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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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Document 1

Document 2

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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. United States Courthouse Annex

1100 E. Main Street, Suite 501

Richmond, Virginia 23219-3517

Patricia S. Connor

Clerk

www.ca4.uscourts.gov Telephone

(804) 916-2700

 November 8, 2007

 Kevin M. Rose, Esq.

 BOTKIN & ROSE, PC

 3210 Peoples Drive

 Harrisonburg, VA 22801

 Jim Harold Guynn Jr., Esq.

 GUYNN, MEMMER & DILLON, PC

 415 South College Avenue

 Salem, VA 24153

 Re: 06-1654 Van Der Linde Hous v. Rivanna Solid Waste

 3:05-cv-00076-nkm

 Dear Counsel:

 Enclosed is a copy of an order filed today in this case.

 Yours truly,

 PATRICIA S. CONNOR

 Clerk

 /s/ Sarah A. Carmichael

 By: ________________________

 Deputy Clerk

 Enclosure(s)

 cc: Clerk, U. S. District Court

Appeal: 06-1654 Doc: 38 Filed: 11/08/2007 Pg: 2 of 10
Filed: November 8, 2007

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 06-1654

(3:05-cv-00076-nkm)

VAN DER LINDE HOUSING, INCORPORATED,

d/b/a Container Rentals,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

versus

RIVANNA SOLID WASTE AUTHORITY,

Defendant - Appellee.

O R D E R

The court amends its opinion filed November 7, 2007, as

follows: 

On page 2, section I, lines 7 and 14 – the word “Albermarle”

is corrected to read “Albemarle.”

For the Court

/s/ Patricia S. Connor

 

 Clerk

Appeal: 06-1654 Doc: 38 Filed: 11/08/2007 Pg: 3 of 10
PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

VAN DER LINDE HOUSING, 

INCORPORATED, d/b/a Container

Rentals,

Plaintiff-Appellant,  No. 06-1654

v.

RIVANNA SOLID WASTE AUTHORITY,

Defendant-Appellee. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Virginia, at Charlottesville.

Norman K. Moon, District Judge.

(3:05-cv-00076-nkm)

Argued: May 23, 2007

Decided: November 7, 2007

Before WILKINSON and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and

Frank D. WHITNEY, United States District Judge for the

Western District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Whitney wrote the opinion, in

which Judge Wilkinson and Judge Shedd joined. 

COUNSEL

Kevin M. Rose, BOTKIN & ROSE, P.C., Harrisonburg, Virginia, for

Appellant. Jim Harold Guynn, Jr., GUYNN, MEMMER & DILLON,

P.C., Roanoke, Virginia, for Appellee.

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OPINION

WHITNEY, District Judge:

Van der Linde Housing, Inc. ("Van der Linde") appeals the dismissal of its complaint against the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority 

("the Authority"), alleging, inter alia, that it was denied equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. We 

review the district court’s order of dismissal de novo, Baird v. Rose, 

192 F.3d 462, 467 (4th Cir. 1999), and now affirm.

I.

Van der Linde is a Virginia corporation with its principal place of 

business in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a municipal waste disposer, Van 

der Linde owns fourteen roll-off container trucks that it uses to collect, 

transport, and dispose of municipal solid waste pursuant to contracts 

with various third parties. Van der Linde collects municipal solid waste 

primarily from construction sites in several municipalities, including the 

City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia. Van der Linde 

uses a variety of locations for waste disposal, including (at the time 

this action was instituted) a transfer station ("Zion Crossroads Transfer 

Station") near Zion Crossroads, Virginia.

The Authority is a governmental entity that is vested under Va. Code 

§ 15.2-5136 with the authority to fix disposal fees or "tipping fees" on 

waste originating within its service area. The Rivanna Service Area is 

defined as the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, 

Virginia. In 1997, the Authority entered into an agreement with BFI 

Waste Systems of North America, Inc. ("BFI"), which then owned the 

Zion Crossroads Transfer Station, to allow waste haulers within the Rivanna Service Area to deposit their waste at the transfer station. The Zion 

Crossroads Transfer Station is presently owned and operated by Allied 

Waste Systems ("AWS"), BFI’s successor. In addition to operating the 

transfer station, AWS also collects, transports, and disposes of municipal 

solid waste originating in the Rivanna Service Area, competing directly 

against Van der Linde and other waste haulers. 

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Under the agreement, the Authority is responsible for collecting

disposal fees from all Rivanna Service Area haulers which deliver

municipal solid waste to the Zion Crossroads Transfer Station. The

fee has two components: (1) a base disposal fee of $46 per ton that

the Authority collects and pays to AWS for the use of the transfer station; and (2) a "service contribution fee" of $16 per ton, which the

Authority retains in return for providing "comprehensive waste management services." "Comprehensive waste management services" is

not defined in the agreement, but the Authority maintains that it is a

service charge for billing and operational costs. 

Prior to 2005, Van der Linde paid the $46 per ton base disposal fee

directly to AWS and therefore paid nothing to the Authority, since the

Authority was not involved in the billing process. Beginning in 2005,

however, the Authority began asserting its rights under the agreement

to invoice area waste haulers (except AWS) for their use of the transfer station and tack on the $16 per ton service contribution fee. Van

der Linde does not challenge the rationality of exempting AWS from

the $46 per ton base fee, which, if assessed against AWS, would simply be remitted back to itself. However, Van der Linde does argue

that all area waste haulers, including AWS, should share equally in

the responsibility for paying the Authority’s billing and operational

costs through the $16 per ton service contribution fee. 

Van der Linde, through the institution of this lawsuit in late 2005,

had not passed the $16 per ton "service contribution fee" onto its customers, and alleges that because of this it has incurred approximately

$31,882.35 in damages by absorbing the cost of the fee. Additionally,

Van der Linde alleges that it will suffer lost business because AWS

has been contacting customers of Van der Linde and informing them

that they can save $16 per ton by switching to AWS for municipal

waste disposal. Since AWS does not have to pay the $16 fee, it does

not have to pass this cost on to its customers, and thus AWS has a

$16 per ton price advantage over all of its competitors. These activities form the basis of Van der Linde’s equal protection claim. 

II.

A.

The Equal Protection Clause to the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdicVAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE 3

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tion the equal protection of the laws." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.

The Clause does not proscribe most forms of unequal treatment,

because "[l]awmaking by its nature requires that legislatures classify,

and classifications by their nature advantage some and disadvantage

others." Helton v. Hunt, 330 F.3d 242, 245 (4th Cir. 2003). Rather,

the guarantee of equal protection was intended merely "as a restriction on state legislative action inconsistent with elemental constitutional premises." Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 216 (1982). Thus, the

Constitution only forbids arbitrary differentiations among groups of

persons who are similar in all aspects relevant to attaining the legitimate objectives of legislation. F.S. Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia,

253 U.S. 412, 415 (1920). 

Some classifications, like those based on race and gender, are

deemed inherently "suspect" because they are rarely relevant to attaining a permissible legislative goal, and thus are subjected to varying

degrees of heightened scrutiny by the courts. Plyler, 457 U.S. at 216

& n.14. Other classifications will likewise be treated as suspect where

they have the purpose or effect of burdening a group in the exercise

of a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. Id. at 217 &

n.15. But the vast majority of governmental action — especially in

matters of local economics and social welfare, where state governments exercise a plenary police power — enjoys a "strong presumption of validity" and must be sustained against a constitutional

challenge "so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate

end." Helton, 330 F.3d at 246 (emphasis added). 

The Supreme Court has described the rational basis standard of

review as "a paradigm of judicial restraint." F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314 (1993). It is emphatically not the

function of the judiciary to sit as a "super-legislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas

that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect

lines." Smith Setzer & Sons, Inc. v. S.C. Procurement Review Panel,

20 F.3d 1311, 1323 (4th Cir. 1994). Van der Linde bears the heavy

burden of negating every conceivable basis which might reasonably

support the challenged classification. Beach Communications, 508

U.S. at 315. Moreover, the Authority’s policy decisions are "not subject to courtroom fact-finding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data." Id. Neither may a

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policy’s rationality be judged on the basis of its wisdom, fairness, or

logic (or lack thereof). Id. at 313. "[A]bsent some reason to infer

antipathy, even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by

the democratic process and . . . judicial intervention is generally

unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch

has acted." Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 97 (1979). Thus, to be irrational in the Constitutional sense, "the relationship of the classification to its goal" must be "so attenuated as to render the distinction

arbitrary." Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 11 (1992).

B.

Van der Linde cannot satisfy its heavy burden of negating every

conceivable basis supportive of the Authority because there is an

unassailable rational basis supporting the economic classification here

at issue. Van der Linde’s lawsuit seeks nothing more than to challenge the Authority’s assessment of a service fee against waste haulers who utilize disposal services that the Authority makes available

to them. The Authority has negotiated for the right of Van der Linde

and other area waste haulers to dispose of their waste at a type of

facility that they do not own but to which they must have access. The

Authority then charges a service contribution fee for serving in this

capacity as a market intermediary.1

To recite Van der Linde’s argument in these terms is to refute it.

The fundamental difference between Van der Linde and AWS, by

which the Authority legitimately differentiates between them, is ownership versus non-ownership of a waste disposal site. In this one

1Although each waste hauler must have access to some outlet for waste

disposal, no policy of the Authority forces Van der Linde to utilize the

Zion Crossroads Transfer Station and thereby incur the service fee. For

example, nothing in the record suggests that Van der Linde cannot avoid

the fee altogether by (1) opening and operating its own transfer station

or landfill or (2) hauling the municipal solid waste that it collects to an

alternative disposal facility, such as another transfer station or directly to

the landfill. Indeed, at oral argument counsel for Van der Linde represented that his client has begun recycling most of the waste it collects so

as to avoid paying the fees associated with use of the Zion Crossroads

Transfer Station. 

VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE 5

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important respect the economic relationship between the Authority

and AWS is exactly the opposite of the relationship between the

Authority and Van der Linde. AWS, which owns and controls the

Zion Crossroads Transfer Station, obtains no benefit from the Authority’s negotiation of a right of access to local disposal sites. In fact,

AWS helps facilitate the supply of outlets for waste by making its

own transfer station available to all other waste haulers through the

Authority as intermediary. In other words, AWS is a supplier of the

type of public services that the Authority provides, while Van der

Linde is a consumer. 

As far as government programs go, it is hard to conceive of a classification much more rational than the one at issue here. The Authority’s classification places the financial burden upon those entities (like

Van der Linde) that utilize the public services provided by the

Authority, while exempting those entities (like AWS) that the Authority relies upon to ensure public access to those services. Thus, the

classification here at issue is nearly perfectly tailored to effectuate the

purpose for which the Authority exists: making available the means

to dispose of municipal solid waste by negotiating with suppliers for

landfill access and taxing consumers for the Authority’s intermediary

services. This tight fit between the Authority’s classification and a

legitimate public purpose is unassailable from a rational basis standpoint, which would support even a very loose fit. Cf. Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 108 (1979).

C.

Van der Linde nevertheless argues that the Authority’s classification is irrational because in practice it could produce an unintended,

irrational result. The irrational result that Van der Linde fears is the

monopolization of waste collection services in the hands of AWS,

since the Authority’s classification effectively gives AWS a $16 per

ton cost advantage over other waste haulers. 

Van der Linde’s argument demonstrates its fundamental misunderstanding of the rational basis standard of review. The "rational" aspect

of rational basis review refers to a constitutionally minimal level of

rationality; it is not an invitation to scrutinize either the instrumental

rationality of the chosen means (i.e., whether the classification is the

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best one suited to accomplish the desired result), or the normative

rationality of the chosen governmental purpose (i.e., whether the public policy sought to be achieved is preferable to other possible public

ends). In other words, the Equal Protection Clause does not require

the government to pursue a sound economic policy, only one that

does not offend entrenched constitutional principles. Nor does it

require that the methods by which the government pursues those policies be particularly palatable to us, so long as they are not completely

arbitrary.2 Thus, from a constitutional standpoint, our analysis is unaffected by the fact that the Authority has chosen to implement a waste

management plan — clearly a legitimate governmental purpose —

that incidentally might result in the monopolization of the waste collection market. Despite this potentially undesirable result, our inquiry

ends with a determination of minimal rationality. Van der Linde’s

proper mode of redress for this kind of grievance is to challenge the

Authority’s policy by engaging the political process or using state

channels for review of municipal governance, not by filing an equal

protection lawsuit in federal court. 

For these reasons, the district court’s judgment of dismissal is

AFFIRMED.

2As Justice Holmes wrote in dissent in the now-overruled case of

Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 75-76 (1905): 

[A] Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic

theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez faire. It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain

opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought

not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes

embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United

States. 

VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE 7

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