Opinion ID: 795813
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: What Does Less Deference Mean?

Text: 24 As stated above, assuming the state's legislation was self-serving to the state, we are less deferential to the state's assessment of reasonableness and necessity than we would be in a situation involving purely private contracts, but what does giving less deference to the legislature actually mean? We hasten to point out that less deference does not imply no deference. See Local Div. 589, Amalgamated Transit Union v. Massachusetts, 666 F.2d 618, 643 (1st Cir.1981) (Breyer, J.) ([W]here economic or social legislation is at issue, some deference to the legislature's judgment is surely called for.); Subway-Surface, 44 N.Y.2d at 112, 404 N.Y.S.2d 323, 375 N.E.2d 384 (noting that the statement of the principle [in U.S. Trust Co.] implies that some deference at least is appropriate). Relatedly, we agree with the First Circuit that U.S. Trust Co. does not require courts to reexamine all of the factors underlying the legislation at issue and to make a de novo determination whether another alternative would have constituted a better statutory solution to a given problem. See Local Div. 589, 666 F.2d at 642. Nor is the heightened scrutiny to be applied as exacting as that commonly understood as strict scrutiny. Such a high level of judicial scrutiny of the legislature's actions would harken a dangerous return to the days of Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905), overruled, see Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U.S. 421, 72 S.Ct. 405, 96 L.Ed. 469 (1952), in which courts would act as superlegislatures, overturning laws as unconstitutional when they believe[d] the legislature [] acted unwisely, Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 730, 83 S.Ct. 1028, 10 L.Ed.2d 93 (1963); see Peick v. Pension Benefit Guar. Corp., 724 F.2d 1247, 1265 (7th Cir.1983) (The danger of heightened scrutiny, and the reason it has been as sparingly applied since its heyday in the Lochner era, is that it can easily mask the imposition by a court of a philosophical and economic straightjacket on the legislature.); see also Laurence H. Tribe, Constitutional Choices 182 (1985) (equating heightened scrutiny under the Contracts Clause as backdoor to Lochner -type jurisprudence). The Lochner doctrine, of course, has long since been discarded. Skrupa, 372 U.S. at 730, 83 S.Ct. 1028. 25 Ultimately, for impairment to be reasonable and necessary under less deference scrutiny, it must be shown that the state did not (1) consider impairing the ... contracts on par with other policy alternatives or (2) impose a drastic impairment when an evident and more moderate course would serve its purpose equally well, nor (3) act unreasonably in light of the surrounding circumstances, U.S. Trust Co., 431 U.S. at 30-31, 97 S.Ct. 1505.