Opinion ID: 815370
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The “Class of One” Argument

Text: The Fourteenth Amendment dictates that a state may not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV. The purpose of this clause is “to secure every person within the State‟s jurisdiction against intentional and arbitrary discrimination, whether occasioned by express terms of a statute or by its improper execution through duly constituted agents.” Vill. of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 564 (2000) (quoting Sioux City Bridge Co. v. Dakota Cnty., 260 U.S. 441, 445 (1923)). Where a litigant asserts a so-called “class of one” Equal Protection challenge, alleging that the litigant itself, and not a particular group, was the subject of discriminatory treatment under a particular law, we have required the litigant to allege “that she has been intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment.” Marcavage v. Nat’l Park Serv., 666 F.3d 856, 860 (3d Cir. 2012) (quoting Vill. of Willowbrook, 528 U.S. at 564). The allegations presented in Appellant‟s Complaint do not demonstrate that Appellant was “intentionally treated differently” from other newspapers in Pennsylvania. In fact, the Complaint fails to present a single example where another newspaper sought and obtained access to a polling place in a location where Appellant could not. As the District Court recognized, “[t]he facts alleged by [Appellant] suggest only that employees of the Post-Gazette unsuccessfully sought to enter polling places located in counties where § 3060(d) is enforced, and that employees of other newspapers were allowed to enter polling places in counties where § 3060(d) is not enforced.” PG Publ’g Co., 2012 WL 4796017, at . Still, we must delve deeper, for Appellant urges us that it has 47 alleged a scheme of selective enforcement sufficient to implicate the Equal Protection Clause.