Opinion ID: 852983
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Plaintiffs' Claim Under the Indiana Constitution

Text: The Indiana constitutional provision that the plaintiffs invoke is not equal protection, but rather the Equal Privileges Clause found in Article I, Section 23. It provides: The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens. As Collins pointed out, Article I, Section 23 of the Indiana Constitution is quite different in both its language and its meaning from the federal Equal Protection Clause whose doctrines governed the United States Supreme Court majority in Harris. By demanding that legislative privileges be dispensed equally, and plainly applying to treatment of Indiana's own citizens, it also differs significantly from the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Privileges Clause was found in the Indiana Constitution well before 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment introduced both the Equal Protection Clause and the Privileges and Immunities Clause into the United States Constitution. Some regarded the Privileges and Immunities Clause, not either the Equal Protection or Due Process Clause, to be the primary guarantor of individual rights against state intrusion. Nowak & Rotunda, Constitutional Law § 14.1 at 632. The federal Privileges and Immunities Clause prohibits state laws that abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States but makes no mention of equal treatment. The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1872), promptly held this provision to apply only to state laws that discriminate in favor of their own citizens and against outsiders. Thus, the federal Privileges and Immunities Clause was rendered a dead letter as a limitation on a state's ability to restrict rights of its own citizens. That result was based in large part on the view that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to displace the critical role of the states as protectors of their own citizens. Lawrence H. Tribe, Constitutional Law § 14 at 10 (3d ed. 2000). Thus, for over a century, [4] the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Federal Constitution was thought to defer to its counterparts in state constitutions. It is the Indiana Equal Privileges Clause that is in issue here, and for the reasons explained below, I believe it requires more than either the Equal Protection Clause or the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the course of establishing its standard for constitutional legislative classifications under the Indiana Equal Privileges Clause, Collins explicitly rejected the federal equal protection approach of degrees of scrutiny. Collins, 644 N.E.2d at 80. Rather, [t]he protections assured by Section 23 apply fully, equally, and without diminution to prohibit any and all improper grants of unequal privileges or immunities, including not only those grants involving suspect classes or impinging upon fundamental rights but other such grants as well. Id. at 80. Thus, all claims of unequal privilege are evaluated under the test described in Part I of this opinion. The method chosendenial of funding undoubtedly meets the requirement that the legislation be related to the goal of promoting human life. But I believe the legislation fails the Collins requirement that the classification be reasonably related to the legislative objectives. The plaintiffs point to other measures, such as denying scholarships at universities to women who elect abortions, that they contend might also be justified in the name of deterring abortions, if the State's Medicaid statutes are upheld. Although these hypothetical examples are not before us today, in general I think they raise the issue whether the disparate treatment is reasonably related to the defining characteristic, and not whether the class is defined by a permissible characteristic. Under Collins, as Justice Sullivan points out, the reasonableness of the relationship between the classification and the legislative objective turns on a balancing test. The woman's right under the Constitution of the United States to elect an abortion is established by Roe v. Wade , irrespective of the origin of the pregnancy or whether her life is threatened by carrying the fetus to term. The U.S. Supreme Court in Roe held, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Roe, 410 U.S. at 164-65, 93 S.Ct. 705. Thus, the right to choose is not absolute, but the interest of the State in promoting childbirth is constitutionally subordinate to the woman's right to choose to protect her life and her health. As explained above, under Harris, federal equal protection doctrine would permit the State to deny funding even if its interest promotion of human lifeis offset and outweighed by other interests as long as the legislation disadvantages no suspect classification and impinges no fundamental right. But the Indiana Constitution is rife with provisions asserting the primacy of individual rights. The 1851 Constitution, like its 1816 predecessor, begins with a Bill of Rights and only later turns to provisions establishing the branches of government. The Bill of Rights starts with Article 1, Section 1, which borrows from the Declaration of Independence in asserting rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This emphasis on individual rights reflected the strong populist sentiment prevailing at the 1851 convention, which essentially carried out the agenda set in 1816. See Price v. State, 622 N.E.2d 954, 962 n. 11 (Ind.1993). In the same vein, the Indiana Equal Privileges Clause elevates individual rights by requiring more than some recognized governmental interests before legislation can override the interests of the individual. Thus, under Collins a rational relationship to any legitimate governmental interest is not enough to carry the day. Under the balancing test of our state constitution, the governmental interests must outweigh those of the private citizen before a statute may deny a privilege granted to others. Under this standard, when faced with the federal constitutional right of a woman to choose to protect her health, the State's interests fail to carry that burden. This case presents a classic confrontation between individual rights and the will of the majority as reflected in legislation. The law at issue here affects only women who are indigent and desire a medically necessary procedure. The effect of the statute is to impose a financial penalty on a woman's election to exercise her constitutionally guaranteed right to choose. Of course, as a practical matter, this financial obstacle may result in delays that complicate the woman's medical condition, and often may force the result of a choice that is for the woman alone to make. The State thus seeks to impose its choice upon the woman to whom that decision is constitutionally reserved. By so choosing, the State seeks to prioritize the interest it advances over the woman's right to choose. Whether the State seeks to advance its interest by criminalizing abortions, as it no longer can do, or by creating legislation that penalizes the exercise of that right, either is, as a matter of constitutional priorities, an unreasonable balance. As such, this legislation imposes an unreasonable classification and is invalid under Collins. Justice Sullivan concludes that indigent women whose pregnancy risks serious and permanent impairment of a major bodily function may not be denied Medicaid benefits. Those women are a subset of all indigents in need of medically necessary procedures. Accordingly, I concur in Part II of Justice Sullivan's opinion, though it does not grant all of the relief to which I believe the plaintiffs are entitled. RUCKER, J., concurs.