Opinion ID: 173060
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Rational Basis Review Applies to the Detachment Statute

Text: Applying these principles to the Utah school district detachment statute, we find that rational basis review is the appropriate level of scrutiny. First, rational basis review accords with Hunter's holding that states have wide discretion in structuring political subdivisions and conferring authority upon them. See 207 U.S. 161, 28 S.Ct. 40, 52 L.Ed. 151. The Supreme Court's Lockport and Holt decisions specifically affirmed the continue[d]... constitutional significance of that discretion, Holt, 439 U.S. at 71, 99 S.Ct. 383, see also Lockport, 430 U.S. at 271, 97 S.Ct. 1047, and did so in the context of states' authority to determine the boundaries for purposes of voting in local elections. Holt emphasized this point, holding, a government unit may legitimately restrict the right to participate in its political processes to those who reside within its borders. 439 U.S. at 68-69, 99 S.Ct. 383. While Lockport did not specifically address voting rights in boundary change cases, it did emphasize the wide discretion the States have in forming and allocating governmental tasks to local subdivisions, and indicated the Court would defer to a state's determination that the residents of the annexing city and the residents of the area to be annexed formed sufficiently different constituencies with sufficiently different interests. 430 U.S. at 259, 271, 97 S.Ct. 1047. In our view, this deference and Utah's discretion in structuring its political subdivisions counsel against finding that strict scrutiny review should apply. [9] See also Note, State Restrictions on Municipal Elections: An Equal Protection Analysis, 93 Harv. L.Rev. 1491, 1494-95 (1980) (stating the historic state power to define the boundaries of local communities justified examining such residency restrictions under the rational basis test). Second, there is no allegation that the Jordan School District detachment discriminates on an invidious basise.g., along racial linesin a manner that would merit strict scrutiny review. [10] Third, the single-shot nature of the referendum supports applying rational basis review. The detachment elections permitted under the Utah statute serve a limited purposethe alteration of school district boundariesand leave other governmental decisions to be made at recurring general elections. For this reason, the equal protection principles involved are calibrated less stringently. See Lockport, 430 U.S. at 266, 97 S.Ct. 1047. So, for example, unlike the residents of the federal enclave in Evans, the residents here are not without any voice in the election of the officials who govern their affairs. See 398 U.S. at 422-23, 90 S.Ct. 1752; see also Morgan v. City of Florissant, 147 F.3d 772, 774 (8th Cir. 1998) (noting the difference in voting jurisprudence between election laws providing for the drawing and redrawing of state political subdivisions, and laws involving the choice of legislative representatives). Indeed, the Jordan School District voters can and do vote for the county, state, and federal officials who exercise primary control over their day-to-day lives. And even as to their interaction with the detached school district, the voters are not completely without a voice: through their state representatives, they participate directly in the process that provides for the creation (and detachment) of school districts. See Holt, 439 U.S. at 77, 99 S.Ct. 383. The nature of the referendum provided for in the Utah statute thus warrants a less scrutinizing standard of review. Finally, because the Utah school district detachment statute distinguishes among voters having genuinely different relevant interests, rational basis review is appropriate. The Jordan School District voters strongly contest this final point, arguing they do reside in the same governmental unit as those residents allowed to vote, and are equally interested in the detachment issue. They concede a state may limit voting rights to a particular governmental unit, but argue a relevant boundary cannot be drawn where it excludes voters who are as substantially interested and affected as those residents who can vote. Aplt. Br. at 15, 31. Citing the financial and administrative consequences as well as the limitation on self-governance accompanying the Jordan School District's division, the excluded voters claim they are as substantially interested and affected as those residents of the new district who were permitted to vote. Aplt. Reply Br. at 2, 11. They argue the relevant governmental unit is the entire Jordan School District, and that the Utah statute giving only residents in a proposed new district the right to vote is arbitrary and unconstitutionally narrow. In essence, the Jordan School District voters contend strict scrutiny review applies whenever a state legislature excludes residents of a governmental unit or electoral district from voting on local government boundary modifications, unless it can demonstrate that the excluded area is substantially less interested in or affected by the proposed modification. Any analysis of voting restrictions based on residence cannot defer simplistically to political boundaries, they assert, but must begin with a review of the interests of the voters and non-voters in the outcome of the election. But no major decision has adopted a substantial interest test for elections involving different governmental units or electoral districts. To the contrary, cases from Holt to Lockport to City of New York all affirm that, when states use different local boundaries to delimit the electorate for purposes of the application of Equal Protection analysis, the state will be given considerable discretion in determining which boundary counts[,] even when it operates to deny some group of affected residents an equally weighted vote, or any vote at all.  Richard Briffault, Voting Rights, Home Rule, and Metropolitan Governance, 92 Colum. L.Rev. 775, 794 (1992) (discussing cases) (emphasis added). That is why courts have always deferred to state electoral schemes regarding annexations that may have substantial economic or cultural consequences on voters excluded from the annexation election. Reynolds, Local Government Law, supra, at §§ 73, 253 (citing Holt ). In Holt, for example, the Supreme Court utilized Tuscaloosa's city limits as the relevant political boundary for its equal protection analysis, but it just as easily could have used a boundary extending beyond the city and encompassing Holt. Similarly, in Lockport, the Court could have viewed the relevant governmental unit as the entire county. Had it done so, the differently-weighted votes among those living in the county's cities and rural parts would have presented a thornier equal protection problem. But, given the genuine difference in the relevant interests of the groups [(i.e., city and non-city voters)] that the state electoral classification has created, Lockport, 430 U.S. at 268, 97 S.Ct. 1047, the statute's boundary determinations were entitled to deference, see id. at 269-72, 97 S.Ct. 1047. When read together, Holt and Lockport thus indicate courts should defer to the voting restrictions states employ when addressing boundary changes. Lockport emphasized, in fact, the genuine differences in the relevant interests of the voting groups between which the law discriminated. Id. at 268, 97 S.Ct. 1047. In deciding on the validity of the state's voting classifications, Lockport did not look to whether they discriminated against individuals substantially interested in and affected by an election, as the excluded Jordan School District voters maintain. Rather, Lockport looked to whether the state could point to a genuine difference in the relevant interests of the groups in the separate governmental units. Id. (emphasis added). These are two very different standards, and the Jordan School District voters have improperly conflated them. As in Lockport, where the New York law at issue rested on the state's identification of the distinctive interests of the cities and towns within a county, see id. at 268-69, 97 S.Ct. 1047, the detachment law here rests on Utah's identification of the distinctive interests within particular school districts. The excluded voters emphasize that the split will substantially affect them. That may be true. But in the eyes of the state, their interest is still genuinely different from those seeking to form the new districtin the long term, for example, divergent issues may include tax burdens, the use of tax revenues, local control over education, school district size, and allocation of resources. The voting restrictions Utah has devised as a result of these distinctive interests are consistent with ... the wide discretion the States have in forming and allocating governmental tasks to local subdivisions, and these subdivisions' discrete interests. Id. at 269, 97 S.Ct. 1047. The existence of genuine and distinct interests between those in different governmental units or electoral districts counsels against our applying strict scrutiny. Finally, the excluded voters forget that the residents disenfranchised in Holt were every bit as substantially affected as those in Kramer, Cipriano, City of Phoenix, or Hill. The Supreme Court upheld the Alabama law at issue in Holt, despite the fact the statute subjected Holt's residents to Tuscaloosa's police and sanitary regulations, criminal jurisdiction, and power to license businesses, trades, and professions. See 439 U.S. at 61-63, 99 S.Ct. 383. But because the issue in Holt dealt with discriminating between voters in different governmental units, the implications for substantially affected excluded voters could be sidestepped. At the very least, this suggests the principle from Cipriano, City of Phoenix, and other earlier casesdisenfranchisement of those affected by a local government's action triggers strict scrutinyonly applies within that government's borders.  Briffault, Who Rules at Home?, supra at 387 (emphasis added). It also suggests that states should be given much leeway in determining the relevant boundaries for voting.