Opinion ID: 1207883
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Labor Code section 1850 offends the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Text: [11] The Fourteenth Amendment applies to and protects all persons; therefore the equal protection clause extends to aliens. ( Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) 118 U.S. 356 [30 L.Ed. 220, 6 S.Ct. 1064].) [18] [12] Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the state may not condition public employment upon a waiver of constitutional right [19] nor may the state create arbitrary classifications for purposes of hiring and firing public employees. [20] [13] The concept of the equal protection of the laws compels recognition of the proposition that persons similarly situated with respect to the legitimate purpose of the law receive like treatment. In cases involving suspect classifications [21] or fundamental interests [22] of those suffering discrimination, the United States Supreme Court prescribes a strict standard for reviewing the particular enactment under the equal protection clause. Not only must the classification reasonably relate to the purposes of the law, [23] but also the state must bear the burden of establishing that the classification constitutes a necessary means of accomplishing a legitimate state interest, [24] and that the law serves to promote a compelling state interest. [25] [14] Labor Code section 1850 discriminates on the basis of alienage, and such classification invokes a strict standard of review. [26] [15] Moreover, the state may not arbitrarily foreclose to any person the right to pursue an otherwise lawful occupation. [27] Any limitation on the opportunity for employment impedes the achievement of economic security, which is essential for the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness; courts sustain such limitations only after careful scrutiny. Finally, a special mandate compels us to guard the interests of aliens: [P]rejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry. ( United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938) 304 U.S. 144, 153 & fn. 4 [82 L.Ed. 1234, 1242, 58 S.Ct. 778].) We note that particular alien groups and aliens in general have suffered from such prejudice. [28] Even without such prejudice, aliens in California, denied the right to vote, [29] lack the most basic means of defending themselves in the political processes. Under such circumstances, courts should approach discriminatory legislation with special solicitude. [30] [16] Labor Code section 1850 arbitrarily discriminates by classifying persons without relation to any permissible purpose of that section. Section 1850 allegedly seeks to promote the establishment of acceptable wages and working conditions in the contract construction industry. [31] Although this objective constitutes a legitimate state interest, its statutory articulation cannot discriminate arbitrarily or otherwise classify persons without relation to the objective of the enactment. [32] The fact of alienage bears no relationship either to the suitability of those who work upon public projects or to the need of the laborer for such employment. Indeed, defendant has asserted no intrinsic differences between the alien and the citizen which would render the latter the more proper subject for the employment advantages bestowed by the section. [33] The classification does not reasonably relate to the permissible legislative goal of the protection of the labor market in the contract construction field. [34] Defendant argues, however, that the state retains the right to protect its own citizens against alien economic competition. Such a purpose constitutes prima facie discrimination for its own sake; and if the state sought truly effective protection against alien economic competition by extending a prohibition of limitation against all types of alien employment, such a scheme would clearly offend equal protection. ( Truax v. Raich, supra, 239 U.S. 33.) May the state simply favor its own citizens in the disbursement of public funds? First, since aliens support the State of California with their tax dollars, [35] any preference in the disbursement of public funds which excludes aliens appears manifestly unfair. Second, section 1850 prevents aliens from receiving the federal funds which largely support the construction of our highways and other projects; the state can urge no claim to a proprietary interest in such federal funds. Finally, any classification which treats all aliens as undeserving and all United States citizens as deserving rests upon a very questionable basis. The citizen may be a newcomer to the state who has little stake in the community; the alien may be a resident who has lived in California for a lengthy period, paid taxes, served in our armed forces, [36] demonstrated his worth as a constructive human being, and contributed much to the growth and development of the state. [37] Pursuing its argument that the state possesses proprietary power freely to prescribe the terms and conditions of public employment, defendant cites the case of City of Pasadena v. Charleville (1932) 215 Cal. 384 [10 P.2d 745], in which this court upheld the constitutionality of Labor Code section 1850. We rested our decision on two United States Supreme Court cases which together upheld a statute similar to section 1850. ( Heim v. McCall, supra, 239 U.S. 175; Crane v. New York (1915) 239 U.S. 195 [60 L.Ed. 218, 36 S.Ct. 85].) Nevertheless, City of Pasadena must be reconsidered for two reasons: first, the case of Takahashi v. Fish & Game Com., supra, 334 U.S. 410, has cast doubt upon the vitality remaining in those earlier decisions; and second, developments in the law of equal protection require us to reexamine the bases underlying the holdings of those cases. [38] The United States Supreme Court in Heim v. McCall, supra, 239 U.S. 175, the case relied upon by this court in originally upholding the constitutionality of Labor Code section 1850, rested its decision to sustain the statute there involved squarely upon the proposition that the state possesses all the rights of a private employer and therefore encounters no restrictions under the Fourteenth Amendment in the area of public employment. [39] The court held that a state may, therefore, freely regulate the terms and conditions of public employment as no person has a vested right to work for the state or any of its public agencies upon public work, citing Atkin v. Kansas (1903) 191 U.S. 207, 222-223 [48 L.Ed. 148, 157-158, 24 S.Ct. 124]. Commentators have seriously questioned the holding in Heim, especially its reliance upon the dicta of Atkin v. Kansas, supra, 191 U.S. 207. [40] In Atkin, the state sought to limit the hours of daily work for those employed on public works. An employer brought suit and challenged the regulation as an infringement of his right to contract. The United States Supreme Court held that the state, as the ultimate employer, exercises the right to prescribe the conditions upon which it would permit public work to be done on its behalf. In Heim, the court held Atkin controlling, without any apparent consideration of the differences between the two cases: Atkin involved a non-discriminatory statute; the party attacking the statute, an employer, asserted merely his right of freedom of contract; the case involved economic regulation and the court properly invoked a test of reasonableness. [41] In Heim, on the other hand, the court faced a discriminatory statute which excluded employees from otherwise lawful labor because of their status as aliens. Recent developments in the law of equal protection have removed whatever validity Heim and City of Pasadena may have possessed at the time of their rendition. As we stated in Bagley v. Washington Township Hospital Dist., supra, 65 Cal.2d 499, 504, `The power of absolute exclusion is a term not identical with the power of relative exclusion or the power to impose any burdens whatsoever.' (Powell, The Right to Work for the State (1916) 16 Colum.L.Rev. 99, 111.) Today courts and commentators alike recognize without question that the power of government, federal or state, to withhold benefits from its citizens does not encompass a supposed `lesser' power to grant such benefits upon an arbitrary deprivation of constitutional right. (Fns. omitted.) [42] In the words of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, `Congress may withhold all sorts of facilities for a better life but if it affords them it cannot make them available in an obviously arbitrary way or exact a surrender of freedoms unrelated to the purpose of the facilities.' [43] [17] Accordingly, we may no longer question that state regulation of public employment must accord with the Fourteenth Amendment. In Takahashi v. Fish & Game Com., supra, 334 U.S. 410, the United States Supreme Court dealt a death blow to the proprietary rationale as a justification for exclusion of aliens from certain occupations. Takahashi involved a state statute which prohibited certain aliens [44] from fishing in California's coastal waters. The court conceded that the purpose of the law was the conservation of the fish, but held that a state could not constitutionally justify the exclusion of any or all of its resident aliens from employment as offshore fishermen upon the state's claim to ownership of the fish. [45] The court in Takahashi formulated the requirement of strict judicial review of state statutes which discriminate against aliens as a class: The court noted that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed aliens the equal protection of the laws and the Congress has expressed a general policy that all persons lawfully in this country shall abide `in any state' on an equality of legal privileges with all citizens under non-discriminatory laws, and for this reason, the power of a state to apply its laws exclusively to its alien inhabitants as a class is confined within narrow limits. (334 U.S. at p. 420 [92 L.Ed. at p. 1487].) Takahashi, therefore, confirms several developments in the law since the United States Supreme Court decided Heim v. McCall, supra, 239 U.S. 175. First, the court would employ a strict review of all state laws which classified persons on the basis of alienage; second, the court suggested by its holding that employment in a particular occupation was a significant, if not fundamental, interest entitled to special protection under the equal protection clause; [46] and finally, by rejecting the state's asserted proprietary interest in its fish, the court cast doubt upon the legitimacy of this rationale in other cases, including the public employment area. Takahashi thus warrants our rejection of the authority of City of Pasadena v. Charleville, supra, 215 Cal. 384, and of United States Supreme Court cases relied upon for that decision. The argument that the discrimination in the present case constitutes a minor deprivation involving relatively few jobs cannot be accepted; the power to discriminate in one field of public employment includes the power to discriminate in all fields. Perhaps when we decided City of Pasadena v. Charleville public employment constituted an insignificant portion of the total employment in the state. Today, however, public employment constitutes a broad spectrum of occupations, including a vast aggregate of jobs. We may not dismiss the discrimination of Labor Code section 1850 as insubstantial. We hold that Labor Code section 1850 and related sections cannot stand. The discrimination involved denies arbitrarily to certain persons, merely because of their status as aliens, the right to pursue an otherwise lawful occupation. The classification within the statutory scheme operates irrationally without reference to any legitimate state interest except that of favoring United States citizens over citizens of other countries. This latter objective does not reflect such a compelling state interest that it would permit us to sustain this kind of discrimination. [18] Because section 1850 offends the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, that section is hereby declared to be void. To the extent that it conflicts with our present holding, we overrule our decision in City of Pasadena v. Charleville, supra, 215 Cal. 384. We reject its language that the right of any legislative body in this state to prohibit the employment of alien Chinese on public works may not be questioned.... (215 Cal. at p. 398.) This statement, rendered in 1932, strikes a harsh and discordant note today. Its dissonance symbolizes the measure of our progress toward the goal that no man should suffer discrimination in employment because of the irrelevant circumstance of his birth. [47]