Opinion ID: 1496754
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Equal Rights

Text: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that [n]o State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1. Similarly, the Texas Constitution states that [a]ll free men, when they form a social compact, have equal rights.... TEX. CONST. art. I, § 3. Under traditional equal protection analysis, different levels of judicial scrutiny are applied depending upon the type of individual right which the State has chosen to affect through legislative classification. Under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, this Court has previously applied a two-tier analysis: [T]he general rule is that when the classification created by the state regulatory scheme neither infringes fundamental rights or interests nor burdens an inherently suspect class, equal protection analysis requires that the classification be rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Sullivan v. University Interscholastic League, 616 S.W.2d 170, 172 (Tex.1981). Thus, if the legislative classification does not affect a fundamental right or a suspect class, it need only be rationally related to a legitimate state interest in order to pass constitutional muster. See Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 97, 99 S.Ct. 939, 942-43, 59 L.Ed.2d 171 (1979). We apply this same two-prong analysis to the equal protection clause contained in Article I, Section 3 of the Texas Constitution. Spring Branch I.S.D. v. Stamos, 695 S.W.2d 556, 559-60 (Tex.1985). The right accorded to a plaintiff to sue in tort for an injury is not a fundamental right. See Sibley v. Board of Sup'rs of Louisiana, 462 So.2d 149, 155, opinion modified, 477 So.2d 1094 (La.1985). Accordingly, the appropriate level of scrutiny to be applied in this case is whether the classifications drawn by article 4590i are rationally related to a legitimate state interest. See Whitworth, 699 S.W.2d at 197; Spring Branch, 695 S.W.2d at 559. Article 4590i creates two classifications. First, section 11.02 draws a distinction between medical malpractice claimants and other tort claimants. Second, within the class of medical malpractice claimants, there is a distinction drawn based upon whether damages exceed $500,000. Under the rational basis test, I cannot say that this statute is not rationally related to the stated purposes of section 1.02(b). Whether in fact the Act will [achieve its stated goals] is not the question: the Equal Protection Clause is satisfied ... if the Legislature could rationally have decided  that a cap of nonmedical damages would effectuate those goals. See Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 466, 101 S.Ct. 715, 725, 66 L.Ed.2d 659 (1980) (emphasis in original). Where a local economic regulation is challenged on equal protection grounds, we must defer to legislative determinations as to the desirability of particular statutory discrimination. New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 2517, 49 L.Ed.2d 511 (1975). In short, the judiciary may not 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 ..., in the local economic sphere, it is only the invidious discrimination, the wholly arbitrary act, which cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 303-04, 96 S.Ct. at 2517 (citations omitted). This reasoning applies with equal force to the equal rights provision of Article I, Section 3 of the Texas Constitution.