Opinion ID: 792022
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: RUSD Has A Rational Basis for its Decision to Deny the Busing Benefit

Text: 24 But even assuming that Charter One's students are similarly situated to other students within the RUSD, the school's challenge fails nonetheless in light of the plaintiffs' failure to meet the class of one claim's second prong. 25 The exact contours of the second prong of the class of one equal protection claim are not quite clear. As we noted above, the Supreme Court in Olech held that it has recognized successful equal protection claims brought by a `class of one,' where the plaintiff alleges that she has been intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment.  528 U.S. at 564, 120 S.Ct. 1073 (emphasis added). However, since Olech was decided, the standard for such class of one claims has been muddled in this circuit by two divergent lines of cases. Tuffendsam v. Dearborn County Bd. of Health, 385 F.3d 1124, 1127 (7th Cir.2004) (recognizing divergent lines); Indiana Land Co. v. City of Greenwood, 378 F.3d 705, 713 (7th Cir.2001) (same). In one line of cases, panels of this court have held that a class of one equal protection claim is established where the defendant has intentionally treated the plaintiff differently than others similarly situated either without any rational basis for doing so or out of some totally illegitimate animus. See Lunini v. Grayeb, 395 F.3d 761, 768 (7th Cir.2005); Levenstein v. Salafsky, 414 F.3d 767, 775-76 (7th Cir.2005); McDonald v. Vill. of Winnetka, 371 F.3d 992, 1001 (7th Cir.2004) (citing, inter alia, Olech, 528 U.S. at 564, 120 S.Ct. 1073); Nevel v. Vill. of Schaumburg, 297 F.3d 673, 681 (7th Cir.2002); Albiero v. City of Kankakee, 246 F.3d 927, 932 (7th Cir.2001). In another line, however, we have held that the mere absence of a rational basis is not enough to sustain the class of one claim, and that instead the plaintiff must prove illegitimate animus in order to succeed. See Hilton v. City of Wheeling, 209 F.3d 1005, 1008 (7th Cir.2000); see also Crowley v. McKinney, 400 F.3d 965, 972 (7th Cir.2005); Purze v. Vill. of Winthrop Harbor, 286 F.3d 452, 455 (7th Cir.2002); Cruz v. Town of Cicero, 275 F.3d 579, 587 (7th Cir.2001); Bartell v. Aurora Public Schools, 263 F.3d 1143, 1149 (10th Cir.2001); Bell v. Duperrault, 367 F.3d 703, 709-13 (7th Cir.2004) (Posner, J., concurring). 26 Cases like  Nevel and Albiero track explicitly the Supreme Court's holding and are wholly consistent with its rationale. Indiana Land Co., 378 F.3d at 713 (Ripple, J., concurring). In contrast, the Supreme Court explicitly declined to reach the animus approach upon which Hilton and its progeny insist, concluding that allegations [of intentional action with no rational basis], quite apart from the Village's subjective motivation, are sufficient to state a claim for relief under traditional equal protection analysis. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals, but do not reach the alternative theory of `subjective ill will' relied on by that court. Olech, 528 U.S. at 565, 120 S.Ct. 1073; see also Bell, 367 F.3d at 711 (Posner, J., concurring) (conceding that insisting on a free-standing animus test for class of one claims may be akin to fighting a doomed rearguard action). 27 Indeed, it appears our court may have created a tension with Olech and established national law where previously none existed. Indiana Land Co., 378 F.3d at 714 (Ripple, J., concurring). True, sound reasons have been advanced for grafting the animus requirement onto the class of one claim — without such a requirement, breathtaking vistas of liability might be opened, Tuffendsam, 385 F.3d at 1127, and ordinary state law disputes might become the subject of constitutional challenge, Bell, 367 F.3d at 712 (Posner, J., concurring). That said, the appearance of the animus requirement on the class of one stage is no less jarring. However, we need not decide under which standard the class of one plaintiff must proceed, as here Charter One fails under both. Because the plaintiff has failed to allege, let alone show, any subjective ill will on the part of the RUSD in denying the busing benefit, Charter One's class of one claim would clearly fail under the animus standard. 2 28 Under the rational basis test, the court will uphold the legislative enactment (or classification) so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end. Eby-Brown Co., LLC v. Wis. Dep't of Agric., Trade & Consumer Prot., 295 F.3d 749, 754 (7th Cir.2002). A court will not strike down a state policy merely because it may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought. Id. Rather, this inquiry requires the court to consider only whether any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify the classification, Rabbi Abraham Grossbaum and Lubavitch of Indiana, Inc.v. Indianapolis-Marion County Bldg. Auth., 100 F.3d 1287, 1292 (7th Cir.1996), and it is enough that a purpose may conceivably or may reasonably have been the purpose and policy of the relevant governmental decisionmaker, even if the decisionmaker never articulated that rationale, Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 15, 112 S.Ct. 2326, 120 L.Ed.2d 1 (1992). Here, the unique and independent nature of Charter One not only suggests that the school's students are not similarly situated to those who do receive RUSD busing, but also provides a rational basis for denying the benefit to those students. 29 Again, the unique and autonomous nature of Charter One — a seeming functional equivalent of an independent school district — provides one such rational basis for RUSD's decision not to bus the charter school's students. According to RUSD, its goal is to provide busing only to those students whom it is required to transport by law — namely, students of its own schools and resident students of private and parochial schools located within the district. Were we to view Charter One as its own school district, RUSD would be no more required to transport the charter school's students than it would be required to transport resident students who attend adjacent school districts. Indeed, as Charter One concedes, RUSD's policy is consistent with that of school districts throughout Wisconsin, which uniformly exclude independent charter schools from their busing schemes. And the mere fact that Charter One is the only independent charter school within the geographic boundaries of the RUSD does not render its exclusion discriminatory. Based on the administrative autonomy afforded (2r) charter schools under Wisconsin law, it seems that they do exist beyond the pale of local school district transport obligations — an independence that would serve as a rational basis to deny such schools Section 121.54 busing. 30 But we need not find that Wisconsin charter schools established under Wisconsin Statute § 118.40(2r) in general, or Charter One in particular, constitute independent schools districts of their own right in order to reveal the deficiency in the plaintiff's class of one equal protection claim here. Rather, we need only recognize the unique and additional costs that RUSD would incur were it to provide such service to Charter One. 31 As RUSD expressed at oral argument, Cost is the issue; cost is everything here. This Court has already recognized cost as a rational basis for differential treatment. Irizarry v. Board of Educ. of City of Chicago, 251 F.3d 604, 610 (7th Cir.2001); see also Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw, 486 U.S. 71, 83-84, 108 S.Ct. 1645, 100 L.Ed.2d 62. The record does not provide a hard number on exactly how much more it would cost RUSD to bus Charter One students. It does afford an estimate of how much it would cost to implement from scratch an independent busing scheme devoted solely to Charter One students — $124,000 per year for 257 students — a quote Charter One obtained from a bus company as a result of its own research into potential transportation costs. But this figure is in all likelihood over-inflated. For one, the estimate assumed that nearly the entire Charter One student body at the time would require busing — an unlikely assumption (though we do note that the size of the student body has since expanded to over 300, and is designed to reach at least 400 in the future). Furthermore, the extension of the RUSD busing benefit to Charter One students would not require the wholesale implementation of new busing schedules and routes, but rather could be accomplished, at least in part, by taking advantage of the busing scheme already in place. 32 Indeed, Charter One makes much of the fact that there are already existing RUSD bus routes that pass by Charter One with empty seats — seats that the school contends could be filled by its students. But just because a bus has empty seats when it passes by Charter One does not necessarily mean that those seats are going unused. Rather, those seats may be reserved for students yet to be picked up, or perhaps only recently vacated by students dropped off mere moments before passing the school. Thus, there may not be as much room on those buses as the plaintiff suspects, and the less room there is, the more the need for additional buses to accommodate Charter One students — at a daily rate of $124.66 per bus, not including an additional $24.29 per run. Dep. of Karen Flynn at 84-85 (July 18, 2003). 33 Regardless of the current load and capacity of the existing buses and their designated routes, other peculiarities associated with adding Charter One students to the RUSD busing mix might work appreciable costs in both RUSD time and money. To avoid the cost of implementing a busing scheme devoted exclusively to Charter One, RUSD would almost certainly be forced to alter its current busing routes. Some buses service more than one school, requiring the accommodation of not only the various, specific addresses of each passenger (both current riders and each added Charter One student), but also the coordination of potentially different start and end times at each school serviced. Such alterations would come with appreciable costs, be they the creation of new routes, the addition of more buses, or the elongation of bus routes requiring earlier pick-ups and later drop-offs. And while the record does not allow us to quantify these additional costs to RUSD with any degree of certainty, we are confident that they are substantial enough to provide a rational basis for RUSD's refusal to extend the busing benefit to Charter One students. 34 It requires no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to see that cost is indeed RUSD's issue here. Compared to Charter One's relatively small and manageable universe of students, faculty, and staff, RUSD must care for the needs and costs of over 20,000 students, as well as dealing with the monetary demands of various collective bargaining groups and legislative caps on its spending. True enough, both Charter One and the schools of the RUSD receive the same amount of operational funding from the DPI (about $6900 per pupil per year); but only the plaintiff can draw on generous financing from local benefactors such as the S.C. Johnson Fund in times of need. And if the money runs out, Charter One can go to that generous benefactor for assistance; school districts, such as RUSD, on the other hand, are forced to prostrate themselves before the taxpayer, at the mercy of referenda. RUSD tells us that it simply cannot take on any more costs without receiving more money. The defendant admitted at oral argument that if cost was not an issue — if it could be paid or reimbursed the costs of busing Charter One students by Charter One itself or one of its financial backers — then the district would have no objection to extending the benefit. Such contracting for services is precisely what these circumstances call for, as we again note Section 4.8 of the plaintiff's charter, which explicitly empowers the school to enter into such contracts for transportation. 35 But the defendant's financial straits need not be dire for us to find its refusal to extend transportation services to Charter One rational. We need only recognize that extending the busing benefit will come at a significant enough expense to RUSD, and that is rational basis enough to justify its transportation policy decision. For now, it suffices to say that Charter One is not entitled to a free ride.