Opinion ID: 289589
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Equal Protection in Civil Cases.

Text: 28 Over the past two decades one of the most important trends in both judicial and legislative decisions has been the enormous thrust to equalize the treatment of rich and poor in the courts. Spurred on by Supreme Court decisions dealing with the right to counsel, federal and privately sponsored legal service organizations have sprung up in increasing numbers, both to implement the Court's mandate in criminal cases and to extend effectively the protection of the legal system for the first time to large numbers of poor civil litigants. 20 29 The constitutional mandate that all citizens be accorded the equal protection of the laws 21 has formed the basis of many of these Supreme Court opinions. The seminal case, of course, is Griffin v. Illinois. 22 There the Court stated the broad egalitarian principle encompassed by the equal protection clause: There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has. 23 30 In Griffin the Court vacated the denial by the Illinois Supreme Court of a petition for post-conviction relief because the state had not provided the indigent defendants with a free copy of the trial transcript, which was deemed necessary for an effective appeal. Although the state could be said to have treated all parties equally in one respect — it had a single scale of fees which it charged to all who ordered transcripts 24 — the Court noted that only the rich could afford transcripts on appeal. The Court held that the practical unavailability of transcripts to the poor on appeal which resulted from this uniform fee scale amounted to a denial of equal protection to the indigent. As a result the Court required the state to act affirmatively to equalize the burdens of the adversary process by furnishing transcripts to those who could not afford to pay for them. 25 31 This same constitutional requirement that the state act affirmatively to equalize the conditions of the adversary process for the poor also stands behind the landmark decision requiring the courts to provide counsel for indigent defendants at trial. In Gideon v. Wainwright the Court recognize[d] that in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. 26 32 Emerging case law makes it clear that provision of unaided counsel at trial cannot, of itself, erase the inequalities stemming from the defendant's poverty. 27 Additional funds are necessary to make the defendant's representation more nearly equal to that of the government. The state must, therefore, provide funds to pay for defense counsel's trips to investigate the case and interview key witnesses. 28 Expert witnesses may have to be provided to testify on behalf of the defendant at trial on crucial issues. 29 33 This concept of equal protection is equally viable in appellate courts. Griffin itself involved procedures on appeal. Douglas v. California 30 relied heavily on the language and principles of Griffin in holding that the states must provide counsel for indigent defendants on appeal. A few years later the Court held that appointed counsel must act just as if he were a paid advocate in order to assure penniless defendants the same rights and opportunities on appeal — as nearly as is practicable — as are enjoyed by those persons who are in a similar situation but who are able to afford the retention of private counsel. 31 34 Other roadblocks to appellate review for the poor have also been held unconstitutional. Court rules which condition the bringing of a direct appeal 32 from or a collateral attack 33 on a conviction upon the payment of a filing fee, however small, 34 deny equal protection to the indigent. 35 Expenses which do not totally preclude review, but which block effective access 36 to the courts for the poor may deny equal protection. 37 If a state hears all paid appeals, it may not screen the in forma pauperis cases, furnishing transcripts only after a trial judge's determination that there are issues worth appealing. 38 Nor has the Court limited its transcript requirement to serious offenses. Last term the Court announced that a state could not deny a free transcript to a defendant who wanted to appeal a conviction of violating a municipal ordinance. 39 The Court also struck down a New Jersey statute requiring indigents who appealed criminal convictions, lost, and subsequently went to prison, to repay the cost of state-provided transcripts. As the Court said: [I]t is now fundamental that, once [avenues of appellate review are] established, these avenues must be kept free of unreasoned distinctions that can only impede open and equal access to the courts. 40 35 The limits of a state's duty affirmatively to equalize a defendant's ability to participate meaningfully in the judicial process are only now being sketched out in the cases. The picture is far from complete, but recent cases dealing with costs in divorce cases 41 and transcripts on appeal from proceedings involving determination of parental rights, 42 coupled with the expansive readings being given to in forma pauperis statutes, 43 all suggest that the trend seems to be toward more, not less, affirmative action. Thus, while most of the cases extending equal protection to the judicial process have involved criminal proceedings, the constitutional mandate that there be no invidious discrimination between indigent and rich litigants is being recognized in civil cases as well. 36 The equal protection clause applies to both civil and criminal cases; the Constitution protects life, liberty and property. It is the importance of the right to the individual, not the technical distinction between civil and criminal, which should be of importance to a court in deciding what procedures are constitutionally required in each case. 44 Often a poor litigant will have more at stake in a civil case than in a criminal case. The struggling employee    may well find a wage attachment or confiscation of his tools as onerous in securing employment as a criminal conviction. Moreover, the citizen who permanently loses his home, a government job, a required license, or unemployment benefits may    receive a more crippling blow that the criminal who serves a jail sentence. 45 37 The Supreme Court has not considered itself bound by formal distinctions. It has not hesitated to apply these notions of equal protection in some proceedings traditionally considered civil; the right to a free transcript extends to coram nobis 46 and habeas corpus 47 proceedings. Although these types of cases might fairly be characterized as criminal, they do show that the civil-criminal distinction is not the touchstone of equal protection. 38 In at least one overtly civil case the Court has applied an analysis similar to that used in Griffin and the filing fee cases in holding that a state may not condition the exercise of an important right on the payment of a fee. In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections 48 the Court held that a state could not condition the right to vote on the payment of a uniform and relatively insignificant ($1.50) poll tax. The Court said: 39 We conclude that a State violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying this or any other tax.   49 40 The right of all to have free access to the courts is basic to our democratic system. It too cannot be conditioned on the payment of a fee where such a condition precludes the exercise of the right. Just as the poll tax bears no relation to voter qualification, a litigant's ability to pay for a transcript bears no relation to the justice of his position in a suit against him for eviction. 41 Civil cases, of course, are different from criminal cases in that the state is not always the moving party. But this difference does not establish that the underlying principle of Griffin is completely inapplicable to civil cases. None of the equal protection cases discussed above has focused on the state's direct involvement in the criminal proceeding. Instead, the Court focused on the deficiencies of procedures whereby rich litigants received more thorough consideration of their appeals than did poor litigants. Court procedures which of themselves invidiously discriminate between rich and poor impair guarantees of equal justice which the Constitution was designed to protect. As Shelley v. Kraemer 50 teaches, the courts themselves may not be vehicles of discrimination. There the Court barred judicial enforcement of discriminatory private agreements, in spite of the fact that these agreements were legal between the parties. 51 In the instant case the DCCA held that its own rules mean that appellant was unable to obtain the transcript even though this was necessary for determination by the court of the merits of a substantial question raised by appellant, whereas a rich litigant could have obtained such review simply by ordering the transcript. 42 While a government may have some affirmative obligations to aid poor litigants in civil cases, it is unnecessary that we determine the extent to which the Constitution requires it to end all distinctions between rich and poor in the courts, or to provide indigent civil litigants with transcripts on appeal. Moreover, despite the compelling arguments which can be marshalled to show that transcripts are constitutionally required for civil appeals presenting substantial issues, our holding today is not such a ruling. Instead, mindful of our obligation to avoid reaching the constitutional issues whenever possible, 52 we proceed to consider the applicable federal and District of Columbia statutes, impelled — if not compelled — to equalize the opportunities of rich and poor to obtain appellate review. 43