned
with the tortfeasor going free as with the equality of treatment
under the statutory recovery scheme. Here, as in
Levy,
there is impermissible discrimination. An unacknowledged
illegitimate child may suffer as much from the loss of a parent as
a child born within wedlock or an illegitimate later acknowledged.
So far as this record shows, the dependency and natural affinity of
the unacknowledged illegitimate children for their father were as
great as those of the four legitimate children whom Louisiana law
has allowed to recover. [
Footnote
7] The legitimate children and the illegitimate children all
lived in the home of the deceased, and were
Page 406 U. S. 170
equally dependent upon him for maintenance and support. It is
inappropriate, therefore, for the court below to talk of relegating
the unacknowledged illegitimates "to a less favorable position as
are other dependent relatives such as parents." The unacknowledged
illegitimates are not a parent or some "other dependent relative";
in this case, they are
dependent children, and, as such,
are entitled to rights granted other
dependent
children.
Respondents contend that our recent ruling in
Labine v.
Vincent, 401 U. S. 532
(1971), controls this case. In
Labine, the Court upheld,
against constitutional objections, Louisiana intestacy laws which
had barred an acknowledged illegitimate child from sharing equally
with legitimate children in her father's estate. That decision
reflected, in major part, the traditional deference to a State's
prerogative to regulate the disposition at death of property within
its borders.
Id. at
401 U. S. 538.
The Court has long afforded broad scope to state discretion in this
area. [
Footnote 8] Yet the
substantial state interest in providing for "the stability of . . .
land titles and in the prompt and definitive determination of the
valid ownership of property left by decedents,"
Labine v.
Vincent, 229 So. 2d 449, 452 (La.App. 1969), is absent in the
case at hand.
Moreover, in
Labine, the intestate, unlike deceased in
the present action, might easily have modified his daughter's
disfavored position. As the Court there remarked:
"Ezra Vincent could have left one-third of his property to his
illegitimate daughter had he bothered
Page 406 U. S. 171
to follow the simple formalities of executing a will. He could,
of course, have legitimated the child by marrying her mother, in
which case the child could have inherited his property either by
intestate succession or by will as any other legitimate child."
Labine, supra, at
401 U. S. 539.
Such options, however, were not realistically open to Henry Stokes.
Under Louisiana law, he could not have acknowledged his
illegitimate children even had he desired to do so. [
Footnote 9] The burdens of illegitimacy,
already weighty, become doubly so when neither parent nor child can
legally lighten them.
Both the statute in
Levy and the statute in the present
case involve state-created compensation schemes, designed to
provide close relatives and dependents of a deceased a means of
recovery for his often abrupt and accidental death. Both wrongful
death statutes and workmen's compensation codes represent
outgrowths and modifications of our basic tort law. The former
alleviated the harsh common law rule under which "no person could
inherit the personal right of another to recover for
Page 406 U. S. 172
tortious injuries to his body"; [
Footnote 10] the latter removed difficult obstacles to
recovery in work-related injuries by offering a more certain,
though generally less remunerative, compensation. In the instant
case, the recovery sought under the workmen's compensation statute
was in lieu of an action under the identical death statute which
was at issue in
Levy. [
Footnote 11] Given the similarities in the origins and
purposes of thee two statutes, and the similarity of Louisiana's
pattern of discrimination in recovery rights, it would require a
disregard of precedent and the principles of
stare decisis
to hold that
Levy did not control the facts of the case
before us. It makes no difference that illegitimates are not so
absolutely or broadly barred here as in
Levy; the
discrimination remains apparent.
II
Having determined that
Levy is the applicable
precedent, we briefly reaffirm here the reasoning which produced
that result. The tests to determine the validity of state statutes
under the Equal Protection Clause have been variously expressed,
but this Court requires, at a minimum, that a statutory
classification bear some rational relationship to a legitimate
state purpose.
Morey v. Doud, 354 U.
S. 457 (1957);
Williamson v. Lee Optical Co.,
348 U. S. 483
(1955);
Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe R. Co. v. Ellis,
165 U. S. 150
(1897);
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.
S. 356 (1886). Though the latitude given state economic
and social regulation is necessarily broad, when state statutory
classifications approach sensitive and fundamental personal rights,
this Court exercises a stricter scrutiny,
Brown v. Board of
Education, 347 U. S. 483
(1954);
Harper v. Virginia Board of
Elections, 383 U.S.
Page 406 U. S. 173
663 (1966). The essential inquiry in all the foregoing cases is,
however, inevitably a dual one: what legitimate state interest does
the classification promote? What fundamental personal rights might
the classification endanger?
The Louisiana Supreme Court emphasized strongly the State's
interest in protecting "legitimate family relationships," 257 La.
at 433, 242 So. 2d at 570, and the regulation and protection of the
family unit have indeed been a venerable state concern. We do not
question the importance of that interest; what we do question is
how the challenged statute will promote it. As was said in
Glona:
"[W]e see no possible rational basis . . . 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."
Glona v. American Guarantee & Liability Insurance Co.,
supra, at
391 U. S. 75.
Nor can it be thought here that persons will shun illicit relations
because the offspring may not one day reap the benefits of
workmen's compensation.
It may perhaps be said that statutory distinctions between the
legitimate and illegitimate reflect closer family relationships in
that the illegitimate is more often not under care in the home of
the father, nor even supported by him. The illegitimate, so this
argument runs, may thus be made less eligible for the statutory
recoveries and inheritances reserved for those more likely to be
within the ambit of familial care and affection. Whatever the
merits elsewhere of this contention, it is not compelling in a
statutory compensation scheme where dependency on the deceased is a
prerequisite to anyone's recovery,
Page 406 U. S. 174
and where the acknowledgment so necessary to equal recovery
rights may be unlikely to occur or legally impossible to effectuate
even where the illegitimate child may be nourished and loved.
Finally, we are mindful that States have frequently drawn
arbitrary lines in workmen's compensation and wrongful death
statutes to facilitate potentially difficult problems of proof.
Nothing in our decision would impose on state court systems a
greater burden in this regard. By limiting recovery to dependents
of the deceased, Louisiana substantially lessens the possible
problems of locating illegitimate children and of determining
uncertain claims of parenthood. [
Footnote 12] Our decision fully
Page 406 U. S. 175
respects Louisiana's choice on this matter. It will not expand
claimants for workmen's compensation beyond those in a direct blood
and dependency relationship with the deceased, and it avoids
altogether diffuse questions of affection and affinity which pose
difficult probative problems. Our ruling requires equality of
treatment between two classes of persons the genuineness of whose
claims the State might, in any event, be required to determine.
The state interest in legitimate family relationships is not
served by the statute; the state interest in minimizing problems of
proof is not significantly disturbed by our decision. The inferior
classification of dependent unacknowledged illegitimates bears, in
this instance, no significant relationship to those recognized
purposes of recovery which workmen's compensation statutes
commendably serve.
The status of illegitimacy has expressed through the ages
society's condemnation of irresponsible liaisons beyond the bonds
of marriage. But visiting this condemnation on the head of an
infant is illogical and unjust. [
Footnote 13] Moreover, imposing disabilities on the
illegitimate child is contrary to the basic concept of our system
that legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual
responsibility or wrongdoing. Obviously, no child is responsible
for his birth, and penalizing the illegitimate child is an
ineffectual -- as well as an unjust -- way of deterring the parent.
Courts are powerless to prevent
Page 406 U. S. 176
the social opprobrium suffered by these hapless children, but
the Equal Protection Clause does enable us to strike down
discriminatory laws relating to status of birth [
Footnote 14] where -- as in this case --
the classification is justified by no legitimate state interest,
compelling or otherwise.
Reversed and remanded.
[
Footnote 1]
Stokes v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 257 La. 424,
242 So. 2d
567 (1970).
[
Footnote 2]
La.Rev.Stat. § 23: 1232 (1967) establishes the schedule of
payment of workmen's compensation benefits to various
classifications of dependents as follows:
"Payment to dependents shall be computed and divided among them
on the following basis: "
"(1) If the widow or widower alone, thirty-two and one-half per
centum of wages."
"(2) If the widow or widower and one child, forty-six and
one-quarter per centum of wages."
"(3) If the widow or widower and two or more children,
sixty-five per centum of wages."
"(4) If one child alone, thirty-two and one-half per centum of
wages of deceased."
"(5) If two children, forty-six and one-quarter per centum of
wages."
"(6) If three or more children, sixty-five per centum of
wages."
"(7) If there are neither widow, widower, nor child, then to the
father or mother, thirty-two and one-half per centum of wages of
the deceased. If there are both father and mother, sixty-five
percentum of wages."
"(8) If there are neither widow, widower, nor child, nor
dependent parent entitled to compensation, then to one brother or
sister, thirty-two and one-half per centum of wages with eleven per
centum additional for each brother or sister in excess of one. If
other dependents than those enumerated, thirty-two and one-half per
centum of wages for one, and eleven per centum additional for each
such dependent in excess of one, subject to a maximum of sixty-five
per centum of wages for all, regardless of the number of dependents
."
[
Footnote 3]
La.Rev.Stat. § 23:1021(3). The relevant provisions for
acknowledgment of an illegitimate child are as follows:
La.Civ.Code, Art. 202 (1967):
"Illegitimate children who have been acknowledged by their
father, are called natural children; those who have not been
acknowledged by their father, or whose father and mother were
incapable of contracting marriage at the time of conception, or
whose father is unknown, are contradistinguished by the appellation
of bastards."
La.Civ.Code, Art. 203:
"The acknowledgment of an illegitimate child shall be made by a
declaration executed before a notary public, in presence of two
witnesses, by the father and mother or either of them, whenever it
shall not have been made in the registering of the birth or baptism
of such child."
La.Civ.Code, Art. 204:
"Such acknowledgment shall not be made in favor of children
whose parents were incapable of contracting marriage at the time of
conception; however, such acknowledgment may be made if the parents
should contract a legal marriage with each other."
[
Footnote 4]
See n 2,
supra.
[
Footnote 5]
232 So. 2d 328 (La.App. 1969).
[
Footnote 6]
Stokes v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., see n 1,
supra.
[
Footnote 7]
The affinity and dependency on the father of the posthumously
born illegitimate child are, of course, not comparable to those of
offspring living at the time of their father's death. This fact,
however, does not alter our view of the case. We think a
posthumously born illegitimate child should be treated the same as
a posthumously born legitimate child, which the Louisiana statutes
fail to do.
[
Footnote 8]
The Court over a century ago voiced strong support for state
powers over inheritance:
"Now the law in question is nothing more than an exercise of the
power, which every state and sovereignty possesses, of regulating
the manner and term upon which property real or personal within its
dominion may be transmitted by last will and testament, or by
inheritance, and of prescribing who shall and who shall not be
capable of taking it."
Mager v.
Grima, 8 How. 490, 493 (1850).
See Lyeth v.
Hoey, 305 U. S. 188,
305 U. S. 193
(1938).
[
Footnote 9]
La.Civ.Code, Art. 204,
see n 3,
supra, prohibits acknowledgment of children
whose parents were incapable of contracting marriage at the time of
conception. Acknowledgment may only be made if the parents could
contract a legal marriage with each other. Decedent in the instant
case remained married to his first wife -- the mother of his four
legitimate children -- until his death. Thus, at all times he was
legally barred from marrying Willie Mae Weber, the mother of the
two illegitimate children. It therefore was impossible for him to
acknowledge legally his illegitimate children and thereby qualify
them for protection under the Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Act.
See also Williams v. American Emp. Ins. Co., 237 La. 101,
110 So. 2d
541 (1959), where the Louisiana Supreme Court held that a
posthumously born illegitimate child cannot be classified as a
child entitled to workmen's compensation benefits, as defined under
La.Rev.Stat. § 23:1021(3).
[
Footnote 10]
See 391 U. S. 73,
391 U. S. 76
(1968) (Harlan, J., dissenting in a v.
American Guarantee &
Liability Insurance Co. and
Levy v. Louisiana).
[
Footnote 11]
La.Civ.Code, Art. 2315.
[
Footnote 12]
The most relevant sections of the Louisiana statutes defining
dependency for purposes of workmen's compensation recovery read as
follows:
La.Rev.Stat. § 23:1231:
"For injury causing death within two years after the accident
there shall be paid to the legal dependent of the employee,
actually and wholly dependent upon his earnings for support at the
time of the accident and death, a weekly sum as hereinafter
provided, for a period of four hundred weeks. . . ."
La.Rev.Stat. § 23:1251:
"The following persons shall be conclusively presumed to be
wholly and actually dependent upon the deceased employee:"
"
* * * *"
"(3) A child under the age of eighteen years . . . upon the
parent with whom he is living at the time of the injury of the
parent."
The above section thus qualifies the illegitimate children in
this case as dependents.
La.Rev.Stat. § 23:1252:
"In all other cases, the question of legal and actual dependency
in whole or in part, shall be determined in accordance with the
facts as they may be at the time of the accident and death. . .
."
Naturally, the variations of dependency claims coming to
Louisiana courts under these sections are many, but Louisiana has
consistently required valid evidence of dependency for recovery.
See, e.g., Sandidge v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 29
So. 2d 522 (La.App. 1947), where children, living with their mother
who was separated from the father, in order to receive the maximum
compensation for the father's death, must establish that they were
wholly dependent upon the father for their support.
[
Footnote 13]
See, e.g., Gray & Rudovsky, The Court Acknowledges
the Illegitimate:
Levy v. Louisiana and
Glona v.
American Guarantee & Liability Insurance Co., 118
U.Pa.L.Rev. 1 (1969). A comprehensive study of the legal status of
illegitimacy and the effects thereof is H. Krause, Illegitimacy:
Law and Social Policy (1971); reviewed by Wadlington, 58 Va.L.Rev.
188 (1972).
[
Footnote 14]
See Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.
S. 365 (1971);
Hunter v. Erickson, 39 U.
S. 385 (1969);
Brown v. Board of Education,
347 U. S. 483
(1954);
and see also Hirabayashi v. United States,
320 U. S. 81
(1943).
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in the result.
For me, La.Civ.Code, Art. 204, is the provision in the State's
statutory structure that proves fatal for this workmen's
compensation case under the focus of constitutional measurement.
The Article operated to deny Henry Stokes the ability even to
acknowledge his illegitimates so that they might qualify as
children within the definition provided by La.Rev.Stat. §
23:1021(3). This is so because the decedent (inasmuch as he was
then married to Adlay Jones Stokes and remained married to her the
rest of his life) and the mother were incapable of contracting
marriage at the time of conception and thereafter. This bar,
indeed, under the Court's decided cases, denied equal protection to
the illegitimates.
Cf. Labine v. Vincent, 401 U.
S. 532,
401 U. S. 539
(1971).
I thus give primary emphasis to the presence of Art. 204 and, I
believe, far more emphasis than does the Court. If that statute did
not exist or were inapplicable, the case might be a different one.
While the Court refers to Art. 204, and to a degree relies upon it,
ante at
406 U. S. 171
n. 9, it seems to me that it does so only secondarily. I read the
opinion as flatly granting dependent unacknowledged illegitimate
children full equality with dependent legitimate children, and
therefore as striking down the Louisiana
Page 406 U. S. 177
statutory scheme even for the situation where the father has the
power to acknowledge his illegitimates but refrains from doing so.
In other words, the Court holds the Louisiana system
unconstitutional with respect to illegitimate dependent children
wholly apart from the barrier of Art. 204. Certainly, the first
paragraph of the opinion is to this effect.
In deciding this case, I need not, and would not, go that far. I
would let the resolution of that issue await its appropriate
presentation.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.
This case is distinguishable from
Levy v. Louisiana,
391 U. S. 68
(1968), and could be decided the other way on the basis of this
Court's more recent decision in
Labine v. Vincent,
401 U. S. 532
(1971). Yet I certainly do not regard the Court's decision as an
unreasonable drawing of the line between
Levy and
Labine, and would not feel impelled to dissent if I
regarded
Levy as rightly decided. I do not so regard it. I
must agree with Mr. Justice Harlan's dissenting opinion, which
described
Levy and its companion case,
Glona v.
American Guarantee & Liability Insurance Co., 391 U. S.
73 (1968), as "constitutional curiosities," and called
the Court's method of reaching the result "a process that can only
be described as brute force."
Id. at
391 U. S.
76.
Since Levy was a constitutional holding, its doctrine is open to
later reexamination to a greater extent than if it had decided a
question of statutory construction or some other nonconstitutional
issue.
See Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U. S.
1,
399 U. S. 22
(1970) (BURGER, C.J., dissenting);
Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail
Clerks Union, 398 U. S. 235,
398 U. S. 259
(1970) (Black, J., dissenting);
Burnet v. Coronado Oil &
Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393,
285 U. S.
405-410 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
Page 406 U. S. 178
The Equal Protection Clause was adopted as a part of the
Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Five years later Mr. Justice Miller
delivered this Court's initial construction of that amendment in
his classic opinion in
Slaughter-House
Cases, 16 Wall. 36 (1873). After setting forth an
account of the adoption of that amendment, he described the account
as a "recapitulation of events, almost too recent to be called
history, but which are familiar to us all." 16 Wall. at
83 U. S. 71.
Referring to the Equal Protection Clause, he said:
"We doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed
by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class, or on
account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview
of this provision."
16 Wall. at
83 U. S. 81. In
nearly 100 years of subsequent adjudication concerning this clause,
the Court has adhered to the notion expressed in the
Slaughter-House Cases that racial classifications are
"suspect."
See, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S.
1 (1967). But during that same period of time, this
Court has proved Mr. Justice Miller a bad prophet with respect to
nonracial classification.
As noted in
Levy, in the field of economic and social
legislation, the Court has given great latitude to the legislatures
in making classifications.
Williamson v. Lee Optical Co.,
348 U. S. 483,
348 U. S. 489
(1955);
Morey v. Doud, 354 U. S. 457
(1957). The test has been whether there is any rational basis for
the legislative classification.
See Kotch v. Board of River
Port Pilot Comm'rs, 330 U. S. 552,
330 U. S. 556
(1947).
"State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their
constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws
result in some inequality. A statutory discrimination will not be
set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to
justify it."
McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420,
366 U. S.
425-426
Page 406 U. S. 179
(1961). Under this test, so long as the "discrimination is
founded upon a reasonable distinction, or difference in state
policy,"
Allied Stores of Ohio, Inc. v. Bowers,
358 U. S. 522,
358 U. S. 528
(1959), the Court will not attempt to weigh its social value or
determine whether the classification might have been more finely
drawn.
Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.
S. 726 (1963). However, this salutary principle has been
departed from by the Court in recent years, as pointed out in its
opinion here, where the Court has felt that the classification has
affected what it conceives to be "fundamental personal rights."
The difficulty with this approach, devoid as it is of any
historical or textual support in the language of the Equal
Protection Clause, is that it leaves apparently to the Justices of
this Court the determination of what are, and what are not,
"fundamental personal rights." Those who framed and ratified the
Constitution and the various amendments to it chose to select
certain particular types of rights and freedoms, and to guarantee
them against impairment by majority action through legislation or
otherwise. While the determination of the extent to which a right
is protected may result in the drawing of fine lines, the
fundamental sanction of the right itself is found in the language
of the Constitution, and not elsewhere. The same is unfortunately
not true of the doctrine of "fundamental personal rights." This
body of doctrine created by the Court can only be described as a
judicial superstructure, awkwardly engrafted upon the Constitution
itself.
The Court's experience with similar superstructures has not been
a happy one. The first part of this century saw the evolution of
the doctrine of "freedom of contract" which was held by the Court
during part of that time to be a part of the Fourteenth Amendment's
requirement that no person be deprived of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law. This doctrine
Page 406 U. S. 180
had its just deserts in
West Coast Hotel Co. v.
Parrish, 300 U. S. 379,
300 U. S. 391
(1937), where Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for the Court,
said:
"The constitutional provision invoked is the due process clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment governing the States, as the due
process clause invoked in the
Adkins case governed
Congress. In each case, the violation alleged by those attacking
minimum wage regulation for women is deprivation of freedom of
contract. What is this freedom? The Constitution does not speak of
freedom of contract. It speaks of liberty, and prohibits the
deprivation of liberty without due process of law."
In a similar vein, it may be said that the Constitution does not
speak of "fundamental personal rights," but speaks of the equal
protection of the laws and prohibits the denial thereof. Two years
ago, this Court, in
Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.
S. 471 (1970), recognized that the broad latitude
accorded state legislatures by both the contemporary history and
the text of the Equal Protection Clause was not limited to statutes
regulating business or industry. There, in a case dealing with the
administration of public welfare assistance which, the Court noted,
"involves the most basic economic needs of impoverished human
beings," the Court nonetheless quite properly applied the "rational
basis" constitutional standard. 397 U.S. at
397 U. S. 485.
It reaffirmed the historically correct statement of the meaning of
equal protection in these words:
"In the area of economics and social welfare, a State does not
violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because the
classifications made by its law are imperfect. If the
classification has some 'reasonable basis,' it does not offend the
Constitution simply because the classification 'is not made
with
Page 406 U. S. 181
mathematical nicety or because, in practice, it results in some
inequality.'
Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co.,
220 U. S.
61,
220 U. S. 78."
"The problems of government are practical ones, and may justify,
if they do not require, rough accommodations -- illogical, it may
be, and unscientific."
Metropolis Theatre Co. v. City of Chicago, 228 U. S.
61,
228 U. S. 670.
"A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of
facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it."
McGowan v.
Maryland, 366 U. S. 420,
366 U. S.
426.
The Court in today's opinion, recognizing that two different
standards have been applied in equal protection cases, apparently
formulates a hybrid standard which is the basis of decision here.
The standard is a two-pronged one:
"What legitimate state interest does the classification promote?
What fundamental personal rights might the classification
endanger?"
Surely there could be no better nor more succinct guide to sound
legislation than that suggested by these two questions. They are
somewhat less useful, however, as guides to constitutional
adjudication. How is this Court to determine whether or not a state
interest is "legitimate"? And how is the Court to know when it is
dealing with a "fundamental personal right"?
While the Court's opinion today is by no means a sharp departure
from the precedents on which it relies, it is an extraordinary
departure from what I conceive to be the intent of the framers of
the Fourteenth Amendment and the import of the traditional
presumption of constitutionality accorded to legislative
enactments. Nowhere in the text of the Constitution, or in its
plain implications, is there any guide for determining what is a
"legitimate" state interest, or what is a "fundamental personal
right." The traditional police power of the
Page 406 U. S. 182
States has been deemed to embrace any measure thought to further
the wellbeing of the State in question, subject only to the
specific prohibitions contained in the Federal Constitution. That
Constitution of course contains numerous guarantees of individual
liberty, which I would have no trouble describing as "fundamental
personal liberties," but the right of illegitimate children to sue
in state court to recover workmen's compensation benefits is not
among them.
The relationship of the "legitimate" state interest and
"fundamental personal right" analysis to the constitutional
guarantee of equal protection of the law is approximately the same
as that of "freedom of contract" to the constitutional guarantee
that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law. It is an invitation for judicial
exegesis over and above the commands of the Constitution, in which
values that cannot possibly have their source in that instrument
are invoked to either validate or condemn the countless laws
enacted by the various States. In refusing to accept the breadth of
meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment urged upon the Court in the
Slaughter-House Cases, Mr. Justice Miller said:
"And still further, such a construction, followed by the
reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in
these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon
all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own
citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as
consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the
adoption of this amendment."
16 Wall. at 78.
Mr. Justice Harlan made clear in his dissent in
Levy
the exclusively statutory basis for wrongful death actions as a
matter of legal history, and the same may be even more emphatically
said about claims for workmen's
Page 406 U. S. 183
compensation benefits. In spite of the Court's statement of a
test, one part of which requires the determination of the extent to
which "fundamental personal rights" might be endangered by the
Louisiana classification here, we are nowhere told in the opinion
just what "fundamental personal right" it is that is involved, to
say nothing of whether it is "endangered." The Court says that,
while society has long condemned "irresponsible liaisons beyond the
bonds of marriage," nonetheless "visiting this condemnation on the
head of an infant is illogical and unjust." A fair-minded man might
regard it as both, but the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment requires neither that state enactments be
"logical" nor does it require that they be "just" in the common
meaning of those terms. It requires only that there be some
conceivable set of facts that may justify the classification
involved.
In the instant case, I cannot condemn as irrational Louisiana's
distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. In a
statutory compensation scheme such as this, the State must
inevitably draw rather fine and arbitrary lines. For example,
Louisiana declares that parents will have priority in this scheme
over first cousins, regardless of the degree of dependency or
affection in any given case. Surely no one would condemn this
classification as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, since it
is likely to reflect fairly the unarticulated intent of the
decedent. Similarly, the State might rationally presume that the
decedent would have preferred the compensation to go to his
legitimate children, rather than those illegitimates whom he has
not acknowledged.
Although the majority argues that "the state interest in
minimizing problems of proof is not
significantly
disturbed by our decision,"
ante at
406 U. S. 175
(emphasis added), it clearly recognizes, as it must, that, under
its decision,
Page 406 U. S. 184
additional and sometimes more difficult problems of proof of
paternity and dependency may be raised. This is particularly true
with respect to petitioner's youngest child, who was not born until
after the death of his father. I believe that a State's desire to
lessen these problems under its statutory scheme is a rational
basis for difference in treatment of the two classes.
Finally, the majority apparently draws some comfort from the
fact that the illegitimate children here could not have been
acknowledged, since the decedent remained married to another woman
while he raised these children. However, I do not believe that it
follows from this fact that the statutory classification is
irrational. On the contrary, this element of the statutory scheme
points up another possible legislative purpose which I do not
believe this Court should so freely dismiss. Louisiana, like many
other States, has a wide variety of laws designed to encourage
legally recognized and responsible family relationships. I believe
this particular statutory provision, forbidding acknowledgment of
illegitimate children when the parents were not free to marry (in
this case, because the father was already married to another
woman), might be considered part of that statutory pattern designed
to discourage formation of illicit family relationships. Whether
this is a wise state policy, and whether this particular statute
will be particularly effective in advancing it, are not matters for
this Court's determination.
Levy and today's decision are not only inconsistent
with the long line of earlier cases construing the Equal Protection
Clause to forbid only irrational classifications; they are quite
inconsistent with
Dandridge v. Williams, supra, decided
two years after
Levy. If state welfare legislation
involving "the most basic economic needs of impoverished human
beings" is to be judged by the traditional "reasonable basis"
standard, I am at a
Page 406 U. S. 185
loss to see why that standard should not likewise govern
legislation determining eligibility for state workmen's
compensation benefits.
All legislation involves classification and line drawing of one
kind or another. When this Court expands the traditional
"reasonable basis" standard for judgment under the Equal Protection
Clause into a search for "legitimate" state interests that the
legislation may "promote," and "for fundamental personal rights"
that it might "endanger," it is doing nothing less than passing
policy judgments upon the acts of every state legislature in the
country.