Opinion ID: 76424
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Appellants' Equal Protection Challenge

Text: 35 The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment proclaims that [n]o State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of laws. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. The central mandate of the equal protection guarantee is that [t]he sovereign may not draw distinctions between individuals based solely on differences that are irrelevant to a legitimate governmental objective. Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248, 265, 103 S.Ct. 2985, 2995, 77 L.Ed.2d 614 (1983). Equal protection, however, does not forbid legislative classifications. Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 10, 112 S.Ct. 2326, 2331, 120 L.Ed.2d 1 (1992). It simply keeps governmental decisionmakers from treating differently persons who are in all relevant respects alike. Id. Unless the challenged classification burdens a fundamental right or targets a suspect class, the Equal Protection Clause requires only that the classification be rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 631, 116 S.Ct. 1620, 1627, 134 L.Ed.2d 855 (1996). As we have explained, Florida's statute burdens no fundamental rights. Moreover, all of our sister circuits that have considered the question have declined to treat homosexuals as a suspect class. 16 Because the present case involves neither a fundamental right nor a suspect class, we review the Florida statute under the rational-basis standard. 36 Rational-basis review, a paradigm of judicial restraint, does not provide a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices. F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 313-14, 113 S.Ct. 2096, 2101, 124 L.Ed.2d 211 (1993) (citation omitted). The question is simply whether the challenged legislation is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 320, 113 S.Ct. 2637, 2642, 125 L.Ed.2d 257 (1993). Under this deferential standard, a legislative classification is accorded a strong presumption of validity, id. at 319, 113 S.Ct. at 2642, and must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification, id. at 320, 113 S.Ct. at 2642 (citation omitted). This holds true even if the law seems unwise or works to the disadvantage of a particular group, or if the rationale for it seems tenuous. Romer, 517 U.S. at 632, 116 S.Ct. at 1627. Moreover, a state has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification. Heller, 509 U.S. at 320, 113 S.Ct. at 2643. Rather, the burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might support it, whether or not the basis has a foundation in the record. Id. at 320-21, 113 S.Ct. at 2643 (citation omitted).
37 Cognizant of the narrow parameters of our review, we now analyze the challenged Florida law. Florida contends that the statute is only one aspect of its broader adoption policy, which is designed to create adoptive homes that resemble the nuclear family as closely as possible. Florida argues that the statute is rationally related to Florida's interest in furthering the best interests of adopted children by placing them in families with married mothers and fathers. Such homes, Florida asserts, provide the stability that marriage affords and the presence of both male and female authority figures, which it considers critical to optimal childhood development and socialization. In particular, Florida emphasizes a vital role that dual-gender parenting plays in shaping sexual and gender identity and in providing heterosexual role modeling. Florida argues that disallowing adoption into homosexual households, which are necessarily motherless or fatherless and lack the stability that comes with marriage, is a rational means of furthering Florida's interest in promoting adoption by marital families. 17 38 Florida clearly has a legitimate interest in encouraging a stable and nurturing environment for the education and socialization of its adopted children. See, e.g., Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433, 104 S.Ct. 1879, 1882, 80 L.Ed.2d 421 (1984) (The State, of course, has a duty of the highest order to protect the interests of minor children, particularly those of tender years.); Stanley, 405 U.S. at 652, 92 S.Ct. at 1213 (noting that protect[ing] the moral, emotional, mental, and physical welfare of the minor is a legitimate interest[], well within the power of the State to implement) (internal quotation marks omitted). It is chiefly from parental figures that children learn about the world and their place in it, and the formative influence of parents extends well beyond the years spent under their roof, shaping their children's psychology, character, and personality for years to come. In time, children grow up to become full members of society, which they in turn influence, whether for good or ill. The adage that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world hardly overstates the ripple effect that parents have on the public good by virtue of their role in raising their children. It is hard to conceive an interest more legitimate and more paramount for the state than promoting an optimal social structure for educating, socializing, and preparing its future citizens to become productive participants in civil society — particularly when those future citizens are displaced children for whom the state is standing in loco parentis. 39 More importantly for present purposes, the state has a legitimate interest in encouraging this optimal family structure by seeking to place adoptive children in homes that have both a mother and father. Florida argues that its preference for adoptive marital families is based on the premise that the marital family structure is more stable than other household arrangements and that children benefit from the presence of both a father and mother in the home. Given that appellants have offered no competent evidence to the contrary, we find this premise to be one of those unprovable assumptions that nevertheless can provide a legitimate basis for legislative action. Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 62-63, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 2638, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973). Although social theorists from Plato to Simone de Beauvoir have proposed alternative child-rearing arrangements, none has proven as enduring as the marital family structure, nor has the accumulated wisdom of several millennia of human experience discovered a superior model. See, e.g., Plato, The Republic, Bk. V, 459d-461e; Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (H.M. Parshley trans., Vintage Books 1989) (1949). Against this sum of experience, it is rational for Florida to conclude that it is in the best interests of adoptive children, many of whom come from troubled and unstable backgrounds, to be placed in a home anchored by both a father and a mother. Paris Adult Theatre I, 413 U.S. at 63, 93 S.Ct. at 2638.
40 Appellants offer little to dispute whether Florida's preference for marital adoptive families is a legitimate state interest. Instead, they maintain that the statute is not rationally related to this interest. Arguing that the statute is both overinclusive and underinclusive, appellants contend that the real motivation behind the statute cannot be the best interest of adoptive children. 41 In evaluating this argument, we note from the outset that it is entirely irrelevant for constitutional purposes whether the conceived reason for the challenged distinction actually motivated the legislature. Beach Communications, 508 U.S. at 315, 113 S.Ct. at 2102; see also City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 48, 106 S.Ct. 925, 929, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986) (It is a familiar principle of constitutional law that this Court will not strike down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive.) (citation omitted). Instead, the question before us is whether the Florida legislature could have reasonably believed that prohibiting adoption into homosexual environments would further its interest in placing adoptive children in homes that will provide them with optimal developmental conditions. See Panama City Med. Diagnostic Ltd. v. Williams, 13 F.3d 1541, 1545 (11th Cir.1994) (The task is to determine if any set of facts may be reasonably conceived of to justify the legislation.). Unless appellants' evidence, which we view on summary judgment review in the light most favorable to appellants, can negate every plausible rational connection between the statute and Florida's interest in the welfare of its children, we are compelled to uphold the statute. See Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 111, 99 S.Ct. 939, 949, 59 L.Ed.2d 171 (1979) (In an equal protection case of this type, however, those challenging the legislative judgment must convince the court that the legislative facts on which the classification is apparently based could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decisionmaker.). We turn now to appellants' specific arguments. 42
43 Appellants note that Florida law permits adoption by unmarried individuals and that, among children coming out the Florida foster care system, 25% of adoptions are to parents who are currently single. Their argument is that homosexual persons are similarly situated to unmarried persons with regard to Florida's asserted interest in promoting married-couple adoption. According to appellants, this disparate treatment lacks a rational basis and, therefore, disproves any rational connection between the statute and Florida's asserted interest in promoting adoption into married homes. Citing City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985), appellants argue that the state has not satisfied Cleburne 's threshold requirement that it demonstrate that homosexuals pose a unique threat to children that others similarly situated in relevant respects do not. 18 44 We find appellants' reading of Cleburne to be an unwarranted interpretation. In Cleburne, the Supreme Court invalidated under the rational-basis test a municipal zoning ordinance requiring a group home for the mentally retarded to obtain a special use permit. Id. at 435, 105 S.Ct. at 3252. The municipality argued that it had a legitimate interest in (1) protecting the residents of the home from a nearby flood plain, (2) limiting potential liability for acts of residents of the home, (3) maintaining low-density land uses in the neighborhood, (4) reducing congestion in neighborhood streets, and (5) avoiding fire hazards. Id. at 449-50, 105 S.Ct. at 3259-60. The Court, however, found that the municipality failed to distinguish how these concerns applied particularly to mentally retarded residents of the home and not to a number of other persons who could freely occupy the identical structure without a permit, such as boarding houses, fraternity houses, and nursing homes. Id. The Court concluded that the purported justifications for the ordinance made no sense in light of how it treated other groups similarly situated. Id. at 450, 105 S.Ct. at 3260. Appellants have overstated Cleburne 's holding by asserting that it places a burden on the State of Florida to show that homosexuals pose a greater threat than other unmarried adults who are allowed to adopt. The Cleburne Court reasserted the unremarkable principle that, when a statute imposes a classification on a particular group, its failure to impose the same classification on other groups similarly situated in relevant respects can be probative of a lack of a rational basis. Bd. of Trustees of the Univ. of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 366 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 955, 963 n. 4, 148 L.Ed.2d 866 (2001) (explaining Cleburne 's rationale); see also Nordlinger, 505 U.S. at 10, 112 S.Ct. at 2331 (noting that disparate treatment is permissible unless differently treated classes are in all relevant respects alike) (emphasis added). 45 This case is distinguishable from Cleburne. The Florida legislature could rationally conclude that homosexuals and heterosexual singles are not similarly situated in relevant respects. It is not irrational to think that heterosexual singles have a markedly greater probability of eventually establishing a married household and, thus, providing their adopted children with a stable, dual-gender parenting environment. Moreover, as the state noted, the legislature could rationally act on the theory that heterosexual singles, even if they never marry, are better positioned than homosexual individuals to provide adopted children with education and guidance relative to their sexual development throughout pubescence and adolescence. 19 In a previous challenge to Florida's statute, a Florida appellate court observed: 46 [W]hatever causes a person to become a homosexual, it is clear that the state cannot know the sexual preferences that a child will exhibit as an adult. Statistically, the state does know that a very high percentage of children available for adoption will develop heterosexual preferences. As a result, those children will need education and guidance after puberty concerning relationships with the opposite sex. In our society, we expect that parents will provide this education to teenagers in the home. These subjects are often very embarrassing for teenagers and some aspects of the education are accomplished by the parents telling stories about their own adolescence and explaining their own experiences with the opposite sex. It is in the best interests of a child if his or her parents can personally relate to the child's problems and assist the child in the difficult transition to heterosexual adulthood. Given that adopted children tend to have some developmental problems arising from adoption or from their experiences prior to adoption, it is perhaps more important for adopted children than other children to have a stable heterosexual household during puberty and the teenage years. 47 Cox, 627 So.2d at 1220. It could be that the assumptions underlying these rationales are erroneous, but the very fact that they are arguable is sufficient, on rational-basis review, to immunize the legislative choice from constitutional challenge. Heller, 509 U.S. at 333, 113 S.Ct. at 2649-50 (citation and internal punctuation marks omitted). Although the influence of environmental factors in forming patterns of sexual behavior and the importance of heterosexual role models are matters of ongoing debate, they ultimately involve empirical disputes not readily amenable to judicial resolution — as well as policy judgments best exercised in the legislative arena. For our present purposes, it is sufficient that these considerations provide a reasonably conceivable rationale for Florida to preclude all homosexuals, but not all heterosexual singles, from adopting. 48 The possibility, raised by appellants, that some homosexual households, including those of appellants, would provide a better environment than would some heterosexual single-parent households does not alter our analysis. The Supreme Court repeatedly has instructed that neither the fact that a classification may be overinclusive or underinclusive nor the fact that a generalization underlying a classification is subject to exceptions renders the classification irrational. 20 [C]ourts are compelled under rational-basis review to accept a legislature's generalizations even when there is an imperfect fit between means and ends. Id. at 321, 113 S.Ct. at 2643. We conclude that there are plausible rational reasons for the disparate treatment of homosexuals and heterosexual singles under Florida adoption law and that, to the extent that the classification may be imperfect, that imperfection does not rise to the level of a constitutional infraction. 49
50 Appellants make much of the fact that Florida has over three thousand children who are currently in foster care and, consequently, have not been placed with permanent adoptive families. According to appellants, because excluding homosexuals from the pool of prospective adoptive parents will not create more eligible married couples to reduce the backlog, it is impossible for the legislature to believe that the statute advances the state's interest in placing children with married couples. 51 We do not agree that the statute does not further the state's interest in promoting nuclear-family adoption because it may delay the adoption of some children. Appellants misconstrue Florida's interest, which is not simply to place children in a permanent home as quickly as possible, but, when placing them, to do so in an optimal home, i.e., one in which there is a heterosexual couple or the potential for one. According to appellants' logic, every restriction on adoptive-parent candidates, such as income, in-state residency, and criminal record — none of which creates more available married couples — are likewise constitutionally suspect as long as Florida has a backlog of unadopted foster children. The best interests of children, however, are not automatically served by adoption into any available home merely because it is permanent. Moreover, the legislature could rationally act on the theory that not placing adoptees in homosexual households increases the probability that these children eventually will be placed with married-couple families, thus furthering the state's goal of optimal placement. Therefore, we conclude that Florida's current foster care backlog does not render the statute irrational. 52
53 Noting that Florida law permits homosexuals to become foster parents and permanent guardians, appellants contend that this fact demonstrates that Florida must not truly believe that placement in a homosexual household is not in a child's best interests. 21 We do not find that the fact that Florida has permitted homosexual foster homes and guardianships defeats the rational relationship between the statute and the state's asserted interest. We have not located and appellants have not cited any precedent indicating that a disparity between a law and its enforcement is a relevant consideration on rational-basis review, which only asks whether the legislature could have reasonably thought that the challenged law would further a legitimate state interest. Thus, to the extent that foster care and guardianship placements with homosexuals are the handiwork of Florida's executive branch, they are irrelevant to the question of the legislative rationale for Florida's adoption scheme. 22 To the extent that these placements are the product of an intentional legislative choice to treat foster care and guardianships differently than adoption, the distinction is not an irrational one. Indeed, it bears a rational relationship to Florida's interest in promoting the nuclear-family model of adoption since foster care and guardianship have neither the permanence nor the societal, cultural, and legal significance as does adoptive parenthood, which is the legal equivalent of natural parenthood. Fla. Stat. § 63.032(2). 54 Foster care and legal guardianship are designed to address a different situation than permanent adoption, and the legislature must be allowed leeway to approach a perceived problem incrementally. Beach Communications, 508 U.S. at 316, 113 S.Ct. at 2102. The fact that [t]he legislature may select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting the others, does not render the legislative solution invalid. Id. (citation omitted); Heller, 509 U.S. at 321, 113 S.Ct. at 2643 (The problems of government are practical ones and may justify, if they do not require, rough accommodations — illogical, it may be, and unscientific.) (citation omitted). We conclude that the rationality of the statute is not defeated by the fact that Florida permits homosexual persons to serve as foster parents and legal guardians. 55
56 Appellants cite recent social science research and the opinion of mental health professionals and child welfare organizations as evidence that there is no child welfare basis for excluding homosexuals from adopting. 23 They argue that the cited studies show that the parenting skills of homosexual parents are at least equivalent to those of heterosexual parents and that children raised by homosexual parents suffer no adverse outcomes. Appellants also point to the policies and practices of numerous adoption agencies that permit homosexual persons to adopt. 57 In considering appellants' argument, we must ask not whether the latest in social science research and professional opinion support the decision of the Florida legislature, but whether that evidence is so well established and so far beyond dispute that it would be irrational for the Florida legislature to believe that the interests of its children are best served by not permitting homosexual adoption. Also, we must credit any conceivable rational reason that the legislature might have for choosing not to alter its statutory scheme in response to this recent social science research. We must assume, for example, that the legislature might be aware of the critiques of the studies cited by appellants — critiques that have highlighted significant flaws in the studies' methodologies and conclusions, such as the use of small, self-selected samples; reliance on self-report instruments; politically driven hypotheses; and the use of unrepresentative study populations consisting of disproportionately affluent, educated parents. 24 Alternatively, the legislature might consider and credit other studies that have found that children raised in homosexual households fare differently on a number of measures, doing worse on some of them, than children raised in similarly situated heterosexual households. 25 Or the legislature might consider, and even credit, the research cited by appellants, but find it premature to rely on a very recent and still developing body of research, particularly in light of the absence of longitudinal studies following child subjects into adulthood and of studies of adopted, rather than natural, children of homosexual parents. 26 58 We do not find any of these possible legislative responses to be irrational. Openly homosexual households represent a very recent phenomenon, and sufficient time has not yet passed to permit any scientific study of how children raised in those households fare as adults. Scientific attempts to study homosexual parenting in general are still in their nascent stages and so far have yielded inconclusive and conflicting results. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the question of the effects of homosexual parenting on childhood development is one on which even experts of good faith reasonably disagree. Given this state of affairs, it is not irrational for the Florida legislature to credit one side of the debate over the other. Nor is it irrational for the legislature to proceed with deliberate caution before placing adoptive children in an alternative, but unproven, family structure that has not yet been conclusively demonstrated to be equivalent to the marital family structure that has established a proven track record spanning centuries. Accordingly, we conclude that appellants' proffered social science evidence does not disprove the rational basis of the Florida statute.
59 Finally, we disagree with appellants' contention that Romer requires us to strike down the Florida statute. In Romer, the Supreme Court invalidated Amendment 2 to the Colorado state constitution, which prohibited all legislative, executive, or judicial action designed to protect homosexual persons from discrimination. 517 U.S. 620, 624, 116 S.Ct. 1620, 1623, 134 L.Ed.2d 855 (1996). The constitutional defect in Amendment 2 was the disjunction between the [s]weeping and comprehensive classification it imposed on homosexuals and the state's asserted bases for the classification — respect for freedom of association and conservation of resources to fight race and gender discrimination. Id. at 627, 116 S.Ct. at 1625. The Court concluded that the Amendment's sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects. Id. at 632, 116 S.Ct. at 1627. 60 Unlike Colorado's Amendment 2, Florida's statute is not so [s]weeping and comprehensive as to render Florida's rationales for the statute inexplicable by anything but animus toward its homosexual residents. Amendment 2 deprived homosexual persons of protections against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civic life in a free society. Id. at 631, 116 S.Ct. at 1627. In contrast to this broad and undifferentiated disability, the Florida classification is limited to the narrow and discrete context of access to the statutory privilege of adoption 27 and, more importantly, has a plausible connection with the state's asserted interest. Id. at 632, 116 S.Ct. at 1627. Moreover, not only is the effect of Florida's classification dramatically smaller, but the classification itself is narrower. Whereas Amendment 2's classification encompassed both conduct and status, id. at 624, 116 S.Ct. at 1623 (quoting the text of Amendment 2, which covered homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships), Florida's adoption prohibition is limited to conduct, see Cox, 627 So.2d at 1215. Thus, we conclude that Romer 's unique factual situation and narrow holding are inapposite to this case.