Opinion ID: 853063
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Earlier Judicial Review of Special Legislation

Text: Although the text of Section 23 has remained unaltered since it was placed in the Constitution in 1851, it has been subject to a variety of interpretations over the intervening 151 years. It was initially thought that Article IV presented no justiciable issue. This view was first articulated in Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. 409 (1868), and continued through the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth. As this Court put it in Bd. of Comm'rs v. Fetter, 193 Ind. 288, 296, 139 N.E. 451, 454 (1923): Upon the authority of numerous decided cases from this court, and from the courts of other states which have constitutional limitations akin to the one here in question, the rule is firmly fixed that the question whether or not a general law can be made applicable, or that a special law is in violation of said section of the constitution because a general law can be made applicable, is necessarily one of legislative discretion, and not one of judicial determination. In Groves v. Bd. of Comm'rs, 209 Ind. 371, 199 N.E. 137 (1936), this Court moved from the view that Article IV, Section 23 presented no justiciable issue to the doctrine that statutes general in form were general for purposes of Article IV even if they applied in practical terms to only one or a few counties. The Court addressed a statute applying only to counties having a population of not less than 250,000 nor more than 400,000, and having three or more cities, each with a population of 50,000 or more. Id. at 375, 199 N.E. at 139. Lake County alone met those criteria. The Court held: If the act is broad enough to apply to all counties of the state under the same circumstances, it cannot be condemned. Id. at 376, 199 N.E. at 140. Whatever the realistic prospect that another county might ever meet these parameters and also contain three cities, each of 50,000 population, there remains at least the theoretical prospect that smaller counties could over time grow to meet these criteria. Similarly, Lake County might lose one of its three cities of 50,000, or fall outside the 250,000-to-400,000 bracket. Based on these logical if practically remote possibilities, this Court held that [u]nder such circumstances, the law is general in its application and not local or special, id., and inquired no further. A variation of complete deference to classification by population upheld several statutes against Article IV attack on the basis that singling out the affected areas was reasonable. In Long v. State, 175 Ind. 17, 20, 92 N.E. 653, 654 (1910), this Court stated, Many of our penal statutes have exclusive application to special localities or objects, and are nevertheless general and unquestionably valid, because they rest upon an inherent and substantial basis of classification. Similarly, in Kelly v. Finney, 207 Ind. 557, 579, 194 N.E. 157, 166 (1935), this Court cited Long for the proposition that [t]he fact that a statute exempts from its operation certain classes does not render the act local or special as long as the classification is not unreasonable or arbitrary. Reflecting the similarity of equal protection doctrine to this line of reasoning under Article IV, Section 23, the Kelly Court also cited Continental Baking Co. v. Woodring, 286 U.S. 352, 52 S.Ct. 595, 76 L.Ed. 1155 (1932), and Schwartzman Serv., Inc. v. Stahl, 60 F.2d 1034 (W.D.Mo.1932), for that proposition. Neither of these federal court decisions addressed Article IV, or indeed any state constitutional provision. Continental Baking dealt with state regulations on commercial highway hauling, and involved only constitutional challenges under the federal Due Process, Equal Protection, Privileges and Immunities, and Commerce Clauses. 286 U.S. at 357, 52 S.Ct. 595. Schwartzman addressed the constitutionality of similar regulations, and although it did not specify the constitutional provisions on which it based its decision, it presumably was also decided under federal constitutional law. [6] The approach of Long and Kelly also appeared in Evansville-Vanderburgh Levee Auth. Dist. v. Kamp, 240 Ind. 659, 168 N.E.2d 208 (1960), where a statute allowed the creation of a joint city-county levee authority district in any city within a county having a population between 160,000 and 180,000. At the time the statute was enacted, only Vanderburgh County fell within this population bracket. A Vanderburgh County taxpayer filed suit contending, inter alia, that the statute was unconstitutional special legislation. This Court upheld the statute, stating, [T]he presence of [some arbitrariness due to the use of population classifications] does not make the legislation special if there still remains some relationship between such classification and the objective of the law which the legislature could have considered to exist. Id. at 663, 168 N.E.2d at 210. Finally, adopting the same view, Dortch v. Lugar, 255 Ind. 545, 266 N.E.2d 25 (1971), relied on Kamp and Kelly in upholding the Unigov statute for Marion County. That statute reorganized local municipal and county government in all counties containing a city of the first class and included a stated purpose to enable the consolidation of governmental functions in densely populated metropolitan communities. Id. at 550, 266 N.E.2d at 30. Unigov, then and now, applied only to Marion County, which contains Indianapolis, the only Indiana city of the first class. In upholding the statute, this Court stated, As a general proposition ... it is sufficient for purposes of §§ 22 and 23 of Art. 4 [i]f ... the classification is reasonable and naturally inherent in the subject matter. Id. at 552-53, 266 N.E.2d at 31. Although these cases were consistent in their view that reasonableness of the classification validated a law under Article IV, none of these holdings addressed the history behind Article IV, Section 23. More importantly, none explained at any length whether the reasonableness of the classification is a touchstone in determining whether a law is general or special, or whether it otherwise preserved a statute attacked under Article IV. The reasonableness approach to Article IV issues is strongly reminiscent of concepts derived from the equal privileges and immunities clause of Article I, unfortunately also numbered Section 23. That provision of Article I states, The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens. To comply with that section, legislation that singles out one person or class of persons to receive a privilege or immunity not equally provided to others must meet two requirements. First, it must be based upon distinctive, inherent characteristics which rationally distinguish the unequally treated class, and the disparate treatment accorded by the legislation must be reasonably related to such distinguishing characteristics. Collins v. Day, 644 N.E.2d 72, 79 (Ind.1994). Second, any privileged classification must be open to any and all persons who share the inherent characteristics which distinguish and justify the classification, with the special treatment accorded to any particular classification extended equally to all persons. Id. Although Collins v. Day reformulated the Equal Privileges Clause in 1994, the Collins test is reminiscent of many earlier decisions under the Special Legislation Clause, including Long, Kelly, and Dortch. Under this line of cases, and in light of Collins' restatement of the Equal Privileges Clause test, there seemed to be little difference between Article IV special legislation and Article I unequal privileges. So viewed, the Article IV restraint on special laws becomes the reasonable classification focus imposed by Article I. In other words, for a special law to be imposed, it must be reasonably related to inherent characteristics of the territory in which it is applied, and apply equally to those who share those characteristics. Thus, legislation that applies in less than the entire state would pass both Article I and Article IV muster by the same standard. In the meantime, however, in 1986 this Court returned to complete deference to population ranges as ipso facto general statutes. In N. Twp. Advisory Bd. v. Mamala, 490 N.E.2d 725, 726 (Ind.1986), the Court upheld a statute affecting the operation of parks located in each township having a population of not less than one hundred eighty thousand (180,000) nor more than two hundred four thousand (204,000) that is located in a county having more than two second class cities. Only one township in the state fell within that classification. This Court held the law was general because the statute did not contain any provision which would either preclude other townships from eventually qualifying under the statute or would prevent North Township from falling outside the parameters of the statute. Id. Only the most generous deference to legislative judgment could uphold this quite particularized legislation, which presented a classic example of the perceived local legislation that gave rise to Article IV. Indeed, virtually any geographic area can be uniquely defined with such very specific population parameters in concert with other characteristics. Mamala thus represented in practical terms a return to the view that Article IV presents no justiciable issue at all.