Opinion ID: 2117678
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Stated Purpose of the Act

Text: Government could not function without making classifications. The discriminatory effects of classification ordinarily do not violate equal protection as long as there is a basis for disparate treatment that naturally inheres in the subject matter. See Caldis v. Board of County Commissioners, supra, 279 N.W.2d at 670. Any classification can be challenged as denying equal protection; it then becomes the duty of the court to determine the statute's validity and to uphold the classification if it includes all, and only those, persons who are similarly situated with respect to the purpose of the law. See Ferch v. Housing Authority of Cass County, 79 N.D. 764, 59 N.W.2d 849, 864 (1953); Developments in the Law  Equal Protection, 82 Harvard L.Rev. 1065, 1076 (1969, Part 2). Generally, when the legislature has expressed the purpose of the law, courts need only examine the statute itself in determining whether or not: (1) a particular classification bears some rational relationship to the expressed purpose; (2) the classification is based upon a permissible distinction (that is, are similar things treated similarly); and (3) the classification is clearly arbitrary or unreasonable. The North Dakota Legislature explicitly expressed the purpose of the Act but the exclusion of agricultural services has no correspondence to that expressed purpose. The legislature made no attempt to express any purpose for the exclusion. When the legislature fails to express a purpose for an enactment, the court will ordinarily attribute a purpose which is consistent with the provisions of the enactment and which is the most probable legislative purpose. See Development in the Law  Equal Protection, supra, 82 Harvard L.Rev. at 1077, which says: To this end the court may properly consider not only the language of the statute but also general public knowledge . . . .