Opinion ID: 216184
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application to the 2008 Amendment

Text: We are required to entertain the Treasurer's rational speculation that the 2008 amendment was intended to facilitate Kentucky's interest in assuming possession of abandoned property, even though, as the district court found, the legislative history does not reflect whether this goal was actually considered by the General Assembly. [4] Because this objective constitutes a legitimate state purpose and the seven-year presumptive abandonment period is rationally related to that purpose, the 2008 amendment does not violate substantive due process guarantees. It cannot be doubted that Kentucky has a legitimate interest in enacting legislation that allows the state to take custody of property that is presumed abandoned. See Anderson Nat'l Bank, 321 U.S. at 240, 64 S.Ct. 599 ([I]t is no longer open to doubt that a state, by a procedure satisfying constitutional requirements, may compel surrender to it of deposit balances, when there is substantial ground for belief that they have been abandoned or forgotten. . . .); see also Sec. Savs. Bank v. California, 263 U.S. 282, 285-86, 44 S.Ct. 108, 68 L.Ed. 301 (1923). American Express unsuccessfully attempts to refute the 2008 amendment's presumption of validity by asserting that the General Assembly has adopted irrational means to advance this interest. In particular, American Express maintains that the General Assembly had no grounds to conclude that traveler's checks are lost or abandoned after seven years, given the district court's finding that between a quarter and a third of traveler's checks still outstanding at the seven-year point are cashed before the fifteen-year point. Hollenbach, 630 F.Supp.2d at 762. Nevertheless, the General Assembly rationally could have concluded that traveler's checks are no less likely to be abandoned after being unredeemed for seven years, as opposed to fifteen years. Cf. Cunnius v. Reading Sch. Dist., 198 U.S. 458, 477, 25 S.Ct. 721, 49 L.Ed. 1125 (1905) (holding that the seven-year time period after which Pennsylvania law presumed an absent person dead and allowed for the administration of his or her estate certainly cannot be said to be unreasonable). The legislature need not produce `mathematical precision in the fit between justification and means' when enacting economic legislation. Blue Diamond, 79 F.3d at 521 (quoting Concrete Pipe & Prods. of Cal., Inc. v. Constr. Laborers Pension Trust, 508 U.S. 602, 639, 113 S.Ct. 2264, 124 L.Ed.2d 539 (1993)); see also Lee Optical, 348 U.S. at 487-88, 75 S.Ct. 461 ([A] law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.). Indeed, the legislature need not support its enactments with empirical evidence at all. Sheffield, 620 F.3d at 614 ([T]o pass rational-basis scrutiny, ordinances need not be supported by scientific studies or empirical data; nor need they be effective in practice.). It falls to American Express to demonstrate that a seven-year presumptive abandonment period is irrational, and the evidence American Express presented to the district court fails to satisfy this burden. In fact, American Express's own statistics indicate that between 99.60% and 99.68% of traveler's checks are cashed before the seven-year mark, and the rate at which purchasers redeem traveler's checks after seven years declines considerably. Because American Express has not carried its heavy burden of `negativ[ing] every conceivable basis which might support [the 2008 amendment],' Hadix v. Johnson, 230 F.3d 840, 843 (6th Cir.2000) (alteration in original) (quoting Heller v. Doe ex rel. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 320, 113 S.Ct. 2637, 125 L.Ed.2d 257 (1993)), we will not overturn the General Assembly's legislative judgment that a seven-year presumptive abandonment period is appropriate for traveler's checks. We may not invalidate the 2008 amendment simply because we think it unwise to deviate from the fifteen-year presumptive abandonment period recommended in the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act and adhered to in forty eight states, or because we are inclined to think that, in general, traveler's checks are not lost or abandoned after only seven years. The district court erred in holding that the 2008 amendment violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of substantive due process.