Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/412/441
Timestamp: 2015-04-01 08:49:15
Document Index: 541515670

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 10', '§ 126', '§ 10', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 122', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 126', '§ 10', '§ 126']

John W. VLANDIS, Director of Admissions, the University of Connecticut, Appellant, v. Margaret Marsh KLINE and Patricia Catapano. | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews John W. VLANDIS, Director of Admissions, the University of Connecticut, Appellant, v. Margaret Marsh KLINE and Patricia Catapano.
412 U.S. 441 (93 S.Ct. 2230, 37 L.Ed.2d 63)
Argued: March 20, 1973.
[HTML] dissent, REHNQUIST, DOUGLAS
Connecticut requires nonresidents enrolled in the state university system to pay tuition and other fees at higher rates than state residents and provides an irreversible and irrebuttable statutory presumption that because the legal address of a student, if married, was outside the State at the time of application for admission or, if single, was outside the State at some point during the preceding year, he remains a nonresident as long as he is a student in Connecticut. Appellees challenge that presumption, claiming that they have a constitutional right to controvert it by presenting evidence of bona fide residence in the State. The District Court upheld their claim. Held: The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not permit Connecticut to deny an individual the opportunity to present evidence that he is a bona fide resident entitled to in-state rates, on the basis of a permanent and irrebuttable presumption of nonresidence, when that presumption is not necessarily or universally true in fact, and when the State has reasonable alternative means of making the crucial determination. Pp. 446454.
Like many other States, Connecticut requires nonresidents of the State who are enrolled in the state university system to pay tuition and other fees at higher rates than residents of the State who are so enrolled. Conn.Gen.Stat.Rev. § 10329b (Supp.1969), as amended by Public Act No. 5, § 126 (June Sess. 1971).
Section 126(a)(2) of Public Act No. 5, amending § 10329b, provides that an unmarried student shall be classified as a nonresident, or 'out of state,' student if his 'legal address for any part of the one-year period immediately prior to his application for admission at a constituent unit of the state system of higher education was outside of Connecticut.' With respect to married students, § 126(a)(3) of the Act provides that such a student, if living with his spouse, shall be classified as 'out of state' if his 'legal address at the time of his application for admission to such a unit was outside of Connecticut.' These classifications are permanent and irrebuttable for the whole time that the student remains at the university since § 126(a)(5) of the Act commands that: 'The status of a student, as established at the time of his application for admission at a constituent unit of the state system of higher education under the provisions of this section, shall be his status for the entire period of his attendance at such constituent unit.' The present case concerns the constitutional validity of this conclusive and unchangeable presumption of nonresident status from the fact that, at the time of application for admission, the student, if married, was then living outside of Connecticut, or, if single, had lived outside the State at some point during the preceding year.
One appellee, Margaret Marsh Kline, is an undergraduate student at the University of Connecticut. In May of 1971, while attending college in California, she became engaged to Peter Kline, a lifelong Connecticut resident. Because the Klines wished to reside in Connecticut after their marriage, Mrs. Kline applied to the University of Connecticut from California. In late May, she was accepted and informed by the University that she would be considered an in-state student. On June 26, 1971, the appellee and Peter Kline were married in California, and soon thereafter took up residence in Storrs, Connecticut, where they have established a permanent home. Mrs. Kline has a Connecticut driver's license, her car is registered in Connecticut, and she is registered as a Connecticut voter. In July 1971, Public Act No. 5 went into effect. Accordingly, the appellant, Director of Admissions at the University of Connecticut, irreversibly classified Mrs. Kline as an out-of-state student, pursuant to § 126(a)(3) of that Act. As a consequence, she was required to pay $150 tuition and a $200 nonresident fee for the first semester, whereas a student classified as a Connecticut resident paid no tuition; and upon registration for the second semester, she was required to pay $425 tuition plus another $200 nonresident fee, while a student classified as a Connecticut resident paid only $175 tuition.
Appellees then brought suit in the District Court pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. 1983, contending that they were bona fide residents of Connecticut, and that § 126 of Public Act No. 5, under which they were classified as nonresidents for purposes of their tuition and fees, infringed their rights to due process of law and equal protection of the laws, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
After the convening of a three-judge District Court, that court unanimously held §§ 126(a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(5) unconstitutional, as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, and enjoined the appellant from enforcing those sections. D.C., 346 F.Supp. 526 (1972). The court also found that before the commencement of the spring semester in 1972, each appellee was a bona fide resident of Connecticut; and it accordingly ordered that the appellant refund to each of them the amount of tuition and fees paid in excess of the amount paid by resident students for that semester. On December 4, 1972, we noted probable jurisdiction of this appeal. 409 U.S. 1036, 93 S.Ct. 521, 34 L.Ed.2d 485.
Statutes creating permanent irrebuttable presumptions have long been disfavored under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. In Heiner v. Donnan, 285 U.S. 312, 52 S.Ct. 358, 76 L.Ed. 772 (1932), the Court was faced with a constitutional challenge to a federal statute that created a conclusive presumption that gifts made within two years prior to the donor's death were made in contemplation of death, thus requiring payment by his estate of a higher tax. In holding that this irrefutable assumption was so arbitrary and unreasonable as to deprive the taxpayer of his property without due process of law, the Court stated that it had 'held more than once that a statute creating a presumption which operates to deny a fair opportunity to rebut it violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.' Id., at 329, 52 S.Ct., at 362. See, e.g., Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, 270 U.S. 230, 46 S.Ct. 260, 70 L.Ed. 557 (1926); Hoeper v. Tax Comm'n, 284 U.S. 206, 52 S.Ct. 120, 76 L.Ed. 248 (1931). See also Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 468469, 63 S.Ct. 1241, 12451246, 87 L.Ed. 1519 (1943); Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 2953, 89 S.Ct. 1532, 15441557, 23 L.Ed.2d 57 (1969). Cf. Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 418419, 90 S.Ct. 642, 653654, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970).
Likewise, in Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972), the Court struck down, as violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Illinois' irrebuttable statutory presumption that all unmarried fathers are unqualified to raise their children. Because of that presumption, the statute required the State, upon the death of the mother, to take custody of all such illegitimate children, without providing any hearing on the father's parental fitness. It may be, the Court said, 'that most unmarried fathers are unsuitable and neglectful parents. . . . But all unmarried fathers are not in this category; some are wholly suited to have custody of their children.' Id., at 654, 92 S.Ct., at 1214. Hence, the Court held that the State could not conclusively presume that any individual unmarried father was unfit to raise his children; rather, it was required by the Due Process Clause to provide a hearing on that issue. According to the Court, Illinois 'insists on presuming rather than proving Stanley's unfitness solely because it is more convenient to presume than to prove. Under the Due Process Clause that advantage is insufficient to justify refusing a father a hearing . . ..' Id., at 658, 92 S.Ct., at 1216.
Second, the State argues that even if a student who applied to the University from out of State may at some point become a bona fide resident of Connecticut, the State can nonetheless reasonably decide to favor with the lower rates only its established residents, whose past tax contributions to the State have been higher. According to the State, the fact that established residents or their parents have supported the State in the past justifies the conclusion that applicants from out of Statewho are presumed not to be such established residentsmay be denied the lower rates, even if they have become bona fide residents.
Connecticut's statutory scheme, however, makes no distinction on its face between established residents and new residents. Rather, through § 122, the State purports to distinguish, for tuition purposes, between residents and nonresidents by granting the lower rates to the former and denying them to the latter.
In these circumstances, the State cannot now seek to justify its classification of certain bona fide residents as nonresidents, on the basis that their Connecticut residency is 'new.'
Moreover, § 126 would not always operate to effectuate the State's asserted interest. For it is not at all clear that the conclusive presumption required by that section prevents only 'new' residents, rather than 'established' residents, from obtaining the lower tuition rates. For example, a student whose parents were life-long residents of Connecticut, but who went to college at Harvard, established a legal address there, and applied to the University of Connecticut's graduate school during his senior year, would be permanently classified as an 'out of state student,' despite his family's status as 'established' residents of Connecticut. Similarly, the appellee Kline may herself be a 'new' resident of Connecticut; but her husband is an established, lifelong resident, whose past tax contribution to the State, under the State's theory, should entitle his family to the lower rates. Conversely, the State makes no attempt to ensure that those students to whom it does grant in-state status are 'established' residents of Connecticut. Any married person, for instance, who moves to Connecticut before applying to the University would be considered a Connecticut resident, even if he has lived there only one day. Thus, even in terms of the State's own asserted interest in favoring established residents over new residents, the provisions of § 126 are so arbitrary as to constitute a denial of due process of law.
In Stanley v. Illinois, supra, however, the Court stated that 'the Constitution recognizes higher values than speed and efficiency.' 405 U.S., at 656, 92 S.Ct., at 1215. The State's interest in administrative ease and certainty cannot, in and of itself, save the conclusive presumption from invalidity under the Due Process Clause where there are other reasonable and practicable means of establishing the pertinent facts on which the State's objective is premised. In the situation before us, reasonable alternative means for determining bona fide residence are available. Indeed, one such method has already been adopted by Connecticut; after § 126 was invalidated by the District Court, the State established reasonable criteria for evaluating bona fide residence for purposes of tuition and fees at its university system.
These criteria, while perhaps more burdensome to apply than an irrebuttable presumption, are certainly sufficient to prevent abuse of the lower, in-state rates by students who come to Connecticut solely to obtain an education.
We fully recognize that a State has a legitimate interest in protecting and preserving the quality of its colleges and universities and the right of its own bona fide residents to attend such institutions on a preferential tuition basis.
We hold only that a permanent irrebuttable presumption of nonresidencethe means adopted by Connecticut to preserve that legitimate interestis violative of the Due Process Clause, because it provides no opportunity for students who applied from out of State to demonstrate that they have become bona fide Connecticut residents. The State can establish such reasonable criteria for in-state status as to make virtually certain that students who are not, in fact, bona fide residents of the State, but who have come there solely for educational purposes, cannot take advantage of the in-state rates. Indeed, as stated above, such criteria exist; and since § 126 was invalidated, Connecticut, through an official opinion of its Attorney General, has adopted one such reasonable standard for determining the residential status of a student. The Attorney General's opinion states:
'In reviewing a claim of in-state status, the issue becomes essentially one of domicile. In general, the domicile of an individual is his true, fixed and permanent home and place of habitation. It is the place to which, whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning. This general statement, however, is difficult of application. Each individual case must be decided on its own particular facts. In reviewing a claim, relevant criteria include year-round residence, voter registration, place of filing tax returns, property ownership, driver's license, car registration, marital status, vacation employment, etc.'
Because we hold that the permanent irrebuttable presumption of nonresidence created by subsections (a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(5) of Conn.Gen.Stat.Rev. § 10329b (Supp.1969), as amended by Public Act No. 5, § 126 (June Sess. 1971), violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the judgment of the District Court is affirmed. It is so ordered.
From these and other cases, such as Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970); Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 92 S.Ct. 251, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 93 S.Ct. 1764, 36 L.Ed.2d 583 (1973); and Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164, 92 S.Ct. 1400, 31 L.Ed.2d 768 (1972), it is clear that we employ not just one, or two, but, as my Brother Marshall has so ably demonstrated, a 'spectrum of standards in reviewing discrimination allegedly violative of the Equal Protection Clause.' San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 9899, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 1330, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting). Sometimes we just say the claim is 'invidious ' and let the matter rest there, as Mr. Justice Stewart did, for example, in concurring in the judgment in Frontiero. But at other times we sustain the discrimination, if it is justifiable on any conceivable rational basis, or strike it down, unless sustained by some compelling interest of the State, as, for example, when a State imposes a discrimination that burdens or penalizes the exercise of a constitutional right. See, e.g., Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969). I am unconfortable with the dichotomy, for it must now be obvious, or has been all along, that, as the Court's assessment of the weight and value of the individual interest escalates, the less likely it is that mere administrative convenience and avoidance of hearings or investigations will be sufficient to justify what otherwise would appear to be irrational discriminations.
A state university today is an establishment with capital costs of many millions of dollars of investment. Its annual operating costs likewise may run into the millions. Parents and other taxpayers willingly carry this heavy burden because they believe in the values of higher education. It is not narrow provincialism for the State to think that each State should carry its own educational burdens. Until we redefine our system of governmentas we are free to do by constitutionally prescribed meansthe States may restrict subsidized education to their own residents. This much the Court recognizes and it likewise recognizes that the statutory scheme under review reasonably tends to support that end.
Distressingly, the Court applies 'strict scrutiny' and invalidates Connecticut's statutory scheme without explaining why the statute impairs a genuine constitutional interest truly worthy of the standard of close judicial scrutiny. The real issue here is not whether holes can be picked in the Connecticut scheme; of course, that is readily done with this 'bad' statute. Whether we deal with statutes of Connecticut or of Congress, we can find flaws, gaps, and hard and unseemly results at times. But our function in constitutional adjudication is not to see whether there is some conceivably 'less restrictive' alternative to the statutory classifications under review. The Court's task is to explain why the 'strict scrutiny' test, previously confined to the areas, should now in practical effect be read into the Due Process Clause. The drift of Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972), on which the Court relies heavily, was to apply a similar test, but at least there the Court essayed to explain that the rights of fatherhood and family were regarded as "essential" and "basic civil rights of man," id., at 651, 92 S.Ct., at 1212, and to provide an analytic basis for the result reached. To the same effect was Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535, 91 S.Ct. 1586, 29 L.Ed.2d 90 (1971), where the Court noted that suspension of a driver's license might impair the pursuit of a livelihood, thereby infringing 'important interests of the licensees.' Id., at 539, 91 S.Ct., at 1589. Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 85 S.Ct. 775, 13 L.Ed.2d 675 (1965), an equal protection case, involved deprivation of the right to vote, by the Court's, and Mr. Justice Stewart's own description, a matter 'close to the core of our constitutional system.' Id., at 96, 85 S.Ct., at 780.
The pressure of today's holding may well push the States to enact reciprocal statutes to the end that Connecticut will undertake to admit as 'resident' students only those students from other States that give the same status to Connecticut residents. When a State allocates a large share of its resources to create and maintain a university whose quality is found attractive to many students from other States, its very success and stature may well operate to cripple it because then, not unnaturally, it will be flooded with applications from students from afar. Perhaps on less 'high ground' students who favor winter sports will flock to the Northeast and Northwest and the sun worshipers will head South. Is the Court willing to say that Connecticut may not grant partial scholarships to persons who have attended a Connecticut secondary school for let us sayat least one full school year and then set nonresident tuition as it does now? We should not be surprised at the natural response of States which, having placed high value on universities, having developed great institutions at large cost, believe that other States should do the same and therefore seek ways to keep the institution in being for its own citizens. I do not suggest these things ought to be done or that they are desirable; rather, I submit, when we examine a statute of a State we should lay aside preferences for or against what the State does in a few particular or isolated cases and look only to what the Constitution forbids a State to do, so as to avoid putting pressure on the States to engage in legislative devices to escape from the hobbles we place on them on matters of purely state concern.
One way to accomplish such a differentiation would be to make the tuition differential turn on whether or not the student was a 'resident' or 'nonresident' of the State at the time tuition is paid. The Court, at least by implication, concedes that such a differentiation would violate no command of the Constitution, but even a capsule examination of how such a plan would operate indicates why it did not commend itself to the Connecticut Legislature. The very act of enrolling in a Connecticut university with the intention of completing a program of studies leading to a degree necessitates the physical presence of the student in the State of Connecticut. Additional indicia of residency, by which the Court apparently sets great storeobtaining a Connecticut motor vehicle registration or driver's license, registering to vote in Connecticutimpose no significant burden on the out-of-state student in comparison with the thousands of dollars he will save in tuition and fees during the pursuit of a four-year course in undergraduate studies. Thus, what the Court concedes to the States in the way of distinguishing between resident and nonresident students, while perhaps a valuable bit of authority in issuing fishing and hunting licenses, is all but useless in making students who come from out of State pay even a portion of their fair share of the cost of the education that they seek to receive in Connecticut state universities.
'(T)he law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.' Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483, 487488, 75 S.Ct. 461, 464, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955).
'The doctrine that prevailed in lockner (Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937), Coppage (Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1, 35 S.Ct. 240, 59 L.Ed. 441); Adkins (Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525, 43 S.Ct. 394, 67 L.Ed. 785), Burns (Jay Burns Baking Co. v. Bryan, 264 U.S. 504, 44 S.Ct. 412, 68 L.Ed. 813), and like casesthat due process authorizes courts to hold laws unconstitutional when they believe the legislature has acted unwiselyhas long since been discarded. We have returned to the original constitutional proposition that courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws. As this Court stated in a unanimous opinion in 1941, 'We are not concerned . . . with the wisdom, need, or appropriateness of the legislation."
Moreover, in Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 85 S.Ct. 775, 13 L.Ed.2d 675 (1965), the Court held that a permanent irrebuttable presumption of nonresidence violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That case involved a provision of the Texas Constitution which prohibited any member of the Armed Forces who entered the service as a resident of another State and then moved his home to Texas during the course of his military duty, from ever satisfying the residence requirement for voting in Texas elections, so long as he remained a member of the Armed Forces. The effect of that provision was to create a conclusive presumption that all servicemen who moved to Texas during their military service, even if they became bona fide residents of Texas, nonetheless remained nonresidents for purposes of voting. The Court held that '(b)y forbidding a soldier ever to controvert the presumption of nonresidence, the Texas Constitution imposes an invidious discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.' Id., at 96, 85 S.Ct., at 780. See also Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 349352, 92 S.Ct. 995, 10061008, 31 L.Ed.2d 274 (1972); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969).
But even if we accepted the State's argument that its statutory scheme operates to apportion tuition rates on the basis of old and new residency, that justification itself would give rise to grave problems under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. For in Shapiro v. Thompson, supra, the Court rejected the contention that a challenged classification could be sustained as an attempt to distinguish between old and new residents on the basis of the contribution they have made to the community through past payment of taxes. That reasoning, the Court stated, 'would logically permit the State to bar new residents from schools, parks, and libraries or deprive them of police and fire protection. Indeed it would permit the State to apportion all benefits and services according to the past tax contributions of its citizens. The Equal Protection Clause prohibits such an apportionment of state services.' 394 U.S., at 632633, 89 S.Ct., at 1330. Cf. Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S., at 96, 85 S.Ct., at 780. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S., at 354, 92 S.Ct., at 1009.
Cf. Carrington v. Rash, supra, 380 U.S., at 9596, 85 S.Ct., at 779780; Dunn v. Blumstein, supra, 405 U.S., at 349352, 92 S.Ct., at 10061008; Shapiro v. Thompson, supra, 394 U.S., at 636, 89 S.Ct., at 1332.